*************** THE IMAGES ***************

There are over 3,000 of them and due to the deficiencies of the equipment they all need a greater or lesser amount of post-work. And so you won’t get to see them for a while.

You’ll need to wait til I return home and get into my studio and start to go through them. And it will be a long wait. But I’ll keep you informed after I return.
***************

… at last. 76°07”N already and pushing on towards the 80°N mark. And who knows? With the progress that we’ve made overnight we might even make it too.

I took several photos of the midnight twilight too, but how do you take photos from a rolling ship into a fog with a zoom lens in the half-light? There’s no chance whatever of taking a really sharp photo that does justice to the view.

Just for a change, last night we had another Sleep Of The Dead. I wasn’t sure about this though for just after I had settled down my neighbour returned to his room, from somewhere I have absolutely no idea where, and decided to switch on the TV. That made more noise than I was wanting so it’s a mystery to me how I managed to drop off to sleep.

And also a mystery to me how I managed to stay out so long. A deep sleep too and my sleep patterns might be slowly starting to return because I was off on a nocturnal ramble last night.

And in something that will come as a surprise to regular readers of this rubbish, the first since I’ve been on board ship. However, I’ll spare you the gory details. After all, you’re all probably eating your breakfast right now.

While we are on the subject of breakfast … "well, one of us is" – ed … I had my breakfast in the company of an elderly woman. Now I know that I can talk … "surely not! Perish the thought!" – ed … but I’m afraid that I wasn’t any kind of match at all. It’s not very often that I have to admit defeat, but here I am today …

One thing though. Judging by the description of the arrangements that she has made in her room in order to accommodate her affairs, I can see that she is a kindred spirit.

And after the warning that we were given last night about the weather, I was half-expecting to find the dining room crockery scattered all over the floor and smashed into smithereens, but nothing of the sort. Something of a false alarm that was, I reckon.

Can’t have been more than a Storm Force 8

Somewhere over there in that vicinity is the settlement of Grise Fiord, Canada’s farthest-north civilian settlement. It’s an artificially-created settlement and it’s really a political thing. There’s this idea about the Arctic islands of “use it or lose it” and with the oil and mineral discoveries in the Arctic, possession of territory is of vital importance in order to give a country a right of claim.

And so the settlement here on Ellesmere Island, to confirm a claim to the territory.

We had a discussion about marine mammals in the Arctic, and I learn quite a lot, despite not really having a great deal of interest in animal life.

Chatting to the crew a little later, the question of the good sleep soon resolved itself. Apparently I’m lodged right over where the anchor is and when we are stationary during the night, they haul it up as first light, which is about 05:15 or so.

Last night though, we kept moving so there was no anchor-hauling at all – hence the silence.

We had a kind of multi-workshop thing going on this morning. about 7 or 8 different ones, and I wanted to go to about half-a-dozen. In the end, I settled for the one on the Inuit language and the one on photography.

And while the language one was interesting and I can now write my own name and those of my friends (both of them!) in Inuit, the photography one was in a sense a little disappointing because while the leader was teaching us how to organise and archive our images, I find that he uses the same technique as I do – albeit on a much higher level due to the nature and amount of his work.

Lunch was a mystery to me. I sat with Lois the Inuit guide and a guy who had been with me at the photography lecture. He gave me the names of a few freeware programs that are available that might help with my image-editing plans, and I’ll look those up when I return home, if I ever do.

But it wasn’t without its excitement because, having finished the lectures early, I went down to my room for a quick 5 minutes rest and awoke 20 minutes later. right out, I was. Definitely feeling the pain, I am.

This afternoon we had a quick briefing and then we were off.

We’re at South Cape Fiord and peninsula which is on Ellesmere Island. Although this is one of the most southerly points of the island, the farthest north point of this island itself is one of the farthest north masses of land in the world. So we are now really and properly in the High Arctic – nothing north of this island except the North Pole.

The ride out to the shore was much calmer than yesterday’s ride, and it was walmer too, so I brought His Nibs for a day out.

And he proved far more popular than I ever am – loads of people stopped to talk to him and have their photos taken with him, and I suppose that he enjoyed every moment of it.

The beach here is very interesting. With the land being heavily depressed by glaciers in the past and slowly liberating itself from the heavy weight, it’s rebounding. Our resident geologist reckons that he has counted as many as 10 raised beaches which were formerly washed by the tide at one point; And with global warming melting the glaciers even more, who knows how many are now submerged yet again?

