It’s not often you have to hold the tent down to stop the wind getting under it and lifting at least an edge. We pegged it down pretty well last night, using lots of rocks, but we weren’t expecting 40 knot gusts in the night. At 3am, JF got out the cosy sleeping bag and braved the frigid wind to put more rocks on the guylines. We hadn’t been sleeping much prior to that as our trusty home rattled and shook against its fierce adversary. We have said many times on the trip, thank goodness we have a good tent, and last night our Hilleberg Tarra proved her worth again. Unfortunately our planned early start was scuppered as we gazed at a sea of white, with gusts making cats paws on the inlet we’d launch in. It was offshore and wild. We checked the updated forecast from Karel which had changed from easterly all day to SW with 30 knot gusts in the morning and NW with 15 knot gusts in the afternoon. Back to bed to try to sleep through all the noise. At one point the wind even set off our
bear fence, requiring another leap out of the cosy bag, with the gun drawn.

At 11am it was much calmer so we launched just after 12 and enjoyed 4 hours of good progress with a bit of current helping us. A headwind then picked up and strengthened as we crossed 5km across Deception Bay. A confused sea state and breaking waves made slow progress. Ahead of us lay a 20km section of cliffs where we were unsure if we would be able to find anywhere to land and camp so we stopped on Neptune island in Deception Bay around 6.30 and made camp after 37km. It’s a pretty spot, we’re in a grassy valley looking out over Arctic island which had a navigational light- the first sign that we are only about 50km away from Salluit now. Tonight is almost certainly our last one in Nunavut, as all the offshore islands are part of Nunavut, whereas the mainland is Quebec.

It seems like nature is giving us short windows of good weather to make it to Salluit then slamming the door shut for a while. Hopefully we’ll have a decent few hours tomorrow, if not we’ll be battling as we have a flight early on 2nd August so we can’t afford to wait for optimum conditions.

Sent from Iridium Mail & Web.