Scoresby Sund Expedition 2022
Day 42. 22nd July 2022
Position: Moored Husavik, Iceland
Weather: Not too bad at all
Ice: Looking better. OK to make landfall a bit further south.
Yesterday morning I went up to the Grimur engineering shop at 07:00 which was pretty stupid because they didn’t open until 08:00. So I went back at 08:00 carrying my wind generator with the very slight hope that they may be able to help me by replacing the bearings in the base swivel. To be honest, I wasn’t very hopeful, and the best-case scenario was that it would take several days and probably cost a small fortune. However, on arrival I was allocated and engineer who was nothing short of a genius. Unperturbed by glued in and seized up bearings in totally inaccessible places he thought outside the box and had a solution to everything. After just an hour he had removed the seized bearings and replaced them with new ones, and I was marching back to the boat with a big grin on my face.
Ray was due to arrive at lunchtime and I should really have spent the morning tidying the boat so that he was presented with a respectable ship to sail on. Instead, I couldn’t resist re-assembling the generator. After cleaning everything then sealing it up with black mastic, and eventually getting it on its mounting I could at last see if it would actually work. Ray then arrived at a boat covered in tools and me covered in mastic but didn’t seem to mind. The good news is that we now have a working wind generator!
We spent the afternoon exploring the town. We decided against swimming in the very posh spa pool up the hill and went for the municipal pool which was more than adequate for us sailors.
The Icelandic swimming pools are always spotless and have large hot tubs to relax in. Actually there isn’t much swimming going on at all. While walking back to the boat along the dock, Caroline from Northabout presented us with a lovely fresh cod for our supper. We later discovered a brewery tap selling Husavik Ol beer and Fish and Chips crisps with real bits of fish!
There has now been a mass departure of yachts with Northabout and The Belle Epoque heading towards the Kangerlussac area of Greenland and Danu heading towards Isafjordur. They are all hoping to get to Scoresby Sund when the ice clears away from the entrance.
You can see the ice chart here
We are now left with Dagmar Aaen whose Captain is very sadly ill and the vessel remains in port awaiting news of his health.
Today further progress has been made to the boat’s systems with the new heater control being fitted and the heater now working perfectly. All I need now are some new sail slides and everything will be ready to go. Matteo is kindly sending some slides out so that task should be ticked off the list soon.
Leave a Reply