Greenland: Qaqortoq, Drinks And Theft

Before we could manage to cross the street in Qaqortoq and head into town, we were almost run over by a large black Cadillac Escalade SUV, not exactly the type of car you expect to see speeding down one of the few pieces of road in Greenland. From the way people dress, the cars they drive, and the Starbucks drinks lining the supermarket shelves it's easy to forget where we are. Even polar bears seem to be a foreign concept. When Krystina asked if we needed to bring a rifle along on a hike outside town, the woman at tourist information laughed, she had never seen a polar bear.

Qaqortoq was intended to be a 2-day stop, just long enough to enjoy our last Greenlandic town, buy fresh provisions for our crossing to Labrador and upload blog photos. Sadly the hotel where we had previously used Wi-Fi was no longer offering the service and only source of Internet access was the public computer at tourist information. At 50 Danish Kroners for 20 minutes, it was only usable for quick email and weather checks.

A German registered boat, Morning Haze, pulled into the space behind us. They had planned to do the Northwest Passage but when the ice didn't clear they decided to make their way down the west coast of Greenland. Along the way they had a serious steering malfunction, which resulted in being towed by a tanker. In the process of getting the tow lines sorted their forward looking depth sounder was ripped off by one of the tanker's lines, sending water spraying into the boat. With strong winds, heavy seas and being towed at a strange angle by the tanker, they decided to shut the watertight door and deal with the problem when they got into port. Now the boat was heading back to Holland for repairs. We invited the crew over for drinks and they brought over a bottle of Islay Whiskey and the key ingredient, glacier ice. It was a special experience to be sitting in Greenland with new friends drinking whisky from a place we had both been and were very fond of.

The next day was warm and sunny. After admiring the beautiful sealskin bags and clothing at the Great Greenland Furhouse we followed the road outside town to a trail that took us across to a view of the next fjord. When we returned to town, the weather was still exceptionally warm justifying a stop at an outside café. The only probably was there really isn't an outside café in Qaqortoq but we knew the hotel had an outside deck. Though the hotel's café seating was inside, they had no probably bringing our order out to the deck where we were sitting enjoying the view over the harbour.

In the evening we went over to Morning Haze for drinks. Both of us were planning to leave in the morning, we exchanged anchorage information as we were heading in opposite directions each having been where the other was going. While we were sitting around chatting we kept hearing strange noises but could see nothing unusual so we thought it had something to do with the tide and the boat moving against the dock.

A drunk man on the dock made getting back to Snow Dragon an interesting experience and the crew of Morning Haze ended up making sure we got back safely. Once on board, we bolted the pilothouse door, happy to be away from the drunk. While Krystina was lying in bed she heard the dinghy move and thought it was either bumping the dock or rubbing up against Morning Haze and asked Frances who was still up to have a look. When Frances went out, she discovered our 15hp outboard motor, battery and fuel take had been stolen.

Krystina immediately got on the VHF to Costal Radio and asked to be put through to the Qaqortoq police. They patched her through to the wrong person but they were able to give her the phone number of the local police. Within minutes of our call, a policewoman was standing on the dock. Krystina explained what was missing while Frances and a crewmember from Morning Haze walked around to see if they could spot anything obvious.

Our motor weighs 55kg and we thought it would have taken 2-3 people to steal it but hadn't heard a boat or a car that would have been needed to transport it. From our description, the police woman was certain she new the identity of the drunk man we met on the dock and that he had single handedly taken our motor. She asked us to come by the police station at 8am to file a report. It was already well into the early hours of the morning when we finally got to bed and managed to get a few hours of sleep.

In the morning it was raining, the policewoman picked us up and drove us the short distance to the station were she filled out an official report detailing the model, serial number and cost of the engine. She also brought out a black book full of Polaroid photos and pointed to a guy and asked us if that was the drunk who had been hassling us on the dock. Sure enough it was the guy. The police spent the day searching the town and found our fuel tank but had yet to locate the engine or the guy that stole it.

The police were optimistic that they were going to get our motor back it was just a question of how long it was going to take. We had planned to leave that morning for an anchorage near Kap Desolation our last stop before crossing to Canada. However, leaving without an outboard would not have only made it difficult at times to get to shore, it's also our way of towing Snow Dragon with the dinghy if her main engine fails. It really wasn't prudent for us to leave without one. The policewoman kindly dropped us off at the local chandlery so we could find out what outboards were available. They had a 15hp but that would have been a strain on our budget since we just purchased a new one 6 months ago and there was the chance our outboard would be waiting for us when we returned to Greenland next summer. Instead we decided that if the police couldn't find our motor by Monday morning, we would purchase a 5hp to get us through until we came back to Greenland and hopefully pick up our motor from the police who were happy to hold it for us. We were already planning to buy a 5hp outboard as a backup and to use when we wanted less weight than the 15hp for beach landings. It jut would have been nice to make the purchase when we were ready and not when we didn't have much of a choice.

With the unexpected weekend in Qaqortoq, we headed to the café at the Qaqortoq Hotel to gather our thoughts over 2 half pints of local beer and an order of nachos. Given the unusual circumstances and that it was still raining we decided to lift the ban we put on Ben and Jerry's ice cream after our slight indulgence in Nanortalik. With a pint of Ben and Jerry's Peanut Butter Cup in hand, we went back to Snow Dragon and watched a movie to take our minds off worrying whether or not we were ever going to see our motor again and if our decision to stay an wait meant we were going to miss the right conditions for crossing to Labrador.