Preparing Maud for liftoff
Norwegians hoping to get historic vessel off the bottom of the sea this summer
Stewart Burnett
Northern News Services
Monday, August 10, 2015
IKALUKTUTIAK/CAMBRIDGE BAY
Liftoff is imminent for the Maud in Cambridge Bay if current plans go right.
Norwegian professional diver Dag Leslie Hansen returns after being underwater for more than one hour photographing and checking out the air bags that are being used to lift the Maud off of Cambridge Bay Aug 2. - Navalik Tologanak/NNSL photo |
The Norwegian team on a mission to bring the historic ship home has been busy this summer filling up the air balloons meant to raise the Maud, only partly visible in the community's bay, off the ocean floor.
Jan Wanggaard, project leader, has been working on raising the Maud since 2011 and hopes to finally get it off the bottom this summer.
"We have started to inflate the air balloons that are attached to the hull of the Maud," Wanggaard told Nunavut News/North on July 31.
"At the present time she's not yet moving, but the more power the air balloons (give it), it will slowly start to tilt until it becomes upright, and we hopefully will manage to lift her from the seabed."
The Maud, historically significant thanks to polar explorer Roald Amundsen, has now sat in Cambridge Bay for 85 years.
"It has lost some of the weight due to the fact it has been stripped from the top," said Wanggaard.
He met one elder in the community who remembered doing just that.
"I heard old people tell that they took wood from the ship," said Wanggaard. "One of the old women told me she was feeling bad about this because she felt that it was wrong that they take it, but at the same time they needed the wood. I told her the explorer Amundsen would have forgiven her for doing this."
But the rest of the ship is still very heavy. According to Wanggaard's estimates, the 10 air balloons attached, each 15 cubic metres in size, should be more than enough to raise the Maud.
"We just hope we are not too far away from the reality," said Wanggaard about estimating the ship's weight.
The air balloons are meant to raise the Maud from the seafloor. From there, a barge will be submerged and the Maud will be pulled over top of it. The barge can be then pumped free of water and floated to the surface, raising the Maud out of the water completely.
"Once she's out of the water and on the barge, it's just securing it and start going home," said Wanggaard.
But travelling home won't happen until the summer of 2016, he added.
"By that time it will already be too late to leave from here this autumn. We will spend the winter here."
He's been advised that letting the Maud freeze above the water during the winter would actually be a wise plan before departing, because the deep freeze will preserve and dry the wood.
"We will have a good advantage by just leaving her out exposed to the air," he said.
The project is mainly sponsored by Tandberg Eiendom As, a Norwegian property company that hopes to eventually create a museum to house the Maud.
"They are idealistic people," said Wanggaard. "Of course they do their business, but this project is purely idealistic. There's no big profit here."
He estimates that the project has cost "two, three, four million dollars" Canadian so far.
"It's a lot of money being spent on this, but we are being as modest as we can," said Wanggaard.
All going as planned, community members should be able to observe the Maud completely above the surface later this summer.
