Sailing Ships and Wooden Cabins

I was, with a team of about 12, stationed on a wooden sailing ship that was searching for the Northwest Passage. We had been thwarted in our attempt and had retreated to the North Atlantic. Winter had been harsh, and the ship's stores were getting low. The captain wanted to make another attempt in the spring, so devised a plan to drop off the carpenters, masons and myself (apparently a structural engineer,) leaving us with about two weeks of rations (if tightly rationed) and the materials for a pair of cabins, which had been meant for way point storage to be set up. I was not particularly in favor of this plan, but the ship's crew made the decision for us one cold, wet night.

We found ourselves on a green shoreline, fumaroles sputtered and fumed in the distance. A wide fresh water river coming had a hot tributary. I looked at the sand on the beach and decided that if we could gather up enough viable seed we could set up our cabins, and then make a greenhouse, heated by the hot water, and we should be able to overwinter here if the captain wasn't good to his word of sending help from the Canadians on his first stop. (Since putting us off was in order to keep him from having to purchase more supplies, I suspect he had no intentions of telling anyone where we were.)

One of the carpenters opined, "It's too bad none of us are shipwrights." I had to agree. We decided that we would only set up one cabin, and look to making a boat of the other so that we might explore our coast and river valley better. There were only a sparse scattering of short woody plants around, so I figured we wouldn't be building much out of the local lumber. Perhaps the hot water was near boiling further inland, we could heat and cook all winter if that were the case.