Getting back out on the sea again scared me something chronic in the early days but I hugged the shoreline in my little boat. Icebergs looked like chaotic bus traffic jams. They were grounded and dragged the bottom to create gurgling bubbles. Lumps fell off with terrible shattering sounds. Too close and I knew they could upend boats. If that wasn’t bad enough submerged bergy bits came away and rocketed to the surface like torpedoes. Storms hit without warning, the 100-knot piteraq variety. In the past people have died horrible deaths here. By August summer was gone, in fact there was never a feeling it had arrived, there was always cold in the air despite 70 days of perpetual 24-hour daylight.

A fellow froze to death here in August. His boat’s steering locked and he was propelled overboard. The flag on our little church flew at half-mast. His infant daughter is now orphaned. 

We have a water tank that holds 2 million litres of drinking water. This lasts Ittoqqortoormiit  three and a half months. One winter over 500 miles south of here in Tasilaq  a piteraq battered one such tank and rolled it out to sea. In many quarters it went down as the storm of the century.

Martin and I boated south to Turner Island to catch the Arctic char run. We saw narwhales on our journey there, set our nets and the following morning hauled in 150 fish, gutted them and sailed home.

I always think it’s good to see other cultures embracing one another. Bringing in fishing lines is a tourist spectacle enjoyed on the west coast and further south. Reeling in Greenlandic sharks is one such sight. One story goes that a hunter had a throng watching as he bought up his lines. No sharks. Just lines baited with dead puppies.

We had August snow.