I slept right through the night from around 10pm to 7am! We
are sailing Dolphin & Union Strait so the seas are pretty calm, still I was
dizzy and unsteady this morning. It is Sunday so I wanted a special breakfast.
We went to the downstairs main restaurant and I had Eggs Benedict and Clay had
blueberry pancakes. It was pretty quiet in there. Evidently on grand voyages
only Crystal has an occasional Viennese Buffet on a Sunday. Today is one of those special days. From
11:30am to 1:30pm they will turn the Crystal Plaza into a big food court. We
looked around at the setup they were working on after breakfast. It looked like
it would be a nightmare. I told Clay he could photograph it from above if he
wanted, but I’d rather eat at the Lido buffet. At 9am I did gentle yoga in Palm
Court. At 10am I went back to the cabin because I wanted to watch the Inuit
Print Making Lecture. After my first try at attending a lecture live and not
being able to find a seat, I’d just as soon watch the cabin broadcast. Clay was
watching the movie “Brooklyn”. He had no recollection of seeing it before. It
should be rebroadcast, so I’ll hope to see it later. There is a TV movie on at
3pm I’d like to see. It will be a quiet sailing day for us before Cambridge Bay
tomorrow. Last night we watched on TV the destination talk for Cambridge Bay.
It seems that the Community Visit tour we booked will get us a zodiac ride to a
remote beach landing where they hope some vendors will have tents set up
nearby. It was not clear if walking into town is feasible or how far or close
it is. It was clear that they have requested all available transportation to
shuttle passengers back and forth but I guess none or few have been promised.
If you get to town, it sounded like a school and art center and community
center have opened to us with arts and crafts vendors. Since we won’t be there
overnight like Ulukhaktok, we won’t really know what to expect until we arrive.
We are on the 9am zodiac group which is number 3 of the community visits.
It was a quiet day today. We have been in view of land off
the port side for most of the day. Evidently there is a narrow channel through
this part that is deep enough to be navigable. The landscape is barren and
desolate. The big excitement was passing a DEW station. I keep forgetting to
write about this. We have been seeing and hearing about the DEW line since
Nome. Evidently some time through the 1950’s and 1960’s the Americans spent billions
building a Defense Early Warning system against Soviet ICBMs. I believe we were
told that it had been decommissioned but the stations and towers and airfields
are still in place. This was the largest one we’ve seen. It looked like it had
big hangars and it had 2 huge golf ball looking things. Clay thought he saw
some seals in the water in the afternoon. I saw birds only.
The other thing I’ve forgotten to write about was how the
expedition crew and ship’s crew worked together yesterday manning zodiac lifevests.
This was the thing that really streamlined the process and enabled them to
process so many people in the time allotted. Every other expedition cruise
we’ve been on, this has been an obstacle and a time-wasting cluster. You have
to go pull a vest from a pile get it straightened out and adjusted and strapped
on. Here both leaving and returning they had us approach several people fitting
the zodiac lifevests in a line. When it was your turn, a crew member of some
kind held your bag or daypack and held the vest for you to turn around and slip
your arms in, then the put the bag back on your back, turned you around or came
around you and fastened and tightened it and sent you on your way. It was a
huge time saver! Well done. Our regular assistant waiter Ben is on the shore
side team for that and is loving it.
At the expedition briefing and recap we learned that we’ve
traveled over 3000 miles and have over 4000 to go! We cruised Coronation Gulf
this afternoon and have a last strait before we arrive at our anchorage for
Cambridge Bay. Ulukhaktok was on west side of Victoria Island and Cambridge Bay
is on the south side. Ulukhaktok (which means place of ulu knives!) is in the
Northwest Territories and Cambridge Bay is in Nunavut which is Canada’s newest
and largest province.
We learned more about our visit tomorrow and it sounds a bit
more promising now. It should be partly cloudy and 48F. There should be
cultural events and arts/crafts sales both onboard and ashore and the leader
actually said and it was printed on the map about a 10K shuttle service from
the gravel pit beach to town and the handful of buildings open to us. They
rescheduled their annual arts festival so we could attend. In less positive
news, they were disappointed to have to inform us that the Public Library had
decided since we were coming that they would impose a CAD$25 entry fee to their
small museum area. The school also wanted us to know that no boots or shoes
would be allowed inside and would have to be removed and left at the door. I
guess they do this all over the Arctic. We saw the shoe/boot storage cubbies at
Ulukhaktok too but they didn’t enforce it.
Dinner was not special, but the food was fine as was the
wine. At 8pm we went to the popcorn movie “Louder than Bombs”. It was sad. Time
for bed now. We have a busy day tomorrow followed by 5 sea days. The wildlife
viewing so far has been a big disappointment. After 5 days on Svalbard without
a polar bear, I guess I’m over expectations. A woman at yoga said they were
wildlife viewing from a fast boat yesterday and when asked what they viewed,
she answered an arctic hare. Hmmm. They’re wild animals, even if you think you
know where they are they don’t have to be there when you are. It sucks about no
Northern Lights too though. At least we have seen polar bears and auroras in
the past! I’ll see if there is Internet now and if so I’ll post this before
bed.
photos
photos
