Last night, at around 11:15pm, a yacht called Lumina approached Lambert Island’s Northern tip from the Southeast, like we had done, a few hours earlier, and laid anchor about 2 miles Northwest of us and the island.
YACHT ‘LUMINA’, SAILORS WITH A GOOD APPETITE
When Leven checked Facebook, he noticed that the skipper of the yacht, a Tim Riley, had left a comment under the most recent Northwest Passage Expedition FB post. Apparently Riley and his team-mates ate some of the rations that Leven and last year’s crew left at Fort Ross (see screenshot). What are the chances… I guess the chances are high, because very few people traverse the Northwest Passage, and those who do will almost always stop at the Hudson’s Bay Company hut at Fort Ross, so they would come across the expedition food left there last year. It is my understanding the food was left to make up for the food last year’s team ate and which had been left by others.
YACHT ‘HONSHU’
A 2nd yacht called Honshu passed us at around 4am. Leven spotted them on AIS, the electronic system.
DECISION TO START OUR BIG PUSH 36H EARLY
The sea gradually got a lot choppier. We didn’t get up to much during the day. At around 3pm, after checking the latest forecasts, Leven announced that we would start a 56-mile (64 statute miles, 104km) push at 6pm.
LIFTING ANCHORS
At 6:05pm we had lifted the anchors and were on our merry way in low to no winds and slightly favourable currents. The sun was shining from a slightly misty, cold, Arctic but cloudless sky. The first few miles we averaged about 2.75 knots (3 mph, 5 kph). We passed several islands and gradually the sun set and it got darker, windier, choppier, and with frequently changing, significant, not always favourable cross currents. At times we were averaging 3.5 knots or more (4 mph, 6.5 kph), at other times we barely kept her above 2 knots (2.3 mph, 3.7 kph).
HUNTERS’ LOG FIRE, UNMANNED RADIO STATION
We passed by what might have been a log fire set up by hunters close to the shore, but still too far to spot details and another, presumably unmanned radio station. When the night settled in properly, we noticed a large sailing yacht following a parallel course to ours, about 2.5 miles (4km) behind us, slightly portside. Then a large cruise ship, Hanseatic Spirit passed us, coming towards us.
(c) Top left, Hanseatic Spirit. (c) Top right, MS Roald Amundsen
FALSE ICEBERG ALARM
At around 11pm one of us briefly mistook an object on the horizon and caused great anticipation and excitement on my side: “Large iceberg on the horizon, my 1 o’clock.” It sure looked like an iceberg from such a far distance.
IAIN PASSING US ON THE MS ROALD AMUNDSEN
However it turned out to be yet another cruise ship. We checked the AIS (Automatic Identification System, “the poor people’s radar” according to Leven). It was Hurtigruten’s MS Roald Amundsen. Leven radioed the captain to say hi. When the captain turned out to be a nice enough chap, Leven also casually mentioned to him, that “a Stefan aboard Hermione says hi to his buddy Iain on the Amundsen.” Not sure if the captain actually made the tannoy announcement to this effect as he had implied he would. For those who missed it, Iain from Manchester had sent me a kind email to say he followed my Northwest Passage blog posts and that he will keep an eye out for Hermione on his journey through the Passage with the Amundsen. He had come across the blog while doing a bit of research ahead of the trip.
