Despite the alarm going off at 5.30am today, by 1pm we had kayaked less than 4 miles! We couldn't blame the weather today as it was almost calm. The first set back was my left wrist. I woke up conscious of an intense pain when i flexed it. I hadn't had any discomfort paddling so i must have slept on it strangely. It was tender on top of the wrist and i was almost useless at packing up camp as i couldn't do any twisting or flexing. JF had to put on my spraydeck and even undo my drysuit zip when i needed a pee! Some ibuprofen gel and a wrist brace made it feel much more secure and strangely paddling didn't hurt it at all. I probably even paddled with better technique than usual as i made sure to keep my wrist straight.

Our second delay was when 15 minutes out JF spotted some moving dots on the shore. The binoculars showed they were magnificent musk ox. Excitedly we turned back to land and walked a few hundred metres to get a good view of the herd, with one little baby scampering around amongst them. It's the first time I've seen them and if have liked to get even closer but we didn't want to disturb them.

Delay number 3 was when JF started drooling over a big river that he supposed would be a good spot for fishing. When we started hearing motor boats in that general direction he knew the fishing must be good as we hadn't seen anyone else for a couple of days. Close to the river mouth, a big green canoe with an engine on the back saw us and made a detour over. The 5 occupants had been catching arctic char in the river and were looking for seals and beluga whales to hunt and eat. We followed them into the river and tried our luck at fishing. No bites in 30 minutes and the tide was dropping quickly. We better leave while we could. I enjoyed a bouncy run down some class 2 rapids, thankful of a plastic boat. One of the locals called us over and showed us an atlantic salmon that he'd caught in a net and he offered it to us for our dinner. We happily accepted before waving goodbye.

After lunch on a rock, it was 1.30 pm and we had barely made any progress paddling wise but we were happy and smiling, it's about the journey after all.

A 9 nautical mile crossing of Leaf Bay took forever. Inside the channel to our west are the world's largest tides and despite being 10 miles from the narrow section we felt the effect of being carried in various different directions. We were happy it was calm and we didn't attempt this yesterday in strong winds. The last km or so took forever as the current turned against us.

We landed in the very pretty Gyrfalcon islands and made use of an unexpected conveyer belt of current to carry us north. Once it ended, we landed on a rocky, barren pile of stones of an island and have made camp with a lovey view of many of the surrounding islands. Of course, we had salmon for dinner.

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