Westward to Bernard Harbor

As we wake up, the wind is in full action: 15 knots from the east blow through the anchorage. Have a coffee, weigh anchor and get going!

Unfortunately it is also pouring rain, which is why we opt to set the gennaker even though the Oxley would be better suited for the course and wind. But it is also the more difficult to dry. We start sailing Oxley and genoa wing-on-wing, then gennaker only, then main + gennaker. Finally about 30 NM motoring into Bernard Harbor against light winds and about a knot of current. A good day of sailing! Speed averages around 9 knots and we move about 196NM closer to our destination. The nights are getting properly dark now, we do miss the benefit of the polar day!

In the region around Cambridge Bay the water was both exceptionally warm with 12°C as well as almost fresh with only about half the salt content as normal sea water. This is due to the freshwater influx from the shoreline and the narrow and shallow connections to the larger water body. A consequence for us is that we cannot run the water maker as the too high water flow would damage the filter membranes. Day by day we are running lower on water also because we didn’t want to pick up questionable water in Cambridge Bay. In the early morning hours we crossed the watershed, indicated by water temperature drop from 12°C to 4°C. I test the salinity, which is now back up at 27 ppt from 20 ppt previously. Good enough to run the water maker, which I promptly do.

In Bernard’s harbor we do some laundry and pass the time for new wind to arrive, which should come after 1 day. We go to shore, explore the ruins of the formerly bustling but now abandoned harbor. There is some construction activity going on. We take the dinghy and approach the activity to meet Pierre Louis, a Quebecois, working in a team of 15 to clean up the old Distant Early Warning Line (DEW), a cold-war relict from the fifties. He is about as surprised to meet tourists as we are to find human activity out here in the middle of nowhere.,Read more