Captain’s Log, M. Y. Asteria

Pond Inlet to Resolute, Canada
August 3 - 10, 2011

August 3rd was the equivalent of D - Day for the crew of Asteria. After four months of intense planning and 4,800 miles travel from Palma de Mallorca, Spain, we were anchored at Pond Inlet, Canada, considered the eastern entrance to the Northwest Passage through the Arctic Ocean. Huge ice bergs drifted west to east in the perpetual current of Eclipse Sound; the largest, grounded in hundreds of feet of water.

Asteria at Anchor in Eclipse Sound, Baffin Island

 There are no docks that could withstand the pressure of the winter ice. All landings are on the beach and we had purchased a fourth tender for just such occasions – a sturdy black, inflatable Zodiac. No bells and whistles, a simple tiller driven outboard with a large open space for passengers and whatever cargo we needed to carry.

Zodiac Landing

 Asteria’s other three tenders would be reserved for sight seeing and spared the grinding punishment of the gravel shore. We had purchased a potpourri of sizes of rubber boots in anticipation of all beach landings being wet landings, however, we opted to ferry everyone and their luggage to the ship via helicopter.

Planted on a ridge facing the spectacular peaks and glaciers of Sirmilik National Park, Pond Inlet, with 1,300 residents is one of the larger of the Canadian Arctic communities.

Pond Inlet

 Well above the tree line, there are no shrubs or large flowering plants to adorn a yard. Houses are elevated to allow snow to blow underneath as well as minimize the effects of transmitting heat into the permafrost a few feet below the surface. Buildings are surrounded with random scatterings of abandoned snow mobile parts, caribou antlers and bones, wood sleds, and odd bits of cast off plastic things.

 The initial impact is of a pervasive starkness, but the genuine smiles of the villagers greeting strangers soften the visual austerity of their environment. 

A Friendly Local

Before departing Palma, and during our three day layovers in Guernsey, and Reykjavik, we tried to anticipate our needs for provisions and various consumable items for three months.  Still, we needed fresh fruits and vegetables, and not knowing what to expect locally, we had arranged fresh provisions to be flown in from Montreal at weekly intervals. After the first shipment arrived we received the invoice and a note from the vendor explaining that he had miscalculated the freight costs. We had ordered fresh flowers, fruit and produce costing $1,100 and paid $5,700 in air freight charges. We soberly reassessed our needs and began to scour the two local all purpose stores to supplement the supplies on board.

Pond Inlet Market

Prices in these northern villages are nothing less than stunning: $4.75 for a four ounce cup of yogurt, eight ounces of cream cheese for $7.75, a half gallon of fresh orange juice at $12.50. A woman in line ahead of me purchased a pack of cigarettes for $20.00. We discovered that most staple items were subsidized for locals. In a few instances the cashier neglected to identify on the register that we were not local, several items such as potatoes and rice were included with no charge on the receipt.

Having lost internet through our normal satellite service provider several days before arriving at Pond Inlet, most of the crew spent their free time in the library, trying in vain to catch up on e-mails and all of the other electronic communications that most of us have come to believe we cannot live without.

For Hilary and me, the unfortunate reality was that there was not enough bandwidth to include photos in our blog and we chose to delay the postings rather than publish the narrative without her photos included.

The entrance to the library displayed a sign in both English and Inuktitut. Prior to the arrival of Europeans and Americans, the Inuit language was only spoken. In their drive to"civilize" the natives, a written syllabic form was created. One syllable is represented by one symbol, the orientation of which depicts a slightly different sound. 

The new owner, his children and two friends, and the owner’s right hand man, Neil, and his wife, arrived aboard a Canadian North twin prop Dash 8.  Departing from Hong Kong, Boston, and Los Angeles, they all clutched their jackets tighter as they stepped onto the gravel runway in the five degree chill of Pond Inlet. We opted to ferry everyone and their luggage to the ship via helicopter. It was a dramatic approach for their first cruise on Asteria.

We had struggled to the last minute to secure an adequate helicopter for the two trips. One promising arrangement had fallen through when the company bailed out on short notice after bogging down in their own minutiae and dithering for a better offer to charter their helicopter for fire fighting service.

Eurocopter B2

Our Quebecois pilot and mechanic, Stephane and Claude, arrived August 1^st from a base north of Montreal in a very used, but well maintained, Eurocopter B2. After landing on Asteria with a single fly by, Stephane casually announced he had never landed on a ship before. He was a paradox of cheery youthfulness coupled with the professionalism gained in twenty two years of flying. Mechanic Claude, also a pilot, exhibited a perpetual stoicism and good nature, constantly whistling a limited repertoire of Beatles tunes. They quickly became welcome members of Asteria’s crew and the capability of the helicopter provided some of our best experiences.

