Thursday, March 01, 2018

Upgraded to IC5!

Having left the Alde gas stove on low all night, we were plenty warm in bed, but disturbed from time to time by the thudding, grinding noise of the hull moving against the ice that envelopes us.


The wind was gale-force, battering the boat with mighty gusts. I ventured out first thing this morning, and conditions were arctic. The snow is very fine, but it's actually hard to know if it's falling or being swept off the drifts by the wind. Or both!

I was out in it because I wanted to empty a toilet cassette, but I found that the Elsan disposal unit is unusable. Frozen. I wanted also wanted to fill our 10-litre drinking-water container, to reduce our use of the boat's water tank, but none of the running water in the marina is actually running. Also frozen. And it's not just the water that's frozen. After I'd changed the cassette, I found that the replacement one, stored in a hold on the well-deck, wouldn't open for use because the mechanism was... frozen stiff! Fortunately, that didn't take too long to thaw once it was inside the cabin.

So, our situation is now a firm IC5. We watched it enter IC4 yesterday afternoon.


We're happy to sit tight and weather this out (what a strange expression!) We won't starve, we won't get cold, we won't get bored. There are folk around the country who are in far worse straits then this, and my heart goes out to them. And it'll all be over soon. Won't it?

PS Grace and I have just come in from helping friends to get water into their tank. The marina manager has contrived to get access to an outlet under a manhole cover, and the idea was to attach hoses to this and thus run it to the boats that need it. It failed miserably. The water froze instantly in the hoses!

PPS I seriously thought I'd got frost-bite in my (foolishly) ungloved hands. I haven't.





2 comments:

  1. Goodness, that’s impressive, Roger! Your photos are beautiful. We’ve had the same conditions over here except our harbour has not frozen owing to the constant tidal movement, but there’s been plenty of scating elsewhere. I’ve seen loads of happy cloggies zooming around on the ice. Not for me, though. I have not enjoyed this Beast from the East.

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  2. Yes, I can just imagine you curled up in a cosy corner of your boat, with a cup of coffee and a good book! There's a lot to be said for it!

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