We made it to Greenland!

An appreciation for resilience at sea

Sarah-Sarah arrived in Nuuk, Greenland yesterday at 5 pm and last night I slept on terra firma for the first time in eleven days. I feel incredibly lucky to have made this sea voyage with such experienced and affable crew aboard such a remarkable boat. The expedition’s Facebook and Instagram pages give some sense of the incredible beauty we experienced and our good fortune with mostly calm water the entire trip. The logs of Scott, Mario, and Sam provide glimpses into the challenges that are an inevitable part of voyaging on a boat and the good humor our crew brought to dealing with all of it.

Approaching Nuuk, Greenland, July 19, 2025

It’s easy to  idealize boating given how it is presented in movies and magazines but the reality is grittier, even on a boat as comfortable as Sarah-Sarah. Something is always going to break during a long trip. That’s when the preparation and the attitude of the captain and crew make all the difference in determining whether everyone stays safe and gets to the next port.

We encountered two major system failures during the trip. Mario described our recovery from the Engine Control Unit failing the second day and Scott described how he restored the navigation and steering system after it crashed. These are crucial systems that need to work properly for the voyage to proceed. What so impressed me was the calm and deliberate approach to problem-solving that Scott demonstrated in both cases, especially during the failure of the Garmin navigation system.

That Garmin pushed a software update that completely broke our navigation system is inexcusable. Yes, Scott has back up plans but those systems would have added time and risk to navigation. Scott stayed up all night when the system first went down, spending eight hours trying different things to fix it. He then spent another seven hours the next evening before the system was loaded with all the right maps and stable. That’s fifteen hours of troubleshooting for a problem created entirely by Garmin’s faulty software update. In all that time, I never saw Scott get angry or really frustrated. He just kept applying himself to the problem until it was fixed. Mind you this is all happening while Scott is monitoring the weather and calculating the safest time to begin our crossing of the Labrador Sea. If there was ever a situation that would have had me stressed out and cussing, that was it. But Scott remained focused and steady until we were ready to go.

Scott’s calm confidence that he would eventually make it through the problem, one way or another, is a shining example of the resilience needed to enjoy time at sea. Something will break, weather will change, adversity will loom. Then the captain and crew need to lean in  and apply their knowledge and preparation to find the best way forward. I had good fortune to be part of the supremely resilient team aboard Sarah-Sarah.

Statue of Hans Egede in Nuuk, Greenland