Nuuk3: Preparation is half the voyage
July 13 in Greenland ⋅ ☀️ 11 °C
The day is perfect: 14°C, intense sun, dry air. In the sun the temperature rises quickly. The plan for the day is to head to town to exchange a wrongly bought rifle magazine and to buy 130 meters of 6 mm rope needed for attaching the trampolines and then mount the new trampolines. Well, it wasn’t that straight forward.
The first mission went smoothly, I now have the correct magazine that fits the rifle. While they also carry ropes, it is primarily the cheap nylon stuff that the fishermen use, nothing you would use to attach your trampoline with. The very helpful guys direct us to a place that should have the rope we are looking for. We dinghy to the place, spot a boat ramp, which is a nice way to secure the dinghy: wheels deployed we drag it up the ramp.
In the “Grønland Bådcenter”, the best thing we are offered are spools of 30m pull-start cord for skidoos. Tough stuff. Not optimal and quite expensive. Because he has a lot and because of the quantity we require, he offers 50% discount. Another employee drops into the conversation and mentions another shop that should have a more suitable and cheaper rope: Qalut Vónin in the old harbor. Ok, let’s go. We walk back to the dinghy only to discover that the tide has fallen and there now is a cliff off the boatramp to the water. No way we can launch without breaking something. So we take a taxi.
Qalut Vónin caters to professional fishermen. The shop is amazing. Fishing nets, hundreds of meter long ropes and also a rope that we can use. Not perfect but good enough. I also buy a blue barrel, a rectangular water basin and a fish hook.
No need to rush, the tide needs to come back up anyways, so we hit a restaurant and then take the bus back to the dinghy. What I expected to take an hour took five. But we met many humorous, helpful and very nice people along the way. A very nice experience.
When we return to the anchorage, both Vanuily and Nunatak have anchored and are already squatting Nunatak’s sun deck. We join them and celebrate their arrival in Greenland.
Then we set to work on the trampoline. This is a big job. Each trampoline is attached to the boat with 80 connecting roped. Each tied with a bowline and a lashing. And the trampoline needs a lot of tension to fall into place. Both of us work for 3 hours to get one trampoline 90% done. Boy am I happy to have the help of Yann!Read more