Thursday - Day 21 - almost Heimaey

(Astute blog readers may note that the day count changed from day 19 to day 21 -- we didn't skip day 20 -- I messed up the day count back on Grundarfjordur and the network is too slow for me to go back and fix it now!) 

On Thursday, we were scheduled to stop at Haimaey, Westman Islands, Iceland...

We arrived early in the morning, and, by 8am,

...five tender boats were out and anticipating taking passengers ashore. But... if you look closely, you might see that they are at differing angles to each other with regard to the surface of the sea, as they were being bounced around quite vigorously. The captain had tried to get the ship positioned so the tender platform would be in the lee of the ship, but even with that, water was washing over the platform (not a good thing for lots of older adults to deal with when attempting to board the tenders). In addition, the weather was predicted to worsen during the day... so Captain Timmers decided, for safety of crew and passengers, to cancel this port stop.

It was very very foggy -- had been for most of the night of sailing as the fog horn was going off regularly as we traveled. In the picture above, you may be able to see small areas of white -- that's where the waves were hitting the cliffs that were right next to our ship. It was disconcerting that we couldn't see the shore at all, but knew that it was very close -- we were glad that the captain could keep us away from the rocky cliffs at our sides.

One of the tenders (again, the fog was so dense that it looks blurry) -- you may be able to see 3 crew members (two in front, one on top) with their heads out as they prepared to head back to the tender hooks to bring the lifeboats back onboard.

We went up to breakfast (as did many others) -- 

I went to get hot water for tea and was surprised to find a sign on the hot water dispenser, "Brewing in Progress"! Who knew that hot water had to be brewed! (I'm sure it was heating.)

After the decision was made to skip Heimaey, the cruise director and crew quickly turned their plans to finding how they could entertain the passengers on this unexpected (bonus) sea day...

Astronomer Tom Vassos quickly was scheduled on the World Stage at 10am to do a talk -- he had gathered a few photographs from other places of the preceding day's solar eclipse - this one from Spain that had been named NASA's Astronomy Photo of the Day for August 13.

Tom Vassos then continued with a bonus presentation that he had put together (I'm certain that he had it as an additional presentation "just in case" of a situation like this) -- on Time Travel as seen in movies and as theorized in science.

Other than that presentation, we didn't do much other than rest and eat! Carl has been struggling with back pain (it seems to be a nerve bundle that is experiencing pressure from a bulging disc in his back and causing numbness in his right arm and a lot of pain) -- it flared up as we traveled from the US to London 4 weeks ago, but had quieted in the last week. It has now flared up again, and we're trying to figure out what we need to do about it in the short term (manage the pain so he can do things he wants to do on the trip) and what we should do about it in the long term (pain management doctor or other care when we get back to Mesa). We're praying and seeking wisdom and a solution.

Later in the day, we had a letter from Captain Timmers relating the decision to cancel the port call at Heimaey.

I'm thinking that cruising has a lot of commonality with RVing, you need to be flexible to having plans change due to circumstances outside of your control on a daily/hourly basis!

Wednesday - Day 19 - August 12 -- Solar Eclipse Day!

Wednesday was the day of the solar eclipse! 

We started the morning (after breakfast) at "Coffee with Jai" hearing from the singers and dancers in the Nieuw Statendam cast.

Tom Vassos and the Captain were doing one last "prep" talk -- we decided to watch on the big screen by the Lido pool as the talk the previous evening in the World Stage had been packed.

The captain had told us the day before that he thought the best chance for a patch of clear sky would be more north than he had originally planned, but, when he got there on Wednesday, it wasn't looking good, so he started south down the path of totality.

He eventually decided heading south wasn't going to do it, so he turned around and headed back north again, a little east of our previous position.

We headed up to deck 11, above the pool, where we could be outside but also protected from the wind -- our first view was pretty cloudy, but we could see that it was possible that we might be moving into clearer skies. (The picture is with the solar eclipse glasses over the lens of the camera.)

Prepared with our solar glasses

Carl got some good pictures as the moon was "eating away" at the sun.

He had to put the solar glass lens across the phone's lens to protect the phone's lens too.

"A few" other people on deck with us!

The Captain got us into a spot where the sun was visible and we had diminishing sunshine on our faces!

Continuing in the eclipse

Carl's picture during totality

Some of our fellow viewers during totality. As the captain had assured us all along, "Whatever else happens, it *will* get dark!"

Another view of totality showing the sun's corona - amazingly beautiful.

Once the sun started coming back out of eclipse, the clouds moved in and we headed back inside.

After the eclipse, we went to the Lido buffet for dinner, where they had "Solar Eclipse Dessert" (on the left).

Some pictures posted on Facebook by fellow passengers on our ship:

The pink on the left lower side is a prominence, I think.

Diamond ring

We were all fully impressed with the Captain's maneuvering the ship into just the right place -- one of our fellow passengers posted this on Facebook (from Bradley Robert):

Just before the eclipse I was standing on the balcony looking up at the bridge and saw the captain in discussion with other crew members. The captain pointed out the window behind the ship to starboard (like 135 degrees) and the ship makes a giant u-turn. The rest of the story per Jai:

Jai was on the bridge watching the captain tell the crew which way we needed to go to find a hole in the clouds and ordered the new course. As we approached, he made adjustments to make sure we weren’t directly under the hole in the clouds but on the proper course to be at the right angle to see the sun through the hole AND follow the clouds to stay in the pocket.

