On Night Watch by Phil.

 

0245 the alarm goes beeps persistently, 15 minutes to get ready for a three hour watch. The wind is aft the beam not much shelter in the cockpit, it’s going to be cold. Trip to the heads battle into warm fibre piles and heavy waterproofs a mug of tea in a thermal mug and relieve the last watch. Three hours in the open to go. Watch keeping up here has to be more diligent than say an ocean crossing as there is always the risk of ice even if the reports say there isn’t any around.

 

Well that is what seasoned yachties may expect and what most of us on board have experienced in the past. However on Catryn, you will probably will want to visit the heads, you will need a jumper and a fleece but sitting in the wheelhouse doesn’t involve three hours of cold drudgery and anyway if you feel a bit chilled then the diesel warm air heater can  be flicked on for 10 minutes which warms the wheel house up nicely. If the sun hit’s the boat the wheelhouse warms up beautifully. Catherine and I are being completely spoiled for any future trips on Tumbler (Catherine’s Twister 28) in chilly climes, lucky for us it’s in the Med at the moment.

 

Anchor watch involves carrying your sleeping bag up to the wheelhouse setting the alarm on the watch to every 15 minutes and sitting up to have a look round can’t be better.

 

The nights are light all the way through the sun just dipping below the horizon visibility has been excellent to date so it has been relatively easy so far.

 

Seal Meat by Phil.

 

Wednesday evenings dinner included a starter of Seal Meat purchased by Dai in Nuuk. These were three little pieces each with the texture similar to liver and a taste erring towards the fishy. Catherine reckoned it tasted a bit like squid I couldn’t really compare it to much at all. Dai’s recipe involves marinating in olive oil, honey, mustard, soy sauce and lemon then pan frying. Can’t say it’s a favourite with me but the others seem to revel in it i remain unsure about the threatened seal stew in the future.

 

Women’s gossip! (by Cath)

 

I had a lovely hot shower on the aft deck yesterday – better than the showers I used to have under the hose in the Aberdyfi Rowing Club after a morning row.

 

These men (Phil and Dai) reckon they could see harbour walls, cliffs, small islands (which didn’t exist) in the middle of the sea on the way across. Actually its unfair to diss them for this as it is in fact a common feature up here at high latitudes. Its really disconcerting and very difficult to distinguish from proper land and mirage land.

 

By the way – I loved the seal meat – very very tasty.

 

My night watch last night consisted of me watching an enormous ice berg (I mean three times the size of my house) threatening to enter into the narrow bay we are anchored in. Fortunately there are two entrances – so we could have escaped either way. And more fortunately the iceberg drifted past the entrance and out to sea.

 

We are in an area of Greenland (Disko Bay) where loads of ice bergs calve off a glacier and then look rather like a very busy shipping lane but with more interesting shapes. We’ve had a house, a piece of land with a lighthouse on the top, the Taj Mahal so far. They are really impressive – worth just coming for this.

 

Seen whales. Had an abandon ship drill – means putting on immersion suits and sweating profusely with all the warm layers underneath. The next drill was shooting the rifle for polar bear practice. I was rubbish! It took ages to work out I had the wrong eye shut and was so far off the target that I hit the rocks and the bullet ricoched back into the water. Phil to his credit hit the wine box we were shooting at .

 

I’m on cooking duty tonight so its fish pie and peas. Other duties for me was fitting a new gas solenoid which means we can now switch off the gas from inside the boat.

 

Final word from Dai: You see what I have to put up with?!