we can navigate the NWP easily. We will see in a few weeks time how this pans out. We have seen a few whales, they look like Southern right whales, but surely that cannot be right. Right? Interestingly, I heard today that BP Oil has stopped construction work on the Liberty drilling project in the Alaskan Arctic/Beaufort Sea, the western approach to the NWP, due to safety concerns. This is great news for a change. I was involved working for Greenpeace, with a similar offshore oil-drilling project in the Beaufort sea called Northstar about 10 years ago, where we set up an ice camp called Sirius close by, to try and stop BP building an artificial island 25 miles offshore to carry out directional drilling under the seabed. Nice to see that the Liberty drilling project has come to a grinding halt for the moment. Let's hope it stays that way. We arrived in Sisismiut, Greenland, on September 18, it has a nice harbour and the town is on a hill side. It is all very colourful and looks sorted in terms of roads and basic living services. The shops are well stocked and the crew including myself left a fair few krone behind buying souvenirs and more warm clothing. I even bought a sealskin hat which I can see might become a bit controversial once back in NZ. I can feel myself falling for Greenland. The country is inspiring in its size and set up, with a population of only 55,000 people and so far they all have been friendly. There is a good feel about the place, although there are also some slummy looking apartment buildings. Everybody seems to have a small runabout boat and there are lots of old wooden Danish fishing boats around in various stages of repair. Most of the wooden boats are coming to the end of their working life and are being replaced by bigger steel and aluminium vessels. The land itself is wide open country: wonderful stuff! Greenland is actually green at the moment. I always thought
Sisimiut Harbour
there was ice everywhere but on the west coast there is grass growing in the short summer months. We did a good hike in the hills for a day, the locals say that winter and spring are the best time to be here, everything is still frozen and you have beautiful days so you can travel everywhere by snowmobile, and there is lots of hunting.
Clearing in with the boat was a non-event. Nobody was really interested and we never saw Customs. There is a ship reporting system for vessels over 40 feet, but this is more for safety reasons and the tracker that is on Billy Budd satisfies the Danish navy in that respect. I guess that with such a small population it would be hard for a stranger to hide in the country. Almost as bad as back home in New Zealand where you cannot "pass some wind" in
279 Port Rd, PO Box 3184 Onerahi, Whangarei Ph +64 9 438 0753 Fax +64 9 438 0467 www.shiprepair.co.nz
MARINE:
• Full Class Survey & Repair Services for Commercial and Pleasure Vessels
• 2000 & 40 Ton Slipway Facility
• All Aspects of Marine Maintenance
Protective Coatings HP Water Blasting Wet Grit Blasting Tank Cleaning Contaminant Removal Electrical Maintenance
System Design Motor Overhauls Megga Testing S/Board Cleaning Fault Investigation Procurement
VIP.S89
November/December 2012 Professional Skipper 59
