Day 14 – Kingnait Fjord

So the morning started with a 6:55am announcement from our fearless expedition leader, Geoff Green, that there were bowhead whales off the port bow. Now normally, this would have me racing for the upper decks in eager anticipation of seeing these majestic creatures of the sea. But instead, I turned over and studied the inside of my eyelids.

Now this might seem to be to antithesis of what I should be doing, and in fact, if Geoff read this, he’d probably kick me off the ship. And don’t get me wrong, the opportunity of seeing bowheads is one that no one should miss. They are truly one of the highlights of any Arctic trip.

But as Geoff continued to crow about the dozens of bowheads that were appearing on all sides of the ship, I kept turning over and tuning him out. Here’s the thing. Bowheads whales, among other creatures, have been hunted by ships for decades. They have an instinctive fear of these vessels and always seem to give us a very wide berth.

So I knew fairly confidently that the best view of the bowheads that we would have, would be of a distant dark spot on the horizon, the occasional spray of a blowhole, or if we were lucky, a distinctive fluke arching above the waves.

They’re the same pictures I got LAST year. And I was tired. So, forgive me if I didn’t race out of my room to do some early morning whale watching.

Next up, was a trip to Kingnait Fjord, another encore SOI stop for me. Last year, we hiked to a beautiful waterfall, and this year we did the same thing. But in addition to that, we also had a BBQ on shore, our 2010 group picture AND the Arctic swim. All of those went fairly successfully, especially the swim – which I managed to again join.
But once again, the best part of the day was the UNPLANNED part. For the second day in a row, we experienced an unusually quick receding tide (at our daily briefing, we were told it was a 9-meter tide, instead of the expected 4 meters). As a result, the zodiacs were once again hard put to make it out of the rendezvous spot to deep waters.

So, off we trotted to a location farther down the shore (thankfully, the BBQs that had been brought to shore for lunch had left on an early zodiac). It was a wet, muddy and tiring trek to catch up to the tide with 80 or so people, but in the end, all returned safely to the ship.

It sure punctuated one of our mottos on expedition – flexibility is the key.

Tomorrow, because of our delayed departure this afternoon, we will be hard-pressed to make it to our planned destination – the Lower Savage Islands. At the very least, we’ll have a full day at sea, with lots of workshops and activities to fill the time.
P.S. As I type this, two of our staff, Matty McNair and Remy Rodden, along with one of our many talented students, Khloe Heard are jamming in our presentation room with two violins and a guitar. I don’t know what they are playing, but it’s just one of many moments I will never forget about this expedition.