TOP OF THE WORLD!

We are currently at 74 deg. 37.33N 75 deg 34.05W doing 8 kts under sail and motor and are nearly at the Northern most point of our trip! Resolute is 74 deg 41N...We are roughly 100 miles from Dundas Harbor and almost into Lancaster Sound. We encountered our first sea ice today which was crazy...all of a sudden you are in it and it's just everywhere all around you, little and not so little chunks of ice. We had to back track a little and make some more ground to the north to get around the little finger that was extending out into Baffin Bay. Our ice charts are very good and showed the ice just a little south of where we found it. We realized that it's very important to remember which way you are trying to go and to know which way is the shortest path out of the ice because once it's all around you its easy to get caught up in just trying to go for the immediate path of least resistance which can just dig you deeper into the ice area. We were able to go slow and make it through with someone on the bow or on the steps of the mast giving direction to the helmsman to avoid the larger chunks. Luckily our Inmarsat communication still seems to be working so we are hopeful that it will continue for the rest of the time we are at 74 degrees and after that its all downhill.