-22C Wow!

After a three day, nasty blizzard earlier this week, the weather has finally broken into the -20Cs. Today, March 21, it is -22C and brilliantly sunny (sunrise 0657 sunset 1918). It hasn't been this warm  for what seems like forever. The change has brought about a flurry of activity around town, both good and bad. We enjoyed a long walk out onto the ice to enjoy the sunshine.

"Eagle", the only sailboat in town, abandoned 50+ years ago

the ice road

The ice road is now ready for use and the cat train has been busy picking up the sea cans from the abandoned barge in Hope Bay. The locals are out enjoying the extra mileage they can do on their vehicles, the road is busy. Apparently, some people drive right across the Strait to the mainland. There is nothing but more of the same once they get there, so, not sure of the appeal, but, it's something to do and maybe makes you feel like you're going somewhere?

the "cat train" returning with a load

the ice seems to go down forever, probably almost two metres anyway

We also had a look at "Maud", the little of her that remains above the surface anyway. Hopefully, this will be her last winter under the ice.

"Maud"

"Maud"

"Jensen", the barge that "Maud" will go back to Norway on.

That's the good part of the warmer weather. Unfortunately, there is a bad part as well, it's brought out the thieves. The post office has been closed for a week. Somebody broke in and opened every single parcel on the premises. You can imagine the chaos now trying to figure out who's missing what and what should go where. It seems especially cruel in a community like this where the post office is still a real lifeline. We were expecting two parcels of DVDs, but, have no idea if they're in the mess, or, still on the way. One consolation, the thieves won't be able to watch our DVDs as they're European format. Also, at 4 a.m. during the blizzard, somebody cut a hole in the wall of the Elks' clubhouse to get access to the liquor inside. The door is well-barred, so, they went in through the wall instead. Apparently two people are in custody and the RCMP are looking for more. It was also very shocking to learn that there was a triple murder here a few years ago. It seems unbelievable in a town of only 3,000 people, but, I guess it can happen anywhere.

We've been busy with boat chores as well. The bilge needed pumping aboard Martin Bergmann, the water had seeped in and filled it to the floorboards. Aboard Tandberg Polar we were running low on fuel. We've known for a while that we were going to have to transfer some out of the aft reserve tank into the main tanks, but, had been procrastinating. The fuel pump looked intimidating, we had to run a hose through the boat and the thought of the havoc we could wreak moving thousands of litres of diesel into places where it shouldn't go made us nervous. The blizzard was coming and we knew we had to do it. Once we'd faced up to it, it really went very smoothly, but, took a few hours to move 12,000 litres from one tank to another.

The fuel pump

Systems aboard Tandberg Polar are a little more complex than we're used to on Gjoa!

During the blizzard we had a problem with the boiler. It kept shutting itself off/on in rapid succession. The very strong wind was coming directly over the stern and downdrafting the chimney. The boat was filling with fumes and we had to shut the boiler off in order not to gas ourselves to death. No boiler = no heat, our worst nightmare and we spent a night worrying about how cold it was going to get and how quickly. It actually wasn't too bad as the electric heaters kept the edge off and above freezing. We took the opportunity of changing the fuel nozzle while the burner was off. The wind had shifted slightly to the north by morning and with crossed fingers we restarted the boiler and it worked fine! Another bullet dodged, for now.

Our list to port is continuing to increase...