My first thought was that there was a sheep walking on the rocks maybe 200 metres away. I saw the movement of white and my brain, used to paddling in Wales, grasped a familiar idea! It probably only took a fraction of a second before I realised what it really was, and in the same instant, JF, was pointing and excitedly saying"bear". It's day 12 of our Arctic kayaking trip and I was beginning to forget about polar bears as every other sighting had turned out to be an iceberg or a patch of snow, but here was a real live one lumbering along the rocky shore, head down, maybe looking for food. He looked up now, towards us, nose in the air, trying to smell us but we were downwind so he was spared the stench of 12 day old thermals. I was thankful that we were on the water and he was on land, although we had only been paddling 5 minutes from our campsite. He was heading in that direction and was only a few hundred metres away.

We took photos and exc itedly admired the magnificent animal, again glad he was happily occupied on a different element to us. After a minute or so he walked away, disappearing behind some rocks before reappearing further away. We carried on paddling happily, making the most of a strong following sea to push us in the right direction today. The forecast was for 35 knot gusts and it may have got close to that at times, it was certainly strong enough in the late afternoon that i had to put my mapcase under my bungys to stop it blowing everywhere. We were paddling close to shore at the time with offshore islands close to our right, so it felt safe to harness the power of the wind with a good safety net. We made very good speed and are probably less that 35km from a small Inuit community.

We had a late start today due to a thunder and lightning storm in the morning. At first I didn't believe JF that there was thunder as it was so windy that it sounded to me like the tent flapping, but then i saw the lightning, followed by an unmistakably loud rumble. We waited a couple of hours to make sure it had cleared and launched at noon. That meant it was low tide by the time we landed and we struggled to find a spot. We ended up on a smooth flatish rock, a few metres above a high high tide, with a steep but fairly smooth route up that we could wheel the kayaks up. Its now even windier and we are finally ready for bed at 11pm.

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