Northwest Passage Expedition – daily update 27 August 2024

Started my first polar bear watch shift of the day at 3am.

GREAT START

Decided against oils, because it didn’t look like I’d need them. After all it’s not that comfortable wearing super-tight ‘plastic bags’ over already tight-enough 6 or 7 layers (baselayer, midlayer, padded fleece jacket, 3x synthetic down jackets, yes, for layering, Goretex hardshell). Naturally, it started to rain five minutes later. So I got out the oil jacket and my (not really oil) pair of waterproof over-trousers (over my thickly insulated water-resistent Arctic heavy duty workmen’s trousers) and put them both on. Literally the moment I had put them on, the rain stopped. The remaining 3h53m of my shift were entirely precipitation-free.

KAYAKING EXPEDITIONS

I recently realised that – I believe – I never updated you, Dear Reader, about the two kayaking expeditions. My oversight.

In essence, and rather regrettably, both Freya Hoffmeister and Simon Carrier and Maxime Geoffrey‘s bold adventures were stopped by the persistent sea ice, which is lasting longer than usual this summer between King William Island and Pond Inlet (part of last year’s first leg of our expedition). I believe that both parties plan to continue next year.

PALIN’S ‘EREBUS’

One thing that strikes me about the naval officers’ careers described in ‘Erebus’ is how much more merit-based Victorian society was compared with today. When (and presumably only when) it comes to the top jobs in the country.

FROM NINE-YEAR OLD SAILOR…

A lot of these naval officers were the 8th child of a Yorkshire priest or the 5th child of a Scottish self-made relatively small-time tradesman and the like. Their fathers decided to enlist them on an ocean-going ship when they were 9 to 15 years old, often just 12 or 13. They worked their way up the ranks.

…TO 40-YEAR OLD KNIGHT

If all went according to plan and with a lot of hard work and a bit of luck they would be captain with the Royal Navy by the age of 30, expedition leader a couple of years later, and knighted by the age of 40 at the very latest.

FREDERICK WILLIAM HERSCHEL

Frederick William Herschel, whom Herschel Island was named after, was the non-university educated son of a German non-university educated military oboist of limited means. Both father and son had been polymaths; the son becoming a composer and an astronomer, who happened to discover Uranus in 1781 and was appointed the Court Astronomer by King George III. William Herschel also had major discoveries in infrared radiation, deep sky surveys, and because the First President of the Royal Astronomical Society when it was founded in 1820.

LAUNDRY SITUATION

The laundry takes forever to dry. The sun is hidden behind clouds and there is sea spray from the occasional breaker. Temperatures are down to just above freezing point again.

FROM POLAR GUIDE TO ASTRONAUT

These days I read pretty much all news about the Arctic, Antarctica, polar exploration, so I came across this article on ExplorersWeb which is about that polar guide in Spitsbergen, who has a Chinese guy on his tour group, all while they are trying to spot some polar bears.

They start talking about space exploration with each other. A robotics PhD student, clearly also interested in the topic, joins the conversation. At the end of the tour, the Chinese dude introduces himself as Chun Wang, the BitCoin billionaire, and invites them both on a SpaceX flight worth a cool USD 50 million each. They will be the first manned flight to orbit over South and North Pole, no space crew has even crossed the Arctic circles so far.

A YACHT PASSES BY US

At around 2:30pm a yacht passes by us near the horizon. From the electronic systems we find out that it is 15m (50ft) long Night Owl.

5 EASY MILES FURTHER UP LAMBERT ISLAND

At 6pm we rowed an easy 5 miles (5.5 statute miles, 9km) further up Lambert Island’s West coast. There is a light beacon with solar panels near the Northern tip of the island, where we are anchoring. It looks a bit like Lunar Lander 2 or something that would move around Mars’s craters.

THE PLAN

In the extremely unlikely event that weather forecasts will stand, then we will be rowing from day after tomorrow, Thursday 7am to Friday 7am, as hard as we can, for 24 hours.

Adverse winds will then force us to sit them out near a place with the grand name ‘Cape Hope’ for two days until Sunday morning, from which point onwards we will have two or even three days of no headwinds, a good part even with tailwinds. Again, we’ll be giving it our best and aim to keep the boat moving on our ‘skeleton crew’ of four non-stop and at a reasonable speed. If all goes to plan and with a fair bit of luck, this might get us within striking distance to our next big stop, Paulatuk. Possibly within a day’s distance (24h rowing hard with tailwinds).

As mentioned before, we have been a bit unlucky for the past three and a half weeks, ever since we set off to sea from Cambridge Bay. Last year’s first leg (of two) of our expedition had been able to move forward about 50% of the time, most of it with tailwinds. In general you would expect a higher percentage of 70% or so, split between tail and manageable crosswinds.

This year, we have only been able to move about 10% of the time. Most of it in adverse conditions, some of it in neutral ones. A small part of this is because we are only four, not eight rowers, but only a small part. For example, it could be that due to a lower speed our team of four might not want to risk falling short of the next protected anchoring location during a particularly short time window, while a team of eight would have the confidence to make it there. However, the very vast majority of cases are not related to our staffing but to weather conditions that would have held back a better staffed boat just the same.

MYSTERY ROWER TO JOIN US IN PAULATUK

While it has been in the making for quite a while now, I’m finally at liberty to say that a mystery rower will join us in Paulatuk for the remainder of our journey. We are all very excited here, and very much looking forward to welcoming our new team-mate aboard Hermione. Life will be a lot easier with a team of five as opposed to a team of four.