week 1 Nunavit

The Summer Travels of Boatboy & Sailor Sue

Or:   Where is the boat?

Departing  SJ, we broke our standard rule of only taking Carry-On luggage. By some miracle, we went through two stop-overs and arrived with the checked bags in Yellowknife on the same aircraft as ourselves. We linked-up with Max (our apprentice –nephew from Sackville), at our hotel when his flight arrived late in the evening and had our last can of beer together before a 2 month dry spell.

Change of plan. We spoke to Azi, the owner, who advised that we would be on-site before our materials. And that we were joining with three others, all flying in from Resolute, to perform the work. GREAT!  I was wondering how we would handle what looked like a growing scope-of-work for this project. Six of us should be able to make things rock.

And, one other thing....the flight tomorrow had been moved to a different charter airline and an earlier departure. Hmmmm.... “How much earlier?” was my question. There were people up and around early in Yellowknife, but as near as I could tell, people were not being fed breakfast in Yellowknife on  Saturdays, unless they could cook it for themselves.

As it turned out, we were able to get a toasted bagel and a coffee. With something in our stomachs we hurried from the restaurant directly to the shuttle. Only a few minutes later we were lifting into a clear blue sky for the 2 hour flight: destination - Ennadai Lake.

We had the cargo on our Dash-7 unloaded and the aircraft turned-around for its return flight to Yellowknife just before the Dehaviland Buffalo arrived at Ennadai Lake from Resolute with more of our supplies. Empty, the Buffalo flew away only to return a few hours later with 40 barrels of fuel and 17- 100 pound tanks of propane. We finally sent the Buffalo crew home to their wives in Yellowknife at 10:00 p.m. It had been a busy day. Even after the sun went down at midnight, we stayed awake, our body-clocks not yet adjusted to the 20 hours of sunshine per day.

The sun was up at 4:00 am on Sunday morning and we arose ready to start work on our project. We all showed up at the breakfast table and our cook, Caroline – gave us a full breakfast.

Sunday: We began opening boxes for the 22 solar collectors and assembled a few. When Max had the assembly under control, Susan and I split-off to lay out the array and to mark the locations for the 24 poles that we had to plant to support the array. We worked along, but spent a lot of our time hunting for tools and materials as these items were randomly packed for shipment.

Monday: Mike brought the excavator and its post hole auger over and drilled the holes. Max and SeeMee had the poles in the ground and back-filled by the end of the day. After supper we took the 18 foot skiff out for a spin and discovered that there was a lot of water in the fuel. We MacGuyvered our way back to the dock and decided to plan our next outing a little better.

Pic 2 – the boys in the skiff

Tuesday:  Work, work, work!  We designed the frames for the upper row of panels in the array to accommodate the ``shortish`` poles we are working with. Max spent the day doing metal fabrication in the workshop after we came up with a new bracket design.  This is the life -  the challenge of design, and talented hands to implement the design.

Wednesday: The daytime temperatures have finally come down from the daytime normal of 32 degrees. We have been working in our `bug jackets`and `bug hats` from necessity, but by late afternoon we had something else to contend with: smoke from the numerous forest fires in northern Manitoba a few hundred miles to our south. Susan and I sealed our suite and turned the ceiling fan to full speed. At midnight we took the `Mule` out for a drive south to the high ridge a mile from the end of our runway. The forest was ethereal in the smoke, with sand forming much of the forest floor. And we had left our camera back at the resort. Note to selves:  carry the camera!

Pic 3  - the drill job

Thursday: The wind reversed overnight and temperatures are down into the low teens. No bugs, no smoke Seemee and Mike, both from Resolute, agree that we are now getting down into the comfort zone.  Apparently the insects disagree, as the cool temperatures and steady 15 knot breeze have kept them away. Work, work, work. The end is in sight for collector assembly. We had to pull some poles that were just too short and replace them with longer ones. This led to a repair job on the new drill which tied-up 4 people for a while. The operation was a success.

Friday: With a rapid final effort we finished all of the solar collectors, and have a small list of missing parts to deal with.  Our supplier sent us the kiss-off on the spares. I guess we will be making the parts. Ah well, they won`t be needed for a few weeks yet.

Pic 4 – the array

Saturday: Site cleanup day in anticipation of another planeload of materials. The Dash 7 returned at 1:30 pm – bringing more materials and two additional members for our construction team. Norm and Luella joined from Yellowknife to complete plumbing work and to install a new boiler.  Our 22 solar collectors are assembled and the frame to support them is largely complete. Sunday (tomorrow) we intend to take a day off, or at least part of the day...Peter, Seemee and Max spent some of the evening out on the lake fishing. Al did likewise with the other skiff. At about 9:30 pm Sue and I decided we’d go for an evening troll. We travelled several miles –with only one hit. As we turned to return to the lodge, I suggested to Sue that she let out more line. Within a few minutes she had a good sized lake trout aboard. It weighed 4 pounds and was 24 inches long.

Pic 5 the trout

Breakfast was now assured, we returned to land well in time for sunset, which was at about 11:00 pm as of last night. The days are noticeably shorter: only 18 hours of daylight now!