Walking between Fjords and Engine Trouble

It’s early morning the 30th of July. The sun is up and shining on an almost completely blue sky. We have moved out of Tiniteqilaq and crossed the fjord to a bay on the other side. The anchor is dropped, and the dinghy is lowered into the water. The wind is strong, we are seeing upwards of 30knots, straight out of the valley where Mari, Vegar, Marselius, Per Morten, Catrine, Stig and Bent are going to hike through.

There is some anticipation in the air. We don’t know much about the landscape thru the valley, and with the current wind conditions, it seems like a long walk. On the land charts we got, there is a marked path thru the valley. But that’s for dog-sleds thru the winter.

After everyone was packed and ready to go, we jumped into the dinghy and Lars drove them to the bottom of the bay and sent them on their way.

Lars went back Polar Sector to join Stein and Atle on moving the boat 30 nm around to pick the land team up on the other side. The land team had around 12km (about 6nm) from the drop-off to the pickup point and Bent optimistically calculated the walk to take about 6 hours.

About three hours after departure, we got a heat warning on the engine onboard Polar Sector. We tried to find the problem while on the move, but we were unsuccessful. So, the only solution was to run on idle to keep the engine from overheating. This halted our speed to around 3 knots, making it to the pickup point in time impossible.

Our other problem was the communication between the boat and the land team, we relied on the VHF to keep in touch. But the high mountains between us made it difficult. At one point we got a connection and the land team said they were about one hour behind schedule. Since Polar Sector would not make it in time, we dropped the dinghy in the water and Lars with a lot of extra fuel, drove about 15nm into the fjord to pick them up.

When Lars was inside the fjord he called up the land team, bad news, they seemed to be stuck at a big lake, having problems finding a way around. So, the waiting game began, and since Lars didn’t bring a rifle, he couldn’t go on land.

But finally, after two hours of drifting around the fjord, he got the call. They were successfully passed the lake and could see him down on the water. Stig, Per Morten, Bent, Catrine, Mari, Vegar and Marselius could cheer after nine hours, they had completed the hike between the two fjords. Now only an hour-long dinghy ride back out to Polar Sector, were dinner was ready for the tired hikers.

After dinner we motored slowly north to Kuumiuut, were we could get a good night sleep. Seeing some whales on our way.

Early next morning Lars and Bent dived into the engine to figure out why we couldn’t get sufficient cooling. Polar Sector have a keel-cooling system, a two-loop system where coolant is pumped by an auxiliary pump to the bottom of the keel to be cooled down, then into the heat-exchanger on the engine, which has an internal loop with a separate pump, to keep it cool.

It seemed like the auxiliary pump had failed, and on closer inspection the impeller was shot. After digging thru some boxes we found the spare and soon we were back up and running.

The reason we could keep running the day before, was because of the internal system on the engine which is also used for heating the boat. So, to keep moving we cranked the central heating system up and that kept the engine cool on idle.