Lancaster Sound

We made it safely to Resolute! As Alex put it, this is a huge accomplishment and what we’ve been trying to plan for since the boat left Maine - coordinating with Hans to pick him up in the North Arctic and then make it to wherever we are picking him 2 days before he gets there. Mission accomplished. We had a good trip over from Greenland even if it was mostly motoring. We went directly for Beechey Island which is where the Franklin Expedition wintered over and where the only 3 graves from their whole lost expedition are located. We anchored there for a few days and met some French people who were camping on the beach for 16 days. One guy was writing a book about a guy, Bellot, who was part of 2 search and rescue missions looking for the Franklin Expedition and drowned during his second trip when he fell through the ice. Another guy was doing some filming for a small documentary. Check out their blog at www.latitude.canalblog.com. Just a warning, I think it’s all in French. While we were at Beechey, Xurxo, Franco and Laura saw a polar bear! I’m very jealous. They were cruising around in the dinghy and saw one on the beach on the far side of the bay. The French people said they had seen 6 in total in the 10 days since being there including a mother and cub. Rob and I went exploring around the Island and climbed to the top and visited Franklin’s Cairn, which was nothing more than a massive pile of rocks with a big pole in the middle but it was the only thing to see other than the graves. Once you go ashore it becomes very apparent that the Arctic really is a desert. There is nothing up here, just rocks and rocks and ice. Beechey Island literally looked like Mars, as you will see in some of the pictures. The landscape was a mess of cracked shale and granite all chewed up by ice. We left Beechey yesterday, made the final 50 miles to Resolute, and pulled in the middle of a snow storm, still very strange in August. While the landscape looks like a desert we have had quite a bit of precipitation up here and not a whole lot of sun which has been a bit dismal. Hopefully Hans ordered some good weather for his 10 days so we get to enjoy it too. We are now anchored alongside the 100 something foot yacht, Billy Budd, whom we are having lunch with today. Resolute is a very bland very small town with nothing to do and a very open very bad anchorage. Regardless we are here until 6 o’clock on the 15th when Hans and company arrive and then we head off down Peel Sound.