Paris / New York - Transcontinental 2009

[BlueGerbil]

April 12, 2010: 186th short message (06:41 a.m. CET)

Waiting, waiting, waiting. We are condemned to wait.

Currently we have extremely bad weather.

There?s a storm and it?s snowing for days as if Mother Holle was hopping mad. Furthermore, one low-pressure system is followed by another. By now there are meters high snow drifts along the houses and between the containers that are standing everywhere. In the meantime, temperatures have increased to around zero degree, everything is wet.

The cars have been finished except for the pontoons and hydraulics, but there?s no way that we can even think about starting. No one gets in or out. The storms control Chukotka. Not even the Russian Vestichots (track vehicles) are driving.

By now even the water trucks that supply Uelen with fresh water from a well that is about four kilometers away, cannot drive there anymore due to the huge amount of snow. Thereupon the tap water (kitchen, heater, etc.) has been changed to salt water since yesterday. The trucks can only drive a couple hundred meters onto the frozen lagoon and get salt water through a drilled hole for the power and heat supply station.

The days for the waiting ? by now decimated ? team members are characterized by discipline. It?s first priority and protects us. Rudi and I stick to it with grimly sternness in order to hang on despite all impressions. However, that doesn?t change the things that are happening around us and which we cannot influence. By now we had to part company by another team member. When I will be writing the book one day, maybe I can explain better what happened, what put a strain on us, what hardships we had to see and experience, how the things happened that were meant to happen ? or were not meant to happen.

..........

April 12, 2010: 187th short message (12:15 p.m. CET)

Due to the strong southern storm, the ice at Uelen?s shore and along the Cape drifted away 1-2 km from the shore after it broke off of the shorefast. It ?anchors? menacingly, seems to observe us just like we do with it. If the wind turns, the crack is closed again within hours.

There are hundreds of seagulls and ducks cavorting in the crack right now. We have no idea where they have been hiding. Except for dogs and culled seals, we only noticed a few ravens the entire time.

April 13, 2010: 188th short message (12:03 p.m. CET)

Yesterday evening, for a very short moment, there has been some ease in the storm.

It has been deceptively pleasant when the wind abruptly faded, the sky opened up, the remaining light of the day illuminated the water channel at around 8 p.m. The water purled, ducks and seagulls swam. The lashing, ice-cold northern wind was back again during the night and this morning. The channel no longer exists. It?s all ice. The water with about 35 gram salt per liter froze within 12 hours. Ice from the North keeps pushing enormously.

At the same place where the tearing edge has been just yesterday, there were sitting about ten hunters with their guns leveled this morning that were waiting for the seals to stick their noses through the breathing holes or the cracked ice into the air. Watch out.