Queen Maud Gulf

Adventure Canada flag on the bow.

I love being at sea.

The gangway from the Polaris dinning room to the Nautilis Lounge past the coffee nook.

The Nautilis Room, where we had most of our meetings.

The pile of zodiac on top of the ship and the cranes that lower them.

The empty pool on the stern deck.

The shore of Victoria Island.

The map of the Arctic and where we've been in three days, as we sail from west to east through the North West Passage.

Sunday, September 3^rd. Queen Maud Gulf (south shore of Victoria Island)

I slept well and woke up feeling a bit better. My eyes are still irritated and itchy but my headache has dissipated. Today is an at sea day, which is a great day to just hang out and recover. We had breakfast and then settled in to listen to three more talks. The first was ‘Archaeology Learning from the Land’ about the study of the human elements found at sites; the second was Marine Birds of the High Arctic about birds that live near and live off the bounties of the sea; and the third was ‘The Ins and Outs of the Northwest Passage’ about the history of and the reasons for its exploration and the many voyages over a period of abut 500 years from a whaler named Frobisher to the disaster of Sir John Franklin’s expedition to the passenger/tourist ships of today. All three talks were very informative and lead by people of incredible and vast experience. Like the trip to the Antarctic this expedition is not just a scenic cruise but an educational journey of learn about the poles from experts in their fields. On board we have an ornithologist, a botanist, a marine specialist, an archeologist, an historian, a geologist, an Inuit art specialist, a naturalist, an Arctic policy expert, a land claims specialist, a photographer, a videographer and two Inuit. So, you can learn as much or as little as you like. In the afternoon I went and bought an internet package of 200 minutes for $100. It is slow and probably going to be hard to keep blogging. Then we went to a talk on whales. Most of what she told us we already knew: there are two types of whales, baleen whales that filter food from the sea and toothed whales that actively hunt, kill and eat other species in the sea. She talked about their migratory patterns, wintering in the tropics to give birth and summering at the poles in the nutrient rich polar oceans. Then we had our daily ‘gathering’ where we are informed about tomorrow’s program. We are to go ashore in an Inuit village. We also heard we had a case of COVID on board and a case of a gastro virus, so be careful and sanitize. We had dinner together and I was able to ‘talk’ to them a bit tonight. John and I went up to the bridge where the ship is ‘driven’ and got talking to a young graduate student who is on a project counting seabirds. We were there for about 20 minutes, and we didn’t see any. We are in a dead zone because it’s an area where there is really no safe habitat for them, i.e., small islands or cliffs where predators can’t reach them. Then we all settled down for the night. About 11pm our ship, following a channel between two islands, passed between the sites of Erebus and Terror wrecks. These were the two ships of Sir John Franklin’s Northwest Passage journey that got stuck in the ice and disappeared from the world with 129 men. For years no one knew what had happened to them and despite numerous expensive rescue voyages, which did find some evidence of their having been to several places, it wasn’t until 2014 that Canada launched a concerted effort to find the two ships using modern sonar and underwater imaging to locate them. Both wreck locations are national historic sites and protected, so we were not allowed to go there. Interesting place to be but we could see nothing, so we stayed in bed.