The big excitement in my afternoon yesterday was when an
RCMP, or Mountie, appeared in Lido Aft balcony performing some kind of ship
inspection. He was in full regalia with a bright red coat, big hat and sidearm
belted across his chest at his waist. I guess because I wasn’t working, but
just sitting waiting 30 minutes for my paint to dry, I saw him and no one else
had noticed. I couldn’t take it anymore and pointed him out to the others. It
was like groupies at a rock concert! The guy was a trip posing here and there
on deck for several minutes for photos. I didn’t have a camera or I might’ve
done the same. Not like the first time we saw a Mountie like that and snuck
photos from across the street and a parking lot!
Dinner was fine. We both had filet mignon. The evening’s
entertainment was 2 troupes of local performers. As the cruise director said,
it doesn’t get more local than this. We enjoyed it even if all the songs
sounded the same to us. The dancing is mostly with hand movements. We had a bed
gift last night. It is a piece of traditional Inuit art from the Canadian
Arctic. They say they ordered a gift for every cabin over a year ago. Each
piece is unique and hand-carved from local stone by the renowned carvers of
Nunavut. The card says this is some of the contribution that Crystal has and is
making to the region we are visiting. Last night before the performance they
had a plaque presentation for inaugural port visit and said they had donated
money and a ton of school supplies. They also introduced the RCMP and said
after they boarded they learned from them about their Santa Project to buy
gifts for children at Christmas and they presented them with a giant $2000
check. Ulukhaktok is famed for artists too but in printmaking.
We were delayed about 20 minutes in our zodiac departure
time. I am not sure what the delay was due to but they were blaming the chop.
We could see it was choppy from upstairs. Breakfast buffet started at 5:30am.
We were up at 6am and in a lightly attended buffet by 7am. Our departure from
Stardust should have been at 8:30am but it was about that time that the 8am
group got called. We heard ashore that the morning kayaking excursion was
canceled due to the wind and chop. We heard on the tender ride back around 1pm
or so that they added some afternoon kayaking to make it up. The sun was
shining and it was all blue skies for a couple of hours midday. It was 37F when
we woke up today and the forecast high was 46F. I expect it made it. We did not
wear our parkas. We were sweating bullets by the time we boarded an admittedly
cold zodiac ride ashore. There were 3 stores (we visited 2, the Co-Op and Northern),
the arts center, the community hall set up as an arts and crafts mall, the
school which had an arts and crafts mall set up as well as free samples of
Arctic Char chowder and the Anglican Mission church. All the buildings were hot
with us being dressed for the zodiac rides. After all the buildings had been
visited, we walked up the viewpoint walk to Uluksartok Bluff. It was supposedly
a 1 mile walk in each direction. It was steep and a very rough rocky road. The
good news was the wind pushed us going up. Three times or more as we hiked uphill, a 4-prop engine plane circled the hill and Ulukhaktok. When we got to the top there was an expediton guide excitedly photographing it and he told us it was an Aurora, sub-hunting plane of teh Canadian military. The views were pretty spectacular.
We could see all 3 bays, the zodiacs, the Serenity and the Shackleton, the
town, the airport and the golf course. We watched a woman work at print making.
She was working with a template and ink with brushes and what looked like homemade
paper. It was a picture of a girl in a pink parka on a dog sled with 2 dogs.
She told me it was very her memory of when she used to travel (by dog sled)
with her father to train the dogs and to go ice fishing. She used to travel! I
loved that and later that was the print I bought for $15. We also spoke with a
woman who was loading a change of color thread on a Brother knitting machine.
She said she was making it with Qivuit. (Say kiv it.) Qivuit is a fiber made from the
undercoat of musk ox. They were selling the yarn in Nome at what we heard were exorbitant
prices. I didn’t check any prices there. The hats here were selling for $160. I
didn’t see any yarn for sale here, but the woman who was loading the Brother
knitting machine must have had about $2000 worth of yarn stacked up on the table
behind her. Clay bought a t-shirt and I got a coffee mug at the Co-op. We were
supposed to return around 11:30am according to our ticket, but for practical
purposes you could leave as early or late as you wanted. We were on our way
back about 12:30pm and on a zodiac around 1. We found a line of 8 loaded
zodiacs waiting to reboard the ship when we got to the starboard side. I am not
sure what the log jam was. I have to say that they did a better job with the zodiacs
than I had expected. They were still working out the kinks when we boarded ours
to leave. The 4th guy to get in staggered around and stumbled onto the
tube and never did grip anything to keep himself in place. I don’t know how he
managed to stay aboard, just dumb luck. They learned a lesson there, not to
release your passenger until they are seated. The zodiac before ours was the kind
we’d been on before with the driver in the back steering the outboard motor
with a stick and they only got 8 aboard. Remember they said they needed 10 aboard
each to move everyone in time today. Ours had a standing center console, was
larger and was loaded with 16 so they were probably averaging 10 per boatload
with both types of zodiacs. We saw one coming back with 20 aboard! It was a
good day. The only animals seen were birds. Seabirds and ravens.
We had lunch in the Lido buffet and they had a wide choice
and it was a good meal. At 2:30pm they were having a 2-hour Traditional Mitt
Making class. They had one in the morning too. Three women from Ulukhaktok were
teaching with I think the help of an onboard instructor in the Studio. I was in
there at 2:10pm with a bunch of people who were left over from the morning
session for personal help. By 2:18pm, it looked like they were about out of
space but by now some of the new people were receiving instruction to get
started and some like my half of the room were being ignored. I could see the gist
of it. Cutting out red felt around cardboard patterns, sewing the pieces
together and then trimming in contrasting thread. I decided I didn’t need to fight
for that and gave up my seat as there were people in the hall trying to get in.
I went up to Palm Court and watched a woman and 3 kids on rocks picking up
stuff that had washed up through the giant tripod-mounted binoculars and watched
the Cineflex screens. I got run out as they were setting up for tea time and people
who wanted to sit at those set tables were coming in looking for seats. I was
just there for the views, Cineflex and sunshine by which to needlepoint. I came
back to the cabin where Clay was possibly sleeping through a Mission Impossible
movie. He told me he couldn’t access our blog to attach photo links so I did
it. Internet was up but painfully slow.
We start sailing again tonight about 8pm. (Everyone was back onboard before 7pm as all the zodiacs were off the beach and the Shackleton had sailed. We set sail before 8pm.) Tomorrow we sail
all day. The next day we should be anchored off Cambridge Bay. If we still have
Internet, I’ll post this now. We have no evening plans beyond dinner in the main
dining room an hour from now.
I would like to say that I recommend EYOS Expeditions. This is the company that Crystal hired to handle this North West Passage expedition style cruise. They have done an excellent job with what they have to work with. I'm not sure whether they do anything that we would have an opportunity to travel with them again, but I would recommend them and look for them again in the future.
photosI would like to say that I recommend EYOS Expeditions. This is the company that Crystal hired to handle this North West Passage expedition style cruise. They have done an excellent job with what they have to work with. I'm not sure whether they do anything that we would have an opportunity to travel with them again, but I would recommend them and look for them again in the future.
