Monday 16th July, Eidembukta to London
Awelina of Sweden
James Collier
Tue 17 Jul 2012 01:11
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78 57.67 N, 12 02.50 E
Anchored in London! Or "Ny London" as it's sometimes called, but it's just
London on the chart. It's a snug cove 3 miles across the Kongsfjord from Ny
Alesund. There was a marble mine here during the first 20 years of the
20th centaury. The mine came to naught however since the marble, although
perfect when here, disintegrated as soon as it was shipped back to Europe. Here
it's in permafrost and so it shattered on the journey home. There are various
workings and machines such as cranes left behind.
We set off from Eidembukta without having breakfast since the wind was from
the SE and so fair for us. But sure enough, it swung back to its old direction
of NNW before long - we were going NNW of course - and gradually increased
through the day, reaching F5 in late afternoon. We tacked all day, Peter doing
sterling service with a near 10 hour stint on the helm. The passage through the
shallows, which we'd feared yesterday, proved not too rough and the navigation
quite straight-forward with a least depth of 5.3m and slack water at the state
of the tide we chose. Just as we were entering the shallows we finally got
through to Jon on the shortwave with quite a good signal. It certainly seems
that the further north we get the better the propagation is on 14MHz.
Several hours of tacking later we bore away into the Kongsfjord where Ny
Alesund is, but because the port doesn't operate outside working hours we
decided to go to 'London' for the night. There were already two boats here when
we arrived at midnight, but we squeezed in to black looks from those already
here (it's a tiny cove). James then made an Algerian couscous with the lamb from
last night.
Excitements and breakages today were fairly minor:
Tomorrow we intend to fill with water, which we’ve pretty much run out of
having not filled since Stornoway, and hopefully diesel before pushing on north.
We also hope to catch up with some friends from Cambridge who run the British
Antarctic Survey base here (no we’re not muddled, they do have an Arctic
Division!).
It’s now 3am and the sun is still shining, but we suppose it’ll be time for
bed soon... |