Manuel Olivera (expedition member):
“A month ago I embarked on a strange journey in which I hooked on to thanks to my friendship with the leader of the fleet, Captain Larramendi. The fleet consists of three discrete artefacts that individually are nothing, but together have no precedent navigating the hard ice of Inlandsis.
The vehicle is driven by the action of moving air; normally in these latitudes the wind is almost ubiquitous and without a pattern, determined by Greenland’s physiognomy, on the one hand, an anticyclone permanently established therein and, on the other, by the Coriolis acceleration (the effect of Earth’s rotation on moving objects). Another issue is if it’s blowing in the right direction.
But there are days, like on June 5, when I write these lines, in which the wind is calm and the sun’s rays burn our faces. The rest of the body is pretty well covered. The temperature outside is 11.5 degrees C below zero, high for these high latitudes. The total calm threatens us with almost eternal sleep.
Under this circumstance the entire crew, five in total including the captain, must activate the emergency protocol: lift the kite and see what happens.
Sailing aboard a WindSled in Greenland must be like doing it in the ocean on a sailboat: depending only on the air current to move, and on a piece of fabric that rides the water surface. I guess I’d like to try it on the water, after this experience, although I would probably get dizzy. Now, it doesn’t happen.
Surviving in a hostile environment such as is the Inlandsis ice cap, is not easy, but now after a month since I started the adventure it’s even more difficult living five people so long in such a small space. A great deal of patience, tolerance and generosity are required. Since May 5 this is how we are and hope to continue until later on this month.
This journey has provided a mission that fills me with pride: gathering snow samples and analyzing resulting data. Density, thickness and surface temperatures, according to the guidelines of Mr. J. I. López, researcher at the Pyrenean Institute of Ecology (IPE-CSIC), and an expert in snow and glacier studies. IPE has chosen the WindSled designed by Larramendi to gather manual measurements of Greenland snow, my job, never done before on a journey like ours: the WindSled inner circumnavigation of this huge island.
80% of Greenland is covered by ice and it represents the second mass in size of the planet’s largest freshwater reservoir. Its impact on Earth’s climate is demonstrated in crystal clear form. Greenland inland ice data may help estimate the evolution of climate and therefore of the Earth in the coming decades. The use of the WindSled is a must for the Earth’s well being. “
