We were getting sick of having our boat in the main marina in Nuuk. The draconian rules were designed to take advantage of every opportunity to squeeze more extortionate fees out of boat owners. Any change of ownership, common here where friends often co-own boats, required payment of a new full registration fee of about one and half thousand dollars. Not only that, but the marina office was closed for almost the entire summer – the season when boats are actually in the marina – so the owners could go on holiday. Even when physically present, the woman who ran the office seemed to take special pride in being outrageously rude.
So when a new marina opened closer to our home, we leapt – perhaps too soon – at the opportunity to move our boat. The new marina was to have four piers, a filling station, electricity, water, and security gates. Initially, the idea was that it would also be slightly cheaper, but then the Greenlandic anti-competition ethic kicked in (that’s another story), with the local council deciding that the fees should be exactly the same. In a later strange twist, the original marina reduced their rates to undercut the new marina, who then refused to do the same.
Nonetheless, things started quite well. The owners of the new marina are nice people. Friendly, helpful. Maybe not especially organised or responsive, but nice. Unfortunately, the marina wasn’t quite finished when it was due to open last spring, when people wanted to start putting their boats in the water. But, obligingly, they allowed people to use the half-finished piers anyway.
So we moored our boat against the half-length pier. We were assigned a specific numbered location, but as they hadn’t yet marked the numbers on the pier, we were told just to put it anywhere. A few weeks later, the numbers appeared on the pier. But by then there were dozens of boats in the water, so it took a good part of the summer for frustrated boat owners to contact each other, shuffle their boats around, and finally organise them in the correct locations.
By then, there was another problem.
The still half-finished pier was now filling up with expensive boats when the first big storm of the summer came through. After it had blown itself out, we went down to check on our boat. With the pier still not anchored to the seafloor at the seaward end, and packed with enormous boats, the force against the attachment point at the landward end, had ripped out one of the two bolts holding the entire pier to the shore. The pier was pitched at a disturbing angle and millions of dollars of boats were held by that single bolt. When we pointed this out to the shop attendant in the marina, the blood drained from his face and he quickly dialed his boss. The next day, a barge was pressed up against the end of the pier and work was finally underway to anchor it to the seafloor.
After that, things were on a more even keel, so to speak. But there was still no sign of the promised security. All summer and through the next winter, there were no security gates. It would happen, we were told. Sometime. We gave up asking.
So we were surprised when, finally, last weekend, we arrived at the marina to go sailing and found a locked security gate at the entrance to the pier. Noone had informed us. Fortunately, we arrived at a time when the marina shop was open. And the attendant had a security swipe card for us. It took me two minutes to go to the shop, pick up the card, and get back to the gate. When I returned, my ten year old son was beaming at me. “Don’t swipe the card!” he demanded. He proceeded then to climb on the rocks around the pitiful fence by the side of the gate. And proudly showed me how he could climb up and open the gate from the inside. I sighed, deeply. Then he closed the gate from the outside again and showed me how he could simply stick his hand through the wire gate and open the handle from the other side. Then my husband, with his adult-sized hands, showed me how he could also put his hand through the gate and open it from the other side.
I don’t know whether this dismal attempt at security simply drew attention to itself, but a couple of days later, after a year of being completely unsecured, several boats in the marina were vandalised. Now I am left wondering, should I choose expensive, rude, and absent, or expensive, unsafe, and insecure?
