Arrived at Beechy Island
We arrived at Beechy Island yesterday around 2:00 in the afternoon in a dieing breeze. The weather window has held beautifully for us and it’s my dire hope that these days of grace extend through the Bering Sea! Beechy Island is a “ground zero” for me. This whole trip/documentary has been to travel the passage, but the fact that this was the last true known area where the Franklin Expedition was intact, for me, is the hallowed of the hallowed. Hundreds of lives have been lost trying to find this passage but no expedition has garnered more attention and mystery than that of John Franklin’s. Long story short, he left England in 1850 with two ice proven ships (they were the ships that “discovered” Antarctica) with 128 men. The expedition was to last two years. Neither the men nor the ships were ever heard from or seen again. Over 30 international expeditions went in search of the missing Franklin Party. Apart from some artifacts that local Inuit had, an occasional found pile of sawed bones (suggested cannibalism) and an extremely confounding note which was left in a cairn on King William Island, Franklin’s Expedition remains one of history’s largest mysteries.
For their day, these men were international heroes, not unlike our astronauts. Their ships were the equivalent of say, our Gemini program, state of the art. Their complete and utter disappearance would be akin to that of Neil Armstrong landing on the moon and simply vanishing. I am extremely humbled and awe struck that Bagan now rests on her anchor in the very bay Franklin’s two ships, the ‘Erebus” and the “Terror” were trapped in the ice for two years.
Once settled in, the shore and filming parties were arranged. Greg and I broke out the dry suits and did an hour long dive. The bottom is as featureless as the landscape here; it’s flat and seemingly goes on forever. Small sea urchins and clams pock-mark an otherwise devoid ocean floor. The water was 40 degrees and the visual around 80’. After a little over an hour we surfaced with some fantastic HD footage (each day’s coverage gets better and better!) of a very intriguing bottom feature. Even though we have underwater communications with each other as well as the surface it was extremely reassuring to surface and see Sefton, Chauncey and Dom’s smiling faces. Clinton was manning the underwater coms and was also in charge of polar bear watch with rifle at the ready. Shortly before I surfaced I remembered a comment I heard in Halifax regarding polar bears; “If you see one, the chances are that he’s been hunting you for quite a while.” They’ve been seen swimming over a hundred miles from land.
Dropped the Hook in Nordre Laksebugt
After a quick overnight in Godthab we ran up the coast for four hours and dropped the hook in Nordre Laksebugt, another beautiful and very isolated deep cove. Once settled, Chauncey and Sefton strapped snowboards onto their backs and started to hike up the hills (remarkably steep hills) in search of a patch of ice they’d seen from the boat. Clinton, Greg and I headed off to a different part of the cove where they kite boarded trainer kites (1 and 3 meters) while I hiked inland a bit. Dom stayed aboard, cooked and stood anchor watch (definitely the short straw). All were successful in their various endeavors (Chauncey and Sefton’s HD video of them boarding down the small glacier was stunning to say the least) and met back aboard about 7:00 for dinner… then the fun began.
Greg and I decided to start breaking out our dive gear and two hours later, after spending far too long climbing in and out of my new dry suit to keep trimming the neck seal (something I should have done in Newport), I went over first and lasted about two minutes. The gear was still all wrong and every diving instinct in me suggested to get out of the water and call it a day… now. Gladly. This didn’t deter Greg, as by the time I’d gotten my various layers off he was already under the boat replacing zincs. Then we saw it; a very small and manageable ice berg about half a mile away across the bay. We all piled into the inflatable, took a close look at the berg, hooked Greg up with underwater communication, and over he went with the underwater video housing. Attached with this blog is some pocket-camera video of Greg filming the berg. You’ll have to trust me when I say that the HD footage he shot above and below the waterline is astonishing, absolutely breathtaking… trust me or buy the documentary when it’s done!
The next morning we up-anchored around 9:00 and are now in our second day of crossing the Baffin Bay. The weather window held, the light breezes which were predicted to fall apart and we’re now in flat seas with less than five knots of air. Our original intent was to head for Pond Inlet but after looking at a ice chart, we down loaded last night, found it to still have ice in it. Lancaster Sound is wide open up to Beechy Island (where the Franklin Expedition graves are) so we’ve altered course. This will add an extra day to the crossing and I’m very happy to report that we are now two days out from The Northwest Passage.
The Greenland Ice Cap
After a quick over night anchor at the small fishing village of Christianshab, (complete with hundreds of howling huskies on land) we left this morning around 9:00 A.M. We immediately came into a massively and seemingly endless ice field studded with bergs of indescribable size and beauty. Again, because words simply won’t support any sort of attempt at a description, I’ll upload two small video files for you.
The first shows the leading edge of the ice in Jakobshavn Isfjord coming down the east side of Disko Island. This is an indication that the Greenland Ice Cap is calving at a very healthy rate. The potential concern for this ice cap is that it wasn’t long ago that the predication of the “Larson B” ice shelf in Antarctica would take decades to melt, but it disappeared in just 30 days. Drastic changes like these can potentially effect global climate overnight. Needless to say, environmental eyes from many differing camps on global warming are watching this ice cap. Because of the heavy concentration of ice and any unexpected wind shift could potentially lock us in, we opted out of going north of the east side of Disko Island and headed straight for the south side. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that the weather window we saw a few days ago stays open, and we can scoot across Baffin Bay to Lancaster Sound sooner rather than later.
The second video depicts the sheer enormity of these creatures. If you look very closely at the bottom of the video you’ll see our 20’ inflatable with Chauncey, Sefton and Greg driving by about 100 yds off the berg. It was during this pass that we on Bagan heard what sounded like a canon exploding inside the berg itself. A piece of ice approximately the same size as the inflatable had fallen down from the top of the arch. Inflatable and crew were back aboard in record time.
By the way, before we leave Greenland could anyone tell me what “Inissinneqassanngilluinnarput” means? We’ve seen it on a few signs and are hoping that whatever it means we’re in full compliance of.
