Decommissioning Days
For the first 3 days in Aasiaat there was unrelenting rain, some wind and Scotch mist. We began to fear that we would never get the sails off and dried for the winter.
A brief respite was forecast for the 4th day and so, immediately after breakfast, all hands were on deck to dry and drop the head sails. Folding a socking great foresail on a narrow deck is, in the skipper's experience, a time to take a low profile as making a three dimensional shape fold flat is not always intuitive. Today he was allowed only to control the halyard and the rate of drop and was thus able to watch, with amusement, the rest of team Shimshal battle it out.
All ended well with the sails bagged and parked in front of the dehumidifier to desicate them to winter storage levels.
Next job was to wrestle the boat cover in place which we completed just as the patter of drizzle returned.
We then took on the indoor jobs of winterising the 2 heads and the two saltwater taps which went without a glitch. With seacock closed we managed to squeeze my oil pump hose down as far as the seacock and backfill with antifreeze. With a jug coupled to the distal pipes we then pumped antifreeze through the taps where we caught it and recycled it into the toilet and bilge pump. We then reconnected everything so that when we come back all we have to do is open the seacocks and away we go!
With the boat now in bits Sally went off to the fire station and bartered a fill for the dive cylinder. A packet of filter coffee and a bag of sugar is the going rate in Aasiaat. She also humped all our home bound gear to the hotel as we have decided to move off the boat for the last 2 nights to get it as dry as possible for the winter layup.
After lunch I attempted to fix the leak from the calorifier with judicious use of some anti-clockwise wound PTFE tape. I'm keeping my fingers crossed in the hope that we do not get that irritating trickle seepage next year.
Meanwhile Sally got us an invitation to a free coffee and cakes event to commemorate the arrival of fibre optic broadband in Aasiaat. We had seen the French cable laying vessel L'Isle des Aux on our trip north and speculated that it might be laying fibre. Sure enough they have, today, completed the laying of a cable from Iceland to Qaqortoq and on to Halifax with a spur up to Aasiaat. It was great to see the town celebrating the arrival of such a crucial bit of infrastructure. At home we just moan that it's slow to get to the countryside. By my reckoning this 30mm diameter cable (they had a sample on the coffee table) must be 3,600 miles long as that's the sailing distance from Reykjavik to Aasiaat and then on to Halifax!
After Sally repaired a rip in the spray hood we called it quits for the day and moved into the hotel for showers, a bed on land and, briefly, super fast broadband.
Tomorrow's jobs are now few. Sally is going to manicure her galley having already drawn up an inventory of remaining food stores and sell-by dates. The boys will disconnect 2/3 of the batteries leaving them to face the winter cold fully charged which should mean that they wont freeze in the expected temperatures. The remaining 1/3 we will keep on trickle charge. That way we can leave the bilge pumps on for the 2 months the boat will be in the water before she is lifted. The latter being an insurance condition.
More or less the last job will be to pump antifreeze through the 4 fresh water taps taking care to ensure we do both the hot and cold circuits.
Our last few days in Greenland have been
and will continue to be busy but Sally and I are already making plans for a return in the spring whilst the sea ice is still here to go dog sledding and snowmobiling. They say the weather here in March and April is stunning!
