If it’s windy here, you can’t just get off the water when it gets too strong as for 6 hours out of every 12, you can be 2km from shore with an uneven boulder field between you and a dry campsite. So today we decided to stay put in fairly strong NE winds. We watched the whitecaps from the tent this morning and went back to sleep. Launching is only really practical an hour, or at some places 2 hours either side of high tide. This means we get to lie in longer each day as today high water was 10am, (but then we paddle later too).

This afternoon we walked 4 miles to a river that looked promising for fishing. We found some deserted cabins and then a massive rubbish dump, before coming across a community that we had thought was abandoned ( and that isn’t marked on our map). Aupaluk had a massive water treatment plant, police station, a well stocked store, kids playground, 90 post office boxes and even an ice rink. The people we saw smiled but didn’t engage in conversation with us, apparently not that curious about 2 strangers who walked into town. We left with a box of eggs and some orange juice with lots of unanswered questions. It just felt a bit wierd to start asking questions to someone.

Now we are back in the tent, happy to be out of the wind. Its really very cold when its windy. We may be stuck here tomorrow but we’re hoping for a change in forecast. Thacks to Karel Visel for sending us daily forecasts.

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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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The wind blew our tent all night and we thought maybe we’d have the same following sea as last evening but alas the SW forecast came true and we battled into 20 knots making about 2-2.5 knots progress. It wasn’t enough to motivate us to keep going and we stopped after only about 6 nautical miles. The prospect a 4 and 6 mile crossing at a snails pace not inspiring us. We landed at a headland 3 hours after HW where the long portage up to the high tide mark was “only” about 400 metres on mostly gravel and stones. It was as good as it was going to get! We didn’t set up the tent at first as it was a beautiful warm, sunny day and we hoped the wind might drop later so we could paddle on. We went for an explore of the tundra and found lots of carribou scat and fur and a dusting of tiny flowers. As the sea went out further we marveled at the massive power of the tides. It was windy enough that we hadn’t seen any mosquitos for 24 hours but as soon as we decided to sit in a rock and enjoy
the sunshine, they appeared in a swarm around us. The wind still felt like 10-15 knots but it must have dropped enough for the hardy Arctic stinging machine to tolerate. As gusts came, the mossies disappeared but with every lull they gathered forces and returned en masse with the sole mission of funding any tiny millimetre of exposed flesh. We rallied our defences and braved the battlefield for a while longer. Then suddenly in an instant the wind swung round to the North West and intensified. I went from hot to needing 2 jackets and a wooly hat in 5 seconds. The only saving grace was that we never saw another mossie for the rest of the evening.

We cooked udon noodle soup with homemade deer jerky, filtered some water from a nearby pond and watched with admiration, and then alarm, as the sea came further and further up that beach towards us. JF quickly studied the tide tables. It was almost 2 hours until high water and we could expect it to rise another 1.5 metres. Oh dear! We reluctantly moved the tent, kayaks and pack alarm to higher ground, This time going above the highest grounded iceberg! Its now 45 minutes before high water and would be under a foot of water eighty now if we hasn’t moved! Its a learning process and a grand adventure.

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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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