After almost an hour, we’re finally through. Despite the time, we haven’t travelled far, and we’re still several hours away from camp. “There shouldn’t be too much ice from here until we hit Sermilik Fjord,” Sven tells us. And he’s right. We put our cameras away and pick up speed, charging through a steeply edged fjord. The journey from here is a little less visually exciting and we settle into the ride. The two guys I’m travelling with have been up this way before and knew what to expect. “Put your heated vest on and all your layers,” one of the guys, Mike, had told me back at the hotel before departure. “Trust me, with the wind chill, you’ll need it.” I didn’t need to be told twice. Maybe it’s the tropical diver in me, or maybe those memories of the cold from the last time I was in Greenland never left. And so, moving at full-pelt along the fjord, togged up to my eyeballs, I had never been so thankful for Arksen’s warmest jacket – and for the heated Ventura dive vest (which I’d cranked up to it’s maximum setting) that was nestled underneath. Along the way, Sven stops to check on two boats that aren’t moving. There’s no mobile signal here and as he explains, “this isn’t a place you would like to run into a problem with your boat”.

The hours passed with chats about the local area. Sven told us of the changing seasons, a local polar bear sighting and of how the local hunters had never seen a pilot whale before and that any kill was an opportunity. He told us of the high abundance of Greenland sharks in the area, the dive conditions at camp at the moment and the hundreds of humpback whales that had been seen this past week feeding much later than usual in the season. As the time passes, icebergs began coming back into view. But this time, they are huge. The size of cars, buildings, multi-story car-parks. And soon enough, they surround us. The fjord opens up, and Sermilik looks just the way I remembered it – full of ice, and beautiful. Unlike Kulusuk, where the ice had been blown in from Sea. Sermilik Fjord has several ocean-terminating glaciers and the ice calved by glacier drifts out toward open ocean.

Shortly after arriving into Sermilik Fjord, Sven turns into a small bay, where there upon the rock jutting out into the water, is a cluster of several simple, brightly-coloured huts. On the grounds of a remote hunter’s cabin, Sven built a base to run diving iceberg-diving expeditions out in the wilderness, lovingly referred to as the ‘Ice Camp’. The accommodation is humble, but comfortable. More comfortable than what I’m used to in the field in Indonesia anyway. The camp itself runs off very little, supported by a glacial stream and a small generator, which means warm(ish) showers and electricity for a few hours a day to charge the essentials; cameras, drones and heated vests. We’re greeted by the site manager, pointed toward shared plywood huts with simple beds and given a simple, but hearty – and more importantly, warm – dinner.

As 10pm crawls around, we have our safety briefing, prep kit for the check dive in the morning and I crawl into bed. I immediately then crawl back out to grab my Weezle diving suit, because the temperature is just a little too low for me – and the last way I want to start polar diving, is running on a cold night’s sleep.”

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