It’s very overdue to say that I am now living in Canada, on the West coast of Vancouver island and enjoying having wilderness on my doorstep! The nearest surf beach is 15 mins drive away and it’s possible to go on a multi-day kayak trip, departing from a beach which is about 3 minutes walk from my house. There are nearby mountains to hike up, fish to be caught from our kayaks and miles of wilderness inhabited by bears, wolves and cougars.
Test for blog…
I was in denial when the alarm went off at 4am. 5 and a half hours sleep wasn't enough. I like to get 8 hours a night on a trip where possible. I find my body receivers pretty well from a long days paddling if I get enough rest. It was bitterly cold outside and still windy, although a bit less than 10 knots and less of a sea state, so not enough excuse to turn over and go back to sleep. We launched around 5.10 and our first 3-4km crossing to the mainland seemed to take forever. At our progress of about 4km per hour, it would take non stop paddling until 7pm to reach Salluit. Not a happy prospect. At least the scenery was beautiful, high craggy mountains and lots of wide green valleys with rivers snaking their way down to the sea. Luckily the wind gradually dropped, the sea calmed and our speed increased. The sun came out and my thermometer went from 5 degrees to 23! Its hard to choose how many layers to put on in the morning here! W e finally turned left down the inlet where Salluit is and paddled 15km to the community of over 1000 people. We passed a group of at least half a dozen seals fishing in a group, surrounded by an eager group of seagulls. This was 30 minutes after a boat passed us looking for seals to hunt. A colorful collection of houses finally came into view, with a few cars and quad bikes speeding along the roads. We landed and JF went on a reconnaissance. He came back in a car 20 minutes later. Some kind people had driven him to the supermarket, postoffice and airport, the 3 places we needed to check out. Sonia then turned up and offered us use of her internet to try to sell the kayaks. Her generosity kept increasing and we will go to stay with her tomorrow night, have a shower, wash our clothes and use hey place as a base to organise things. She'll drop us at the airport in 2 days. Peoples generosity is amazing. Thank you. For tonight, we've paddled 1km out of tow n to a lovely headland for one last night camping in the Arctic wilderness, or near enough. JF is fishing of the point, hoping for one last arctic char. It's been a grand adventure in a place I had never considered visiting. Massive thanks to Pierro, JFs brother, for the flight tickets with Air Inuit and for all his help with logistics. He even flew over us as we approached Quaqtaq and saw us from the plane! thanks a lot to Karel for sending us weather forecasts (kayakweather. Com) and to all the other people who helped us beforehand and along the way. I'll write more later, its time to enjoy our last evening now. Sent from Iridium Mail & Web.
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.
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