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| The Game | ||
Breaking away from the bosom of Sisimiut
Log Date: July 22, 1998
Author: Doug Cabot
Lat/Lon: 66.52.5 N, 53.38 W
Location: 3 miles south of Sisimiut
Weather: Sunny
Sightings: Jaegers, hooded seals
Click on the pictures below to view enlargements.
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Last night I slept on the boat for the first time since we arrived in Sisimiut.
I had pitched a tent on the first night, sleeping in mosquito-free solitude about
ten minutes' walk from Snorri. Then our departure was delayed by a satellite telephone
that will apparently not transmit.
Sisimiut is a fine place. The scenery is spectacular, the town is clean, there are
sled dogs everywhere. Best of all, the people are friendlier, more open, somehow
more fully drawn than in any place we've been.
I was wandering around, back on Friday, when a guy waved me over to his sunny porch
and invited me to drink some red wine with him. His name was Karl, and he's a cook
on a shrimp trawler. He did not know I was from the "vikingskib." He had
the day off due to the off-shore fog and just felt like being friendly.
Karl's English was a little shaky, but luckily his friend Klara showed up, and she
was able to translate for us. She showed off some prints she had done which were
on Karl's wall, and I was so impressed I bought a few from her. She ended up taking
me to her parents' house, where there was a big gathering before her younger brother's
Confirmation. The next day there was a bigger gathering, to which I brought Hodding
and Erik (Hod and I wearing Viking gear) and, well, that seems to be the way it goes
in Sisimiut.
That being said, I don't think anybody was sorry to leave this morning. At least
for me, there is a level of energy that voyaging on Snorri demands. Not so much for
those glorious days of sailing as for the times in between, when there are things
to be fixed, improved, cleaned, and organized. There is the Big Picture to keep in
mind - where we are, where we're going, with whom, and what might be needed to do
the best we can. After a few days in town, that picture starts to cloud. Sleeping
late, shuffling around on errands, going out late, moving from heated spaces to the
outdoors, back and forth, all day long - it positively fogs the mind and drains the
focus that I worked hard to establish. I guess the key word is "momentum,"
and leaving town today, I wished I had it.
Tomorrow, let's hope, I will wake fresh and make incredible meals all day and check
every line for chafe and be irresistibly helpful and chipper to everybody and maybe
jump in the water just because I can. But today, once we set anchor, I was just about
useless. I napped, I read, I stared into space, I worked on my little carving, and
I
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Meanwhile, Erik, Hodding, John Abbott and I don't know who else, worked like whirling dervishes on the foredeck, cleaning and rearranging everything, from bilge to breakfast bin. And they did it with such gusto. Made me feel guilty. Couldn't they have been more considerate, and done nothing too for a while?
But I've skipped over the highlight of the day, the three or four hours when we were actually sailing. We rowed out of the inner harbor, light wind in our faces, at about 10:30. After a half-hour or so, enough to get the blood moving, we set the sail. We then began to beat back and forth, actually making some good headway, until we were able to weather a small island at the entrance to the outer harbor - and we were free.
Well, not really free - we must now wait within a few miles of town for a part to arrive from Norway that will fix our satellite telephone and thus allow us to keep modeming news to the rest of the world. But it's really too dull a tale to tell, that of our technological woes.
The important thing is that we got out of town, and we sailed away from it. Partly sunny, windy and cool. Hodding and I comprised the initial "foredeck crew," which basically means we were the two assigned to release the forward corner of the sail, then haul in and fasten the other corner, at the moment when the boat tacks (comes "through" the wind, steering up and around to the point where the wind comes over the other side of the bow). There are actually a lot of little steps to a successful tack on a square-sailed rig. Timing is critical, and if there is a good wind it can be pretty exciting, if not hectic.
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Heading off on a new tack |
