SetSail note: Following is an excerpt from an email Linda sent her daughters, describing life in Nuuk.Tomorrow we’re going to move north and spend a week or so exploring the fjords there. We will cross into the Arctic Circle. We bought a map yesterday showing all the fjords around here with notes on the Nordic ruins on the back. I sat down to study it this afternoon and discovered that we bought the Danish version instead of English. But there are pictures, so I can sort of figure out what they’re talking about. Then we’ll head to the south and want to be ready to wait for the right weather to go to Ireland by mid August.

Yesterday we went to the national museum where they have displayed mummies that were freeze dried that they think were buried around 1470. Even their clothes were preserved – pretty amazing.

Today we went to the fuel dock to fill the tanks with cheap Greenland diesel. It only costs $3.20 per gallon, the cheapest we will find for a long time. While we were fueling, the 14-year-old son of the fuel dock master came aboard for a visit – we had fun talking with him – he was smiling and very polite and spoke English well but had a little trouble understanding us – probably wasn’t used to American accents. Then I was washing the salt off the outside of the windows, when three scientists stopped to take on gasoline for their boat and were asking about our boat. I invited them aboard and they were taking their boat up one of the fjords today to dive in the waters. They’re testing the salinity in the waters in Greenland trying to get a handle on how much the ice cap has melted. And an Eskimo (they call themselves that as well as Inuit here) came by in his boat and asked “How far have you come?” The sun was out – all in all, not a bad atmosphere for washing windows. Weather wise, the sun is strong, but when the breeze blows, it’s cold coming off the water, which is in the low 40s.

We were rafted 3 deep alongside a barge. One of the three boats is an Australian boat. Roger Wallis charters their boat in Antarctica with his 29-year-old son Ben and and his girlfriend Conny van Moergasted who is from Holland. And this is their first summer here. They’re friends with the Lairds. While we were fueling we all had to move to another part of the harbor and get off the barge where we were tied. So we moved down the harbor and are still rafted alongside “Australis” but tied to a big fishing boat. Their next group of clients from Australia (9 of them) are coming today and tomorrow and they’ll leave tomorrow, as will we.

Just as we were getting ready to go into town to go grocery shopping, a local came by in his big Boston Whaler type boat with his 7-year-old son, and I invited them aboard. They in turn took us for a car ride around Nuuk.

The road only goes 5 kilometers outside of town, to the airport. The road system may be small, but it’s really nice, Four lanes in places, with beautiful water views. The countryside is mainly hilly with boulders, very little soil but some wildflowers and groundcover and no trees. All the houses and buildings are painted bright colors. Everyone has a boat, because if you want to go somewhere it’s by boat or nothing with no roads. The harbor is really busy and crowded. There’s a bus system, trucks, taxis, lots of cars, and the population is only around 2500 people. Real estate is expensive here too. Jes, the man taking us around, said that a 1400 sq. foot condo would sell for around half a million U.S. I don’t see where the money comes from.

It was fun grocery shopping. I bought apples and cheese from Denmark, grapefruit from South Africa, peaches from Spain- Everything comes by container ship once a week from Denmark. Got some good Danish cheese too.

Tell the kids that we saw Santa Clause’s post office. It’s the closest post office to the North Pole.