There were still plenty of glaciers to see, and plenty of icebergs drifting into and out of the fjord. And while it didn’t quite have the same effect as yesterday’s leisurely stroll in the blizzard, I reckoned that it was one of the most beautiful places on earth.

One of the most wild too if you ask me.

We had our polar bear guards here again and I found myself in trouble … "yet again" – ed … for straying out beyond the bear cordon. If you disappear beyond the cordon, the guards can’t see you or what might be creeping up on you. There have been enough encounters, some of them rather terminal and not for the animal either, with people wandering carelessly out of sight of others in the High Arctic.

But I stood on a ridge overlooking the sea for quite a while admiring the icebergs, of which there were plenty, and taking photos of our ship silhouetted against the tidal glacier across the fiord. It was all rather spell-binding and somewhat emotional.

Not as emotional as it might have been for the passengers on one of the zodiacs. A fuel line burst and they were stranded in mid-fjord. A rescue party had to go out to recover them and tow them in.

Three hours was the time that had been allotted for our visit ashore. And in that time I had done about 108% of my daily activity scrambling over the rocks, and I was well-nigh exhausted after my exertions. I was warm too. All of my jackets were unzipped and I had rolled my hat back. I’d have divested myself of a few layers had it been practical.

There were some strange animal tracks that i encountered. Rather like a trident with a very long shaft. No-one could decide if they were lemming or bird. Bird was the general opinion but there were a lot of them and they walked for miles so I’lm not sure.

One of my fellow passengers is a Japanese guy. He doesn’t speak much English but he’s certainly adventurous. He started out on our series of walks by staying on the beach but as time has progressed he’s walking further and further along in order to enjoy the whole experience. I bumped into him up on the high ridge.

You won’t believe this either but as I neared the coast, with a beautiful view of the fjord and the icebergs, I disappeared into a fold in the ground. And when I emerged, one of the guards on the hill shouted to me “did you see it? Did you see it?”

Apparently in just that simple moment when I was out of the view of the sea one of the big icebergs had capsized. And I had missed it!

More tea was being served up on shore so I took advantage of it. And once again, it went cold in an instant.

Aaron the historian was in charge of our zodiac taking us back to the ship and he proposed a sightseeing visit to the capsized iceberg. Everyone voted in favour so off we shot.

Magnificent it was too, especially the bright blue bits which had until 20 minutes ago been under water. It’s hard to believe that all of this is rainwater or snow that fell to earth thousands of years ago long before there was any pollution.

And I can add that today is probably the first time ever that Fairport Convention and Liege And Lief has been played on Ellesmere Island.

I had a shower, a coffee and little relax for a few minutes and then came out to do some work. But ended up assisting in a promotional “arctic dip” sales pitch run by Michael and Breanna. That was quite fun, I’ll tell you.

For tea I was invited to sit with my American friends and a couple of others, and I ended up being involved in a silly argument. I’d noticed the other day that they had said on board ship that they need to bring the Inuit in more to benefit from the economic advantages of tourism, and yet the ship was crewed by Filipinos and Indonesians.

I commented on this fact this evening, and then was treated to a very long diatribe as to why this should not be allowed. Lots of colonial paternailsim in their argument (such as “it’s wrong to take them out of their environment” – which means that it’s right to leave them in despair and on welfare) but that wasn’t the point.

As they say, irony is not the strong suit of most North Americans, and this clearly was the case here,

There was a film later on – “Martha From The Cold” by Martha Flaherty, grand-daughter of Robert Flaherty, he of the Nanook of the North fame.

It concerns the resettlement of the Inuit from Northern Quebec to Grise Fiord and the injustices that surrounded it. Of course, it’s almost word-for-word the same story as that of the Inuit, Innu and Métis in Labrador, but I was interested just the same;

We had a round-table discussion afterwards and of course I interjected the story of Williams Harbour and Black Tickle to show that the policy is still going on, and much more insidiously too.

In the end there were just four of us left. John Houston the animator, Yours Truly, some Korean guy and a girl. The Korean had a large whisky in front of him and the further down the glass he went, the more animated he became;

In the end, there were just the girl and me remaining.
“He was sailing close to the wind” said the girl.
“Sailing?” I retorted. “He’s positively steaming!”

At midnight I went off for my evening walk. Outside we have another Midnight Arctic Twilight and 105° on the binnacle. However we are stationary so I might have some sleep tonight.

We can always live in hope, I suppose.

And I’ll sort out the photos tomorrow. I’m off to bed.