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August 7th, 2009 – At Sea 70 01N 123 23W
by Herb McCormick
(August 7): We can’t say we weren’t warned. Before retiring to his bunk last evening, with a copy of Martin W. Sandler’s book Resolute in hand, skipper Mark Schrader let it be known that if he were up early this morning he’d be ready to get going at a moment’s notice.
(Just for the record, Resolute is the story of Sir John Franklin’s disastrous Arctic expedition in 1848 aboard a couple of boats with the cheery, upbeat names of Terror and Erebus. In retrospect, one could easily conclude that Sir John was tempting fate. “Terror,” of course, speaks for itself. And Sandler helpfully defines “erebus” as “the word for the dark region below the earth where the dead must pass to reach Hades.” Fun! Considering that Franklin and the 128 chaps with him were never seen or heard from again, and that we’re currently, you know, more or less encircled by ice in the Arctic, some might question the choice of Resolute for comforting bedtime reading…even though we try hard not to judge at Casa Herb.)
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| The chart of today’s route from Summer’s Harbour to Pearce Point Harbour. |
Yet I digress.
Aboard Ocean Watch, currently heading eastward in the Amundsen Gulf, we find ourselves today scurrying to a mainland anchorage called Pearce Point Harbor. Somewhat bored and more than a little restless, we’re hurrying down the track some 55 miles from Booth Island to wait for ice conditions to improve. As we do, we’ve decided to keep a running log on today’s short excursion, so that you too can enjoy the ongoing thrills of an Arctic expedition. We’ll begin at:
0700: True to his word, the captain is up and at ‘em. We up anchor and make our way out of the quite cozy little harbor, which was an ideal place to weather yesterday’s stiff northwesterly blow. It’s cold, a brisk 33-degrees, and after the deck is tidied up the crew happily retreats to the confines of our enclosed cockpit. The day before, after the skipper had spent the day ashore and waxed rhapsodic on the virtues of Booth, I wandered ashore and had a hike across what can only be described as its lunar surface. Taking it a step further, Booth was like the moon, but without the view. I was left unmoved and uninspired, a latter day Neil Armstrong but with an inferiority complex: I’d taken one small step for man and, um, one piddling stride for mankind.
0730: First mate Dave Logan, being from Seattle and all, is your basic coffee connoisseur. He usually brews the first pot of the day and he likes it strong. Today, in his quest for an early start, the skipper made the coffee. And something went horribly wrong. I’ve just downed a cup and “jacked up” does not begin to describe the sensation. I feel like diving into the Arctic and swimming to Europe. You’ve heard of Cowboy Coffee, where the spoon stands up in the mug? This is Cowboy, Indians, Chinese Railway Workers, The Combined Mexican and Texas Armies at the Alamo Coffee. I. Just. Want. To. Make. It. Stop. Logan pours a second cup. “Pretty good, Mark,” he says.
0845: We’ve passed a little island called Fiji, which presented us with the opportunity to make some of the lamest,
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| The DEW station on the headland of the Parry Peninsula. |
most obvious jokes you’ve ever imagined, which we all found hilarious. (By the way, why do I feel like I have a thousand ants running a marathon through my intestines? Oh, yeah: Pretty good, Mark!) Now we’re abeam of the big DEW station on the headland of the Parry Peninsula. DEW stands for Distant Early Warning, which we think is a synonym for We’ve Got These Crazy Big Antennas That Look Like Gigantic Soccer Balls And We’re Listening To Everything You Russians Are Saying. Most of the DEW stations are unmanned, but clearly not this one: There’s a big dormitory, the lights are on, there’s even a helicopter adjacent to the buildings. The chopper suggests all sorts of escapist fantasies, and we reckon we could get ashore quickly before anyone noticed, but unfortunately, none of us know how to fly a helicopter.
0900: There’s very little wind, not enough for a decent sail, but the boat is rolling from beam to beam in the leftover northwest swell, so we decide to hoist the main to hopefully dampen the exaggerated motion. The skipper, David Thoreson and I go forward to execute the maneuver, stumbling and bumbling on the teeter-totter decks all the way. When things are truly awful, the Aussies, those antipodean masters of irony, refer to them as “average.” This is turning into a very average morning.
0930: The mainsail has steadied things down a bit, but the ride is still, you know, fairly average. Down below, the boys are whipping up breakfast burritos, of all things, and they graciously ask Zeta Strickland, our teacher, and I – up in the cockpit on watch – if we would care for one. I glance at Zeta, currently wrapped in down, sorta pale, and employing a death grip on a package of saltines, who shoots a look that suggests she’d rather have her eyes gouged out by gorillas. I take it for a no. I, too, will pass, deciding to split the difference between crackers and Mexican, and a few minutes later dash down below for a bowl of exceedingly average granola, which shares the consistency and even taste of the gravel, lunar beach back on Booth Island. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
1000: We pass the peninsula, jibe the main, and take a hard right some 30 degrees to lay a course for Pearce Point Harbor. We thought we knew about all the boats trying to get through the Northwest Passage this summer, but last night, on the SSB radio, we learned that there’s a pair of English sailors, on an open boat no less, currently anchored at Pearce Point and also bound eastward. We all agree that, even for Brits, this sounds like rather extreme behavior bordering on the very precipice of sanity and reason. We also agree that we can’t wait to meet these guys.
1100: Captain Mark updates his personal skipper’s log. Here’s an excerpt: “The Arctic Sailing Directions note the presence of some abandoned buildings and oil tanks on the west side of (Pearce Point) harbor. It appears this is a good place to anchor for all but northerly winds, and is the last sheltered anchorage along the Canadian arctic coast until Bernard Harbor, 190 miles further east. It is also the place where we’ll wait until the ice reports indicate the presence of a safe and reasonably open lead through the ice ‘plug’ on the eastern side of Amundsen Gulf, extending into Dolphin and Union Strait.
“It is very difficult to predict how long the wait may be. The radarsat image delivered a few days ago by the Canadian Coast Guard shows a shore lead with 3/10 to 4/10 ice extending almost the length of the solid ice. East of this plug and all the way into Cambridge Bay the passage is ice free. We need some warm temperatures with easterly or southeasterly winds to break up and move this ice to the north. Current air temp is now 40° (33° this morning when we were hauling the anchor), sea temp 39°. When the concentration of ice looks like 1/10 to 2/10 we’ll go further east and have a look.”
That will conclude the serious portion of today’s report. We now return to the previous assortment of nonsense.
1115-1400: Motoring, motoring, motoring, motoring, motoring, motoring, lunch, motoring, motoring, motoring, motoring……
Mid-afternoon: Pearce Point Harbor is on the horizon. The adventures (!!!) of Ocean Watch continue.
- Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson
This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos
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