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August 12th, 2009 – At Sea 69 55N, 120 46W
by Herb McCormick
(August 12): They looked like a pair of wooly mammoths, giant mounds of shaggy brown fur balanced on a tenuous-looking foundation of four relatively skinny legs. Alfalfa, the wiseacre from Spanky and Our Gang, might’ve been envious of the neat part down the middle of their enormous hairballs, but otherwise they seemed rather unruly beasts. Still, they were certainly arresting figures, and they got our attention. Even in the Arctic, you don’t lay your eyes on musk oxen every day, and when you chance upon a couple, you remember them.
Today, under a brilliant blue ceiling with not a cloud in the sky, the crew of Ocean Watch hauled up their anchor, and with crossed fingers, resumed course for Cambridge Bay. Ice reports show a promising lead into the Dolphin and Union Strait opening up near Cape Baring, on the southwestern corner of Victoria Island. In a perfect world, a lead along the mainland on the southern side of Amundsen Gulf would’ve been ideal, but instead we’re bound on a slight detour of about a hundred miles to the north. With light winds and perfect weather – dodging occasional fields of flat, patio-sized slabs of ice, but with excellent visibility to do so – it’s good to be underway again after several days at Pearce Point Harbor.
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| While hiking, the crew passed the broken antlers of a caribou, bleached white by the summer sun. |
Though we hadn’t planned on stopping at Pearce Point, it proved to be a fine place to wait out ice and weather. Yesterday, in a brisk northeasterly breeze, with the crew of another sailboat, Baloum Gwen, we ventured ashore for a long Arctic hike. I was driving the dinghy into shore when we noticed the aforementioned musk oxen wandering along a headland near the mouth of the harbor, and I took my eye off the ball long enough to nearly plow into the gillnet our mates on Baloum had set off the beach. Dipping my hands into the water, hovering at the freezing point, to clear the dinghy prop wouldn’t have been a load of laughs.
A couple of days earlier, we’d been up on the headland where the musk oxen now roamed, and had a good look at an enclosed, rocky blind erected by polar-bear hunters; a big rock cairn constructed by earlier visitors; and even a seagull nest, which mightily upset the proprietors, who took turns dive-bombing us until we got the message to take our curiosity elsewhere. In the not-too-distant past, there’d been a settlement of sorts at Pearce Point – there are a couple of wholly abandoned cabins, a cement-floored garage, and a well-cared-for trapper’s lodge – and someone even went to the trouble of grading roads and a rugged airstrip. Yesterday, we took the fork in the road away from the cabins and eventually worked our way off the path.
There were small tufts and hillocks of grass that gave way to an expanse of open grassland, here and there dotted with delicate buttercups and other tiny flowers, freckles of gold and purple. The little mountain blossoms were as intricate as gemstones, but much more fragile, each a literal moment of color – a blip in the short Arctic season – in the otherwise harsh and barren terrain.
As we gained elevation the footing devolved into loose scree; we passed the broken antlers of a caribou, bleached white in the summer sun. Up higher, the climbing became easier, bolstered by granite and boulders, all flecked with rusty-looking nuggets of iron ore. After weeks of boat living, our leg muscles atrophied by inaction, it felt fantastic to stride and stretch and scramble.
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| Bear tracks or a Sasquatch? |
Atop the ridge, we had a clear view of a prominent cliff face that looked just like the Rock of Gibraltar, a deep moat of decidedly green Arctic water at its base. The promontory bisected the low, partially submerged, sandy flats of a river delta in its lee; and to weather, a handsome strip of crescent-shaped beach along the Amundsen Gulf. Off in the distance, shimmering in wavy, refracted light, was the blurry image of…what? Fog? Vapor? Ice? It was impossible to say for sure, but the flecks of ice floes, as clean and white as Chiclets against the royal-blue sea, offered a not-so-subtle clue.
Down we went, and the group separated. My little troop went up and over a hill, and was deposited on a long,
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| The crew walked over a hill to discover a long, white-sand beach. |
gorgeous, white-sand beach. We couldn’t believe it. The Arctic? No way. There were dunes and sea grass; clear, crystal wavelets; water that transitioned in blueness from light to turquoise to Navy as the bottom sloped seaward. If we hadn’t seen the bear tracks – or, good grief, was that a Sasquatch?! – wide and deep, well-defined and imposing, I could easily have imagined myself back in Rhode Island, lost amongst the dunes in a dozen different places on a nice, winter’s day.
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| One of the four graves was marked with a cross that read “Marcus Papsok.” |
We headed back to where we’d started, past the discarded runway, littered with fuel drums; under the jet contrail, the first we’d seen in weeks; astride the ancient cemetery, where one of the four graves was marked with a cross that read “Marcus Papsok.” Just then, a big bumblebee buzzed my ear. I repeat: the Arctic? Not a chance.
Luckily, I hadn’t trashed that gillnet, for if I had, that plump Arctic Char wouldn’t have been waiting once we returned. Before long, a pile of driftwood was gathered and a beach fire lit, and that fresh cold-water fish tasted great grilled over its coals. The sun was getting lower when those musk oxen reappeared, sidling over a different, distant hill. Another eventful day in the Arctic: we all agreed, unanimously, that we were lucky sailors indeed.
- Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson
This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos
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