Really an amazing piece of navigation.

The northeastern point is where we saw the solar eclipse -- we are now heading to our next port via a southeasterly course.

What a day! It was so beautiful, and so neat to experience it with so many others! 

Tuesday - Day 18 - Sea Day

After leaving Greenland, the Captain was making his way on Tuesday to the track of the solar eclipse so we could be in position to see it on Wednesday afternoon.

We were relaxing and attending sessions to educate ourselves...

.... primarily regarding tomorrow's solar eclipse! These were the estimated times, but, the captain did not know precisely where along the path of totality that we would end up finding clear skies, so they were subject to change, but not by much.

The talk was by the onboard astronomer, Tom Vassos, from University of Toronto.

He brought graphics from many sources and was very entertaining. This is a picture of the activity going on on the sun's surface earlier on Tuesday. There are a lot of sun storms / ejections going on during this time very close to solar maximum (solar maximum was during 2025).

Because of the high level of solar activity, we may witness several special activities of the sun while the moon blocks the main part of the sun's light.

Near totality, both going into totality and coming out, we might see the "diamond ring" just before the last light of the sun is extinguished (or just after the first light of the sun is again seen).

Tom Vassos is an interesting character -- entertaining, smart, able to built excitement in folks who are on a solar eclipse cruise, but may not know much about what is about to happen.

Other than Tom's lecture, we relaxed (and ate). We could get used to living like this!

Monday - day 17 - part 2 - Scenic cruising

Part 1 of Monday can be found here: https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2026/08/monday-day-17-part-1-qaqortok.html 

Our captain had told us earlier in the day that we were going to be taking a different route around southern Greenland than the one we had traversed earlier which took us pretty far offshore to avoid icebergs and in which we were in dense fog. Instead, he indicated that we would be going through Prins Christianssund (Prince Christian Sound). When we went to his talk a few days ago, someone had asked about whether we would be going through there as many cruises do, and he said that it was not likely as the sound can be bottled up with icebergs and you may not know until you get nearly to the end, and then there is no place to turn around for a long ways, so you have to back out to go around the other way, losing many hours in the process. But, evidently, he had gotten reports that cruising through Prins Christiansund was an option, it would be shorter, but, unfortunately, it would be mostly at night.

A picture from the items that are provided in our stateroom (extra charges apply if they are consumed -- we do not!). I found it interesting that the Coke can is labeled "For Airline and Maritime Consumption Only".

Monday was "Orange Day", recognizing the House of Orange of The Netherlands, the home country of Holland America. We were encouraged to wear orange (we had gone to a thrift store in Arizona and gotten orange shirts to wear as orange is not a color that we usually wear). There was a special "Dutch Night" dinner in the main dining room where we were able to try various Dutch dishes...

... including Lindt chocolate with the desserts -- Carl got two -- the Lindt tulip as well as a Lindt hot fudge sundae!

While we were in the dining room there was great excitement as we passed a couple of icebergs that looked to be very close (we were on the second deck in the main dining room so closer to the water level than our room on deck 6). We weren't able to get out on deck to see those...

... but after dinner, we went out on the Promenade deck (deck 3), 

... and enjoyed seeing some of the icebergs as we passed...

... unfortunately none particularly close.

The view looking behind the ship of the mountains with fog around them was pretty too!

When we went back inside, it was just about time for the 8:30pm show to start, so we went in to watch another show by the magician. 

Cruise director Jai welcomed us to Orange Night and Showtime -- he was quite the picture in orange! (We've heard him called "Elton Jai" -- seems appropriate!)

After the magician show, we went over to see the Orange Party going on in B.B.Kings Blues club -- we watched for a little while from the deck above. The music was good, but very loud.

We were now in fjords on our way to Prins Christiansund -- the sun was getting low in the sky, just lighting high peaks...

... there were tall peaks on each side of the ship.

We were curving around these mountains, and threading between icebergs and mountains...

...it was simply beautiful ---

... pictures don't do it justice.

We sent back to our cabin, 

... and I noticed something odd when we came to this area of the fjord...

... zooming in, we could see that it was something that looked human-created...

As we kept on looking, we could see rooflines and brightly colored houses -- we were a *long* ways away from any other habitation.

In this picture, you may be able to see lights at a couple of the houses.

I looked on the map to see where we were -- the community was Aappilattoq. Wikipedia says, "The settlement had 86 inhabitants in 2025." If you're interested in more information, the Wikipedia article can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aappilattoq,_Kujalleq

Here's a screen capture I did on Google Maps with our approximate route through this area of Greenland. It looks like I may have left Carl behind somewhere near Aappilattoq, but that's just the last place his phone connected with a geolocator -- I assure you, he is still with me on the ship!

It was getting dark, so we couldn't really enjoy seeing the rest of the transit through Prins Christiansund. The ship turned the front floodlights on, so we did have a pretty good view via the bow camera, but, we were tired, and it was late (we would lose an hour Tuesday 2am), so we opted for sleep rather than seeing more.

What an amazing time we've had in Greenland. I guess we didn't have a lot of expectations, so all we saw and did went beyond anything we were anticipating!