We made it after the dramas of the journey from Goose Bay (or Goose Green which Syd keeps calling it) . The FBO is quite efficient considering they were difficult to raise on the telephone. Sunk into the sofas, poured a coffee took off immersion suits – Ah bliss!
Peter the FBO ramp man is one of two students doing a placement from a college in Toronto. He drove out to collect our B&B keys then shepherded us to the fuel refill
It’s out of barrels but you don’t have to bring a hand pump. You do however have to pay for a barrel at a time. In the end we left 34 gallons behind
Peter then drove us to the B&B – one room and not very large double bed – catastrophe
The nice B&B lady did say her friend had another room – We checked that out and I went there – Syd joined me the next day – Very nice very tasteful, comfortable bed. So we are both here now from Tuesday to Friday which looks like the first day to get out
Whilst it’s still quite cloudy there’s more of a chance of punching through into clear air at 10,000. Today (Weds) raining/sleeting much same tomorrow so it’s Friday.
These are the barrels – they’re shipped in once a year after the bay ice – which is solid enough to walk on – melts. This year they had numerous DC3’s (Dakotas) passing through on the way to the DDay anniversary and it nearly cleaned them out (or so the refueller said) Anyway there were 2 for us which we’d reserved.
The above ‘profile’ or ‘cross section’ of weather shows our dilemma in Iqaluit (pronounced Ikaloowit’ ) This was actually taken from the day after we left. We arrived on Tuesday and right through the week there was a lot of cloud up to high levels completely across the Labrador sea and covering Iqaluit with the freezing level on the deck. It eased a little on Thursday with a few gaps so we ran for it to Kangerlussuaq.
The Labrador sea in the picture is the left hand bit of water. Iqaluit is th eleftmost lump of land. Greenland is the next lump of land. Our first problem was getting across the Labrador sea – Now you dont set of into icing unless you’ve got somewhere to run. I know my new Cirrus has FIKI (flight into known Icing) but it would be stupid to launch into a whole journey IMC with icing.
The above picture also shows the next two issues – getting over the top of Greenland (the icecap) which rises to 9000ft and then getting to Iceland the rightmost lump of land.
Thursday morning breakfast : the usual ritual of review the latest forecast from several sources. The gap we’d identified for Friday had disappeared and it looked like we’d be stuck until Monday (Greenland is shut on Sunday)
But hang on a moment whats it like right now on Thursday – well blow me the gaps have opened up and the freezing level is 2000ft Pants on fire – pack the bags – tell the nice lady at B&B we’re off – call the FBO – file FP. So Thursday about 1700 local we’re in Kangelussuaq