Labrador Sea | A North Atlantic Crossing

From one iceberg laden shore to another - shear beauty!

The Strait of Belle Isle — and everything north along the Labrador coast — remains one of the great highlights of the journey. Once you enter the Gulf, things shift. Villages grow smaller, communities become unbelievably welcoming, and you can’t help but feel that here, the sea governs life. Oh — and the swells get real.

It was in the Strait that we spotted our first iceberg. It emerged out of the fog, impossibly huge and far too close for comfort. That moment marked the beginning of our education in radar — learning just how capable it was at detecting even small icebergs, and how reassuring that knowledge would become.

The forecast for a North Atlantic crossing wasn’t great, so we elected to continue north along the Labrador coast instead. What a silver lining that decision turned out to be. In the village of Pincent Arm, the locals told us they hadn’t seen a sailboat in over two years — a testament to how quickly pleasure boating gives way to working boats here, vessels used for livelihoods and essential transport in communities accessible only by water.

Then the day came.

We were in Black Tickle, Labrador, and we were ready.

Casting off from land for the last time is a feeling I will never forget. It was freeing — almost cathartic. After years of planning and weeks of weather watching, we were finally committed. Fully at the mercy of whatever the sea would present. The crossing had begun.

What surprised me most was that the ocean crossing turned out to be the most relaxing part of the entire journey. No more daily planning for the next anchorage. No more scrutinizing charts for rocky passages, or calculating tides and depths. We simply had to sail.

It was a glorious six days, and I slept like a dream. The long, slow swell of the North Atlantic was profoundly soothing. Lying in the v-berth between shifts at the tiller felt like resting on a cloud — a moment of weightlessness as we crested a swell, followed by the deep, grounding comfort of sinking into the trough, like being held under a weighted blanket. Heaven.

I couldn’t get enough of the sunsets and sunrises, soaking in every moonlit moment as the stars began to appear, knowing that soon we would be sailing under the midnight sun.

And then — icebergs.

This is the Labrador Sea, after all. We were surrounded. At one point I did a full 360 and counted fourteen. They appeared in every imaginable size and shape, constantly changing character with the light. The hardest part of the crossing came during a foggy stretch while we were still deep in iceberg alley — eyes glued forward, bodies tense, waiting for an iceberg to materialize from the white nothingness. Hours of intense focus left us cross-eyed and exhausted.

Eventually, as we progressed farther from the Labrador coast, we said goodbye to the icebergs — knowing they would return as our first signal that Greenland was near.

Another unforgettable moment came when a pod of pilot whales appeared and escorted us for nearly an hour, weaving effortlessly through our wake. Pure magic.

Lonnie clearing customs in Nuuk, Greenland

We never encountered a gale. We flew our gennaker for the first time and reveled in the vastness of the open ocean. With favorable southerly winds, we adjusted our landfall from Paamiut to the capital, Nuuk. And then came the moment we first saw land.

Towering mountains rose from the sea, glaciers pouring directly into the ocean. It was absolutely breathtaking. Wow.

Crossing the North Atlantic to Greenland — what an incredible experience. One I will never forget.