The Yeva is currently harbored in the small village of Qaqortoq, located within a system of fjords on the southeastern coast of Greenland. There's three Qs in "Qaqortoq" and not one of them is followed by the letter U. Trails from the town lead through rugged mountains to the old Norse settlement of Igaliku, and to the southeast, hot springs at Uunartoq sit beside a bay dotted with icebergs. The area has had a continuous human presence for roughly 4,300 years, beginning with the Saqqaq culture. DNA evidence suggests that the ancestors of the Saqqaq came from Siberia and that they subsequently remained largely isolated from other populations. It is not known whether they crossed in boats or over ice.
Anyway, on her circumnavigation of the Arctic Circle and needing to find a safe place to repair the Yeva's heater, Ella Hibbert sailed into Qaqortoq's harbor. She reported that she spotted a pod of right whales before landing in Greenland and that she also had her first visual sighting of an iceberg. While in port, on top of fixing her heater, she'll probably top off her fuel and water, and get in a good sleep.
To watch for icebergs at sea, she's had to restrict sleep to 20-minute shifts. However, one of the consequences of waking up too quickly or too early is a phenomenon called sleep inertia, that groggy period between waking and being fully aware. The more abruptly you are awakened, the more severe the sleep inertia. Transitioning between sleep mode and awake mode is a gradual process - our brain-stem arousal systems (the parts of the brain responsible for basic physiological functioning) are activated almost instantly, but our cortical regions, especially the prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain involved in decision-making and self-control), take longer to come on board. As a result, instantaneous decision-making is challenging when abruptly awakened, so one can only imagine how Hibbert's mind reacts to a blip on the Yeva's radar indicating an iceberg up ahead after a brief, 20-minutes sleep.
From Qaqortoq, the Yeva will sail north back up to the Arctic Circle and then pass north of Baffin Island through the Baffin Sea. From there, she'll pick a route through the Northwest Passages depending on the extent of sea ice and head west over the top of the North American continent.
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