Boats

It's September, which means the last parts of summer for people in southern climates. In Iqaluit, fall is now in full force and we got a reminder the weekend that fall is basically a very brief concept. Let's take a look at the view greeting me today as I was walking the dog.

Yeah, that's snow on the hills across the bay. Happened over the weekend, which is pretty depressing, but welcome to the north. Actually, if you look closely, you can see a tiny spec on the bay...

Which is clearly a sailing vessel of some kind. Seeing a boat with a sail on it is a pretty unusual site in Iqaluit at the best of times, but in early September, well, I think the crew is starting to push their luck a bit being in the kind of vessel, that far north at this time of the year. It was a pretty miserable weekend anyway, with lots of high winds and cold.

Which probably didn't make it that much fun for the guests on this vessel either.

Yeah, a cruise ship came into the bay on Saturday, although I didn't see her offload any passengers until Sunday. Not the best weekend in the world up here for visitors. This time last year we were berry picking in our t-shirts. This year we had to turn on the space heater in the living room on Saturday to break the chill in the house.

A friend of mine is convinced we're going to have a brutal winter this year to make up for the easy one we got through. Last year it was raining at Christmas and the bay didn't freeze until January of this year, which is easily two months later than normal. Karma being what it is, he's convinced this year will be punishment.

I kind of hope that he's wrong about that. If for no other reason than I've checked the boating schedule and it appears our sealift boat won't be getting into Iqaluit until October 4th at the earliest. It's possible we won't receive out order until as late as October 17th. Which would mean unloading that box with snow on the ground and it being possibly very cold.

So if we could have another of those weather hiccups this year, at least until November, that would be awesome.

Last Five
1. The river in reverse - Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint
2. Last night of the world (live) - Bruce Cockburn
3. Munich - Editors
4. Fire on the mountain - Rob Thomas
5. Ion square - Bloc Party