The owner’s luggage failed to arrive with him and we spent an extra day in Pond Inlet while Neil plunged deeper and deeper into the Twilight Zone of dealing with airline representatives. After a day and a half the situation had spiraled into an incomprehensible whirl of tail chasing and the owner gamely suggested we move on. We all loaned him various items of clothing and headed west for six days in which we counted on one hand evidence seen of human beings.

It didn’t take long for the guests to appreciate why they had made the effort to travel to this remote landscape. The first helicopter flight seeing excursion at Milne Inlet produced two bowhead whales and a hundred plus narwhals. For most of us, narwhals were literally a mythical creature. We were amazed to see them in such great abundance.

Bowhead Whale (photo Frankie Molina)

We pounded fifty miles across Lancaster Sound from Baffin Island to the south coast of Devon Island and were rewarded with our first good land sighting of a polar bear ambling along the beach adjacent to the triple snout of Cunningham Glacier.

Polar Bear on Devon Island

 Reports I had received of wind and seas in the Canadian Arctic described mostly benign conditions, but throughout our visit, we were regularly dogged by twenty to thirty knots of wind blowing for a day or so from the northeast. Fortunately, the guests had several days to get their sea legs prior to this bumpy passage, and the remainder of the trip was downwind. The beneficial tradeoff for higher than normal wind was less than average fog, a blessing of huge proportion.

At Beechey Island, the 1845-46 winter haven for the doomed Franklin Expedition, we visited the lonesome graves of three sailors who succumbed to tuberculosis during that first winter.

The Graves

 The desolate site housed the graves of others from later expeditions that searched in vain for clues explaining the fate of the two British Navy ships, Erebus and Terror, and their complement of 129 men that set out that year in the quest for the Northwest Passage. With unflagging persistence, Sir John Franklin’s wife, Lady Franklin, spurred the Admiralty to launch multiple expeditions in what may be the greatest search and rescue effort of all time. Finally, in 1869, Charles Francis Hall, through close association with the local Inuit, found evidence that the remainder of the party had perished on King William island, apparent victims of starvation and scurvy. Ironically, a new technology of sealing cooked food in tins to provide long lasting provisions, contributed to the demise of the sailors.

Tins with Lead Solder

 Autopsies and chemical analysis of the bodies found at Beechey Island indicate that lead in the solder used to seal the tins had leached into the food and most likely, hastened their deaths through lead poisoning.

The random prevalence of polar bears and their reputation as one of the most aggressive carnivores on earth mandated the presence of an armed guard on every excursion. In anticipation of that need and our lack of first hand knowledge of the area we hired an Expedition Leader, Brandon Harvey , and Inuit hunter, Stevie Audlakiak, as our guide and guard.

 Expedition Leader Brandon

Inuit Guide / Hunter Stevie

 On every flight, every boat ride, and every beach walk, Brandon or Stevie accompanied the guests with a twelve gauge pump shot gun and high powered hunting rifle. Stevie was typically reserved, but articulate and detailed when describing the culture, lifestyle and habits of his people and land. Deck Hand, Frankie, along with Stevie and Brandon proved to be eagle eye wildlife spotters. Brandon frequently shared his extensive knowledge of the flora and fauna encountered.

                                                                                                         
On day eight we dropped anchor in Resolute Bay, which might more aptly be named Desolate Bay. The low gray - brown hills, receiving less than 6 inches of precipitation a year, appeared hunched and battered by eons of severe weather. At 74 41 N, Resolute is one of the coldest inhabited communities on earth with an average annual temperature of 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

Resolute Post Office

There is some evidence of the Thule people occupying this land a thousand years ago, but the present Resolute came into being only in 1947 with the establishment of a weather station. In 1953, in one of the darker pages of Canadian history, the federal government forcibly relocated natives to Resolute in an effort to establish sovereignty in the high Arctic during the Cold War.

That night we celebrated on board with a communal crew and guest feast with a dozen entrées from East and West. Stevie prepared traditional dishes of narwhal (muktuk) and seal.

Two teenage Inuit girls entertained us with throat singing; guttural breathing and throat harmonics in which two people compete with increasing tempo until one, and then the other burst into uncontrollable giggles.

Throat Singers

The girls joined us for dinner and marveled at the variety of strange food, the complexity of the engine room and bridge equipment, and the abundance of flowers, some of which they had never seen before. We sent them home with arm loads of lilies, carnations, and chrysanthemums to share with their family and friends.

The owner's children departed on the following day and we prepared for new guests for the second trip. Ice break up in the central Arctic was several weeks late this year so instead of continuing west, we had already planned to retrace our steps to Pond Inlet, confident we would see more and different wildlife and view the landscape with a different perspective in the ever changing light and weather.