The Greenlandic weather flexed its muscles when the UFDS visited container vessel Tukuma Arctica at the port in Nuuk mid-March, but even – or rather precisely – when the snow is airborne, safety must be top notch, so things are done by the book.
As sailors will know, everything is relative, so when the UFDS expressed earlier this year that it was cold south of Stockholm in January when Stena Line invited for a visit, future events where clearly unaccounted for. Thus, the Nordic climate is one thing, the Arctic, however, quite another.
Come mid-March – normally regarded as springtime – we visited Royal Arctic Line in Nuuk and boarded the shipping company's large container vessel, the Tukuma Arctica, at the new part of the port in the Greenlandic capital as she was being unloaded and restocked with goods.
The thermometer hovered around -10 centigrade and seasoned with a light snowstorm, it wasn’t exactly optimal working conditions that met the crew and dock workers this early morning, where the light only slowly increased while the massive cranes did their job.
However, it was not something that rattled the experienced seafarers the UFDS met on the ship, which we later came to visit in Aarhus under somewhat more friendly weather conditions. On the contrary, said 1st mate Thomas Jensen, who greeted us on deck at the Tukuma, with whom he has sailed for just over two years.
In fact, it is precisely these kinds of conditions that raises attention levels and call for tasks to be done exactly by the book, he believed, also pointing to the many years of experience with the Greenlandic weather between the crew.
»This isn't even that bad, we've all tried worse,« Thomas Jensen said dryly half-shouting through the gale force wind.
All this experience came in handy during one of the morning's first – and more unusual – tasks, when a 32-ton dump truck had to be loaded off the ship. Very carefully, lifting cables were mounted on the massive work vehicle, tightened, checked, loosened and tightened again before the green light was given.
Accompanied by constant crackling radios and more than a few fixed glances from the crew around it, the dump truck suddenly disembarked in a soft arc before landing on the quay with the ease of a snowflake on the inland ice on a quiet winter's day.
As the sun (presumably) crept up over the horizon, the pilotage of containers from the half-full picked up, of course still with safety top of mind, before new ones had to be boarded so that the Tukuma Arctica could once again turn the bow south.
