Baffin Bay

We are just over 1/2 way through our passage from Greenland to Canada and are currently in the middle of Baffin Bay at 71 degrees North. This is about 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle and about 300 miles from Pond Inlet on Baffin Island. We will either enter the North West Passage at Pond Inlet if the ice is gone from there, or, Lancaster Sound further north. Hope to be in either place sometime Monday or Tuesday. We've been lucky to be able to cross at this lower latitude. Usually, there is a pack of sea ice in the middle of Baffin Bay up to about 75N, but, this year it has receded below 71N making a shorter trip for us.

It's the usual no-wind, motor on, sunshine above, thick fog at sea level passage. The fog is the worst. Sometimes it clears off for an hour or so and then comes back thicker than ever. We have seen a dozen or so really large icebergs. We didn't see any small ice, or, bergy bits ('bergy bit' is an official ice description!), so, were not too worried about them. Then, just when the fog was thickest and we couldn't see more than a few metres around the boat, one just slipped in 'under the radar' (now we know where that term comes from). It didn't show up on the radar at all and although watching carefully around the boat, we didn't see it, until, all of a sudden, it was just abeam and just metres away. We weren't in danger of hitting it, but, it was a nasty surprise. It was big enough, about 2 metres high by 10 metres long, to have caused us a serious problem. Now, we have to be more vigilant than ever.

It has been interesting to be in these waters and at the same time reading 'The Arctic Grail, The Quest for the North West Passage and the North Pole, 1818-1909' by Pierre Berton. It brings to life all the history of the area and the who and why of the place names etc. Also, how things have changed. In the exact stretch of water we're in now, it is mentioned that eighty-two whales were seen in one day. We haven't seen one. Reading Farley Mowat's 'Canada North Now', from the early 1970's, has also been very informative. To keep us inspired, G. has been playing one of his favourite songs, 'The Northwest Passage' by Stan Rogers. If you haven't heard it, look it up and listen, it's great. Here are the words:

Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage,
To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea,
Tracing one warm line through a land so wild and savage,
And make a Northwest Passage to the sea.

Westward from the Davis Strait 'tis there 'twas said to lie,
A sea route to the orient, for which so many died,
Seeking gold and glory, leaving weathered broken bones,
And a long forgotten lonely cairn of stones.

Three centuries thereafter, I take passage over land,
In the footsteps of brave Kelso, where his "sea of flowers" began,
Watching cities rise before me, then behind me sink again,
This tardiest explorer driving hard across the plain.

And through the night, behind the wheel, the mileage clicking west,
I think upon Mackenzie, David Thompson and the rest,
Who cracked the mountain ramparts and did show a path for me,
To race the roaring Fraser to the sea.

How then am I so different from the first men through this way,
Like them I left a settled life, I threw it all away,
To seek a Northwest Passage at the call of many men,
To find there but the road back home again.

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Baffin Bay 1/8/2014 12:00 71°07.6'N 063°36.2'W