Ice jams

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Full Moon

In the end, it was on the third take that the ice settled. The first sheets of fresh ice were blown away by the dozens of knots of wind howling in the night, scratching the hull in the strangest noises. Twice I woke up in the morning to discover the ice had gone and the waves were back.

With their little boats, locals keep hunting when the ice is still only a few centimetres thick. That's when Robbie came to share a coffee a few days ago, breaking the fresh ice. And all the ice went again. Starting over.

On a clear day, the sun came to greet us in what will be its last apparition of the year, casting its oblique rays in the bay, crossing the fjord horizontally from one hill to the other and in less than an hour.

Yesterday, the ice had settled again, and Johnny visited me. This time, to take me to shore, only a few hours, enough time to share a lunch with Yves and Céline. So nice to break my solitude, be it for a few minutes.

On the way back, I asked his brother Amo, on his powerful boat, to push Vagabond so it would point North, the bow heading to the dominant winds. He told me no straightforwardly, but started driving in large loops, breaking the thin ice around the boat. Free once again, Vagabond kept swinging a few more hours in the wind before stopping in the cold of the night.