Pond Inlet

After a night of rocking and rolling across Lancaster Sound, we arrived off the coast of Bylot Island, and sailed up into Pond’s Bay. This stretch of water separates Bylot Island from Baffin Island and was named after the English astronomer John Pond (whoever he may be). We were running late due to the rough weather and conditions at Pond Inlet weren’t much better. The captain had to cancel the use of tenders to take guests ashore, two hikes were also cancelled as the landing sites were too,dangerous for the zodiacs. They eventually launched three zodiacs to see if it was feasible to use them to ferry guests ashore given the conditions. Apparently it was touch and go as to whether or not we would land, but it was deemed safe. However, guests were warned of a wet and bumpy ride ashore and they needed full wet weather gear including the boots.
The first groups across were those guests who had booked excursions and then other groups could go ashore for the community guided walks. Guests were not allowed to wander around the settlement unguided and some areas were clearly out of bounds. Many guests, me included, took one look at the zodiacs bouncing across the waves and everyone huddled down trying to avoid getting wet, and decided to stay on board - about 40%. It was also 2 kilometres from the landing zone to the centre of town where most activities were taking place. Many who did go over, came back straight after their event to get dry clothes and to warm up.
We are at pond Inlet a day early as we need to be able to enter Disko Bay in the daylight to work our way through all the icebergs sitting outside. Maybe we would have had better luck if we had kept to schedule but maybe not.
Leaving Pond Inlet was spectacular- it’s clearly a glacial formation with sides scraped off mountains and many glaciers still moving into the bay. Joyce and I had dinner in the Fredheim Restaurant to enjoy the Filipino cuisine. While we were sitting at our table by the window, we saw a whale going by. The window next to me was so grotty that I decided not to try to take a photo. Silly me. It apparently was a Sperm Whale- a very unusual sighting. Damn.
By the way, that large roll to starboard I talked about in my last post - I’ve heard it was due to the ship trying to avoid ice in the path of the ship.Baca lagi