09/06/11 Sailing with Icebergs

Literally hours after this picture was taken this iceberg broke in two but not before we had taken a drink off it.

Charley and his iceberg.

So here we are, the first adventure of our new TV series ‘Extreme Frontiers: Canada.’

You guys have no idea how good it feels to finally be in this amazing country after all the planning.

We flew initially into St. John’s, but finding no icebergs in that area, we decided to jump on another flight to St. Anthony’s on our official iceberg hunt!

Arriving into St. Antony’s, a beautiful port town on the northernmost tip of Newfoundland, we jumped abroad a trawler to hunt down our first iceberg in ‘Iceberg Alley’.

Unfortunately, we only found icebergs the size of a dustbin- slightly disappointing, but we weren’t ready for defeat.

Arriving back on land, we met up with two local fisherman brothers, called Dean and Dave Patey. Their house was just incredible. It was more like a den or coastal treasure-trove, stacked with tools and commemorative bits and pieces from the local area. Dean and Dave were completely self-sufficient, having built their own house from scratch, and collecting their own food via hunting and fishing locally.

Ice for the Screech in?

These guys were real ‘do it all’ brothers! While were sharing a few tales, we spotted a very, very large iceberg out of their window.

We quickly gathered our kit and Dave drove us to the harbour to their boat. Dave and Pete’s boat was a beautiful old eccentric looking fishing boat, personalised with paintings and writings. Their love for their boat was very apparent, as they told us that their boat was their lifeline for38 freezing days at sea, where they were stranded, and dropped supplies by helicopter. They didn’t want to leave their boat adrift as it was their life! Quite rightly too!

We were soon setting sail for the most stunning iceberg. We were awed by its pure white-colour and eye-watering turquoise blue base. It looked like a giant swan drying its two white-wings in the air. Dave sailed gently into the iceberg and knocked a small chunk off for us. Very impressed with his precision! Dave told us that some of that some of the ice was 24,000 years-old, so even a small piece is very sort after. Everyone wants to get their hands on a tip of ancient iceberg up here!

A storm was brewing, so we bounced back to shore in choppy Atlantic water, hitting squalls of heavy rain. Heading straight to the bar with our fresh iceberg under-arm, we toasted our iceberg discovery with an iceberg-iced rum tipple or three.

We later discovered that afternoon, that our 24,000 year-old swan iceberg had cracked in half and disappeared altogether. We were chuffed to think that we’d managed to celebrate its long, long, long journey down from the Arctic to Newfoundland.

See you on the road…