Our Ship Has Come In

In May, when we were back in Ontario getting married, we purchased a Jeep Liberty with the goal of bringing it up to Iqaluit.  We purchased the Jeep in Ottawa from a very nice couple off of Kijiji.  We insured it through Nunavut Insurance and registered it prior to actually completing the purchase, although we had emailed a substantial down payment and received all of the pertinent information for registration prior to leaving Iqaluit.  We completed the purchase and drove the new jeep to London and got married on May 12th, an amazing day!

Our new wheels

After our wedding we drove the jeep to Valley Field, near Montreal to catch the sealift to Iqaluit.  For reasons that we don't quite understand, the jeep missed the first boat, however was put on the second boat,  with an estimated time of arrival of July 18th. 



Qamutik (The ship with our Jeep on it)

Apparently our ship and the others hit heavy ice in the Davis Straight which delayed the arrival a week or so.  The ship arrived at the bay in Iqaluit on July 24th.  Almost immediately the ship started the unloading process.  A barge is taken out to the ship by two tug boats.  The barge is filled with containers from the ship and taken into shore.  This process takes place at high tide.  The barge comes in very close to shore and when the tide starts to go out, large front end loaders take the containers off the barge.



They were able to get about two days of unloading completed  prior to the ice invading the bay. It takes about 5 or 6 days to unload a ship that has a full load destined for Iqaluit. The ice came in with a vengeance and virtually shut down the unloading process from the boats.  As was mentioned in a previous post, the elders in town have said they haven't seen that much ice in the bay in July and August for over 50 years. 

Barge with containers waiting for unloading

The ice that invaded the bay in the forground

The Qamutik in the background, Jacquie in the forground - The date of this picture is Aug 3, 2012

(note how Jacquie is dressed)

Jacquie and I went down to the beach where the containers are unloaded from the barges daily and sometimes two or three times a day.  We waited, waited and waited some more.  The ship with our vehicle arrived a week before the long weekend.  The long weekend came and still no jeep.  Most days they were not making any trips to the boat, however a few days the barge did manage to manoever itself through all of the ice and brought in a small load off the ship.  On the Saturday of the long weekend (August 4th) the ice seemed to ease up a little.  The barges were able to bring in a few loads and we thought for sure our vehicle would be brought in.  We talked to the manager where the containers were unloaded and he said he felt sure that our car would be in Sunday.

We got up bright and early on Sunday morning and headed down to the beach.  Unfortunately and almost unbelievably it was pea soup fog and not possible for any unloading to take place that day.  Its a good thing that Jacquie and I are two of the most patient people in the word.  For anyone else this situation would be frustrating (OK, we were getting a little frustrated)  We were back on Monday of the long weekend and although the weather was better and there was some unloading taking place, a little more ice had blown into the inner bay and the going was slow. 

Finally, on Tuesday morning August 7th, 14 days after the ship with our jeep on it arrived in Iqaluit, our jeep was unloaded.  We picked it up before work and we were two of the most exited people in Iqaluit!  Not only were we able to drive around in our new jeep, there was a lot of other stuff in the Jeep.  It had been so long since we packed it all, we couldn't even remember what all was there.  At lunch we unload our barbaque, 4 - 18 KG bags of dog food, some pop, laundry detergent, booze, clothing, toliot paper (an important commodity) and a bunch of other stuff.  We were just like two kids at Christmas!

Our new wheels were here and we were so pleased.  The next step was to sell our jeep wrangler.  I had been trying to sell the jeep to no avail since June.  Jacquie decided to take the matter into her hands and had it sold in a day to someone at work. 

The Jeep wrangler had been a very reliable vehicle for us.  It started every morning last winter in sometimes colder than -50C temperatures with the windchill and in some ways we were sad to see it go.  However we really didn't need 2 vehicles.  Thanks for getting us to work all winter!

Goodbye Jeep Wrangler

All in all our sealift experience was an interesting one and one we will probably do again next year.  Although we will probably not be brining up a vehicle next year, we want to go south in May or June and purchase a bunch of stuff that's expensive to get up here and ship it up on the sealift.