Northwest Passage Expedition – daily update 21 August 2024

Now planning to start rowing from tomorrow, Thursday, late afternoon or evening. In our sheltered anchoring place the winds have died down over the course of the day, but we can still see plenty of white horses (breakers) out there.

MUCH COLDER, FIRST SNOW

It got a lot colder. And we had our first few snowflakes since we set off to sea almost three weeks ago. The nights now last for 4.5h and are no longer grey but pitch-black dark for 2/3 of the time. The pictures do not do it justice, because my Galaxy automatically enhances the light multi-fold.  In reality you can barely make out the outline of the bay.

SOMETHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO

The multi-day row ahead of us bears on everyone’s mind. We are all super-keen go get some proper rowing done and some mileage in for more than just a day. On the other hand we are not idiots. It will be very hard, physically and mentally. We are not a team of eight where four of us can sleep at any given moment. We will be on duty non-stop for roughly 8 to 12h, then rotating with a little chance of catching sleep, but still working at least 50 to 75% of the time, then non-stop again, and so on.

NOT SLEEPING THAT WELL

I know I’m not the only one who hasn’t slept particularly well lately. It’s probably a combination of factors. I had noticed my sleeping mat having gradually deflated only when it had become almost entirely useless at keeping the increasingly unpleasant cold away. Similarly, I only noticed late that the side zips of my two (one inside the other) sleeping bags had opened widely inside the bivvy bag inside of which they are placed to fight condensation. This left one side of my body with little protection. I’m usually so tired when I start my rest period that I lack the energy to pay attention to detail.

COLD, DAMP, DARK

We air our wet clothes inside the unheated, cold cabin. It rained quite a lot recently, while previously it had been almost entirely dry. This means we don’t fully close the two latches in order to let the draught take some of the moisture away. It sounds silly and embarrassing, but even the suddenly so much longer and darker nights might have played a role, so did the heavy winds until recently. Cold, Damp, Darkness and strong winds multiply the effort needed for every task. Luckily, the chafing sores and burst blisters on my heels (mainly the right heel) have improved since I gave them a sea water bath and new dressings. Not rowing much and covering the blister pads with duct tape for when we did/do, helped a lot, too.

IAIN

Received an email from Iain from Manchester, who had stumbled across Ellie’s and my blog. The good chap will pass by us on Hurtigruten’s ice class ‘expedition’ cruise ship MS Roald Amundsen next week and says he’ll watch out for us. Well, we’ll sure watch out for the Amundsen.

ROCK’N’ROW

Nothing changes the fact that we all can’t wait to get the mileage in. We didn’t come up here to the High Arctic to rest. We came here to rock’n’row, baby, yayy haha…