Ellie & I made a Guinness Book Record attempt at London Heathrow yesterday, 21 July, for longest hug and I think we probably made it.
At 2:10pm my fellow expedition member Mike (Michael Harding) and I finally left London Heathrow (LHR) for Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, Northern Canada (YCB).
The check-in and security at LHR were not straight-forward. First I had been told that I can’t check in, because I had failed to obtain an eTA (electronic travel authorisation from Canadian Immigration).
The short of it: due to a glitch my eTA had not been linked to my passport number. The airline desk supervisor finally found it via my name, then linked it to my passport number. That or something similar, it was all rushed, confusing and communication was not clear.
Once this was sorted, we went in great detail through the contents of my luggage. Knife, multitool, two bottles of Northwest Passage Expedition gin (one above allowance), life vest with two spare gas cartridges for automatic inflation, strange electronic equipment like a PLB (personal locator beacon), the list goes on.
Then next up, potential traces of explosives were spotted on my duffelbags, obviously must have been an error in the detection device or a random contact with explosives residue perhaps involving some rubbing of my luggage against the one of a mining or tunnel roadworks engineer, maybe military personnel, who knows. Police was called in and I was questioned for 1.5h before I was told sorry for the inconvenience and let go.
On my first contact with Canada, at the first stopover in Calgary, the country lived up to all the lovely stereotypes. The immigrations officer, despite a long queue behind me, was superfriendly and asked me tons of questions about the expedition. None were relevant ones like “Will you carry firearms for self-protection” or “Did you inform National Parks Service about your expedition and obtain all required permits to enter Inuit territory. He was interested if I felt worried about the polar bears, how cold it was going to be, if I’d ever done anything similar before, what my wife thought about me going on the expedition, etc.
Mike had made it safely through to the Calgary departure gate for the flight to Yellowknife, too. We had some huge burgers, the Canadian national dish poutine, and a few beers, then boarded the flight to Yellowknife.
After a night in a hostel near the airport, we continued our trip the next morning with our flight to Cambridge Bay, where this year’s Northwest Passage Expedition starts from.
Our expedition leader, Leven (Leven Sinclair Brown), very warmly greeted Mike and me at the airport. It was my first time meeting the legend (he broke 7 world records, 5 of which still stand) in person. Mike had completed the first leg (of two) of the expedition with Leven, 5 other men, and one young lady called Tuppence last summer.
After a 15-minute ride with our hired 4WD we arrived at the hut where we were staying. Mike and I got to meet the fourth and final member of our expedition, Art “Karts” Huseonica. We had a look around Hermione (rhymes with “tiny”), our boat. She is currently still beached but we plan to put her back into the water in a few days.
Leven informed us that the weather forecasts had changed for the worst and instead of this Thursday, we were now aiming for this Sunday or Monday to set off to sea.
We learned that both the fuel cells on our boat had not survived the extreme temperatures of last winter (-45C). Leven was able to get one of them replaced for a eye-watering £6,000 and the decision was made to make do with just one.
One of the lithium batteries will be replaced tomorrow. The shopping list also includes a spare cooker and propane gas, among others.
Mike and I went for a little dip in the Arctic Ocean. While the 0*C cold water didn’t feel welcoming, it was amazing how warm everything felt once we had left the water. The cold water really gets the blood circulation going.
(c) Photos and video by Leven Brown
Next Leven drove Mike and me to town for some personal shopping. For a tiny frontier settlement of under 2,000 residents, there is plenty on offer.
Following Leven’s advice I bought more warm clothes including a quilt jacket and super-bulky full-length thermal trousers.
Considering the fact we’d be living off Russian rations for up to 10 weeks, we both bought plenty of food, including whole roast chickens, several dozen large eggs, 1kg of butter, 1kg of smoked bacon rashers, 1kg of frankfurters, plenty of bread, crisps, pickles, sweets. All just for on top of our regular 3 meals a day for the next few days. We’ll buy some extra food and snacks for the expedition later this week.
When we arrived back at the cabin, Art had already prepared a fabulous spagbol with side salad. Even grated parmesan cheese was provided.
The cabin has no flowing water 95% of the time. You get a few drops to do the dishes.
The toilet looks almost like normal, but is in essence a hole in the ground, below the comfortable toilet seat. Once you’ve done your business, you put one scoop of compost on top of the pile of the proverbial, hoping that it will reduce the smell. It works okay. A biodegradable baby wipe for the hands. Hand sanitiser. No water.
Tomorrow, Tuesday, we will have to get some actual work done. Do some more checks on the systems, some testing. I will also have to start familiarising myself with Hermione.
We’ll also need to start providing our sponsors with updates and footage. Only this morning, we received confirmation of another major sponsor coming onboard: a former client of mine, Lucht Probst Associates. Very good of them. We are also hoping to sign up two more sponsors before we set off to sea, and more, later.
2 Comments
This is it, no turning back now…I will be keeping everything crossed for you and your team. Looking forward to following along, very best wishes.
Thank you so much, Gilda 🙂 It’s all happening now…