Today was the first day that the tide receded 3 miles from the shore in places. The tidal range in the bay of Ungava is up to 17 vertical metres, so we were quite lucky that today where we are it was merely just over 10 metres! The best news was that the low tide was 2.7 metres higher than a really low tide here so the sea didn’t disappear quite so far from the coast as it might. This limited the distance we had to paddle around alk the reefs and meant we were only about 3 miles from land at our furthest. Still we didnt fancy a 3 mile carry with the kayaks so we played a tactical game and paddled from high water at 8.20am until 2 hours before the next HW. We landed on an offshore island at 7pm after about 25 nautical miles or so. It was a lovely day, which started with a light headwind, just enough to keep the bugs away. The middle third was calm and the last few hours a trail wind picked up and we whooped and surfed.

Once we left the Koksoak river we headed for some offshore islands to avoid getting caught inland in a drying pout bay. It looked like the low rocky islands were less than a mile away with some large looking waves breaking around them. That seemed strange in the small sea state and finally we realised it was ice caught on the rocks. 90 minutes later we arrived, realizing our sense of scale here needed modifying. We landed for lunch, noting that the sea and air temperature is significantly colder on the sea and further north. I was chilled pretty quickly. It was a beautiful island with lots of terns, eiders and other birds making it home and car size and bigger icebergs caught on the rocks. We climbed to the high point and saw Rocks everywhere inside the islands , there was guaranteed way through so we continued on the outside, skirting the reefs and small islands, admiring white and blue icebergs shimmering on every reef and shallow rock. It felt great to be getting to know that
nuances of a new landscape. Now we are on our rocky island, having eaten a big meal and getting ready to walk to the top of this bigger island to see what lies ahead tomorrow!

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