Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

IQALUIT (July 12/99) - An attempt at an early start on the Baffin sealift season last week turned out to be a false start.

The Lady Franklin arrived in Iqaluit on July 2 and was stationed a couple of hundred metres offshore for a week. It was scheduled to come in and beach itself for unloading Friday.

Though there probably are people out there who have been counting the minutes since the Coast Guard sealift arrived aboard the Lady Franklin in Iqaluit on July 2, Gary Pinto, who's waiting for a car he had shipped from Newfoundland, is not among them.

"It hasn't been a problem," said Pinto, a newcomer to Iqaluit. "I'm kind of enjoying the opportunity to do a little walking around."

Pinto said he was more curious than anxious: curious about how the unloading will work.

The Lady Franklin has been stalled within a few hundred metres of the low tide marked by lingering ice, kept in the bay by a light breeze. The ship will come in on the high tide and beach itself so trucks can be driven to its side for the unloading.

Freight includes most of 600 tonnes of construction material ordered by Steenberg Construction Ltd. The remainder is on the Aivik, which arrived in port on July 4 with a Nunavut Eastern Arctic Shipping sealift.

Company owner Jens Steenberg is considerably less patient than Pinto. He said his company has been filling the waiting time with odd jobs.

"Time is money, especially in the North," he said. "Think about what it's costing the owners of those ships out there...they would have been on their way back down again by now. Now the whole schedule is going to be delayed. We're talking millions here."

Last week, the Coast Guard was aiming to have the vessels begin unloading on this past Friday.

"We're anxious to unload it, too," said Scotty Henderson of Hanson Construction Ltd., which will unload the Franklin. "We had an early spring, so they thought they would come up early. But the early spring didn't happen."

Most bars in town are down to the two or three brands of beer people wanted least during the year. The Lady Franklin will increase the selection considerably. She's delivering 130 tonnes of booze.

There's also something called an HB1 Bear Proof Container on board.

"There are five of them. They're garbage cans," said Don Galloway of the department of public works.

Steenberg said the wait highlights how desperately the town needs a proper port.

"We don't have a harbour and we're having big ships come in like this. It doesn't make a lot of sense ... we would unload in a fraction of the time (if there was a port) and cut down on shipping costs."