The NG Resolution arrived in Seattle this morning and is docked at Bell Harbor. This is just a few miles south of our home port in Edmonds. Unfortunately we are traveling this weekend and will not be able to take the boat down to Seattle and visit.
On July 15th we fly to Boston to meet our expedition team. After a couple days in Boston, we are all flying Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, to meet the National Geographic Resolution. For the following three weeks we will be completing an east-west transit of the Northwest Passage, arriving in Nome Alaska on August 7th. I plan to provide updates on our progress, and lots of photos here: Orcella.org (a.k.a. “ken book”) While I hope to make daily updates, there…
(Comments on up coming NW passage trip ~16 min mark) https://www.cruisemapper.com/?imo=9880685
We arrived in Nome yesterday and spent the night in Nome. We are on our way home. We officially completed the 325th Transit of the Northwest Passage and the very first transit of 2022. There are a lot of ships and yachts attempting transits now, as the ice starts to clear. It is also worth noting that we completed the earliest transit by a passenger ship…EVER. Here is a final summary of the route we took…
Getting close to Nome and will soon enter the bearing Strait. A curious Grey Whale approached the ship so we stopped and watched it for a bit.
We are officially thru with the ice and are heading to Nome and will arrive there on Sunday. We plan to spend a night in nome before heading back to Seattle. Our Position as of Noon Friday 8/5. We are the ship closes to the Bearing Strait. The second ship following us is The NG Resolution’s sister ship, the NG Endurance. The USCG Icebreaker Healy is cruising by NE of our position.
Today we parked the ship in the ice and took a look around. We were in the first group that went “ashore” As we were leaving the ice a couple of Polar Bears were spotted off in the distance and the landings were briefly suspended until it was determined that they had no interest in us. There were plenty of armed guides both on the ice and patrolling in Zodiacs. Later after we got underway we came across a female…
We are ~60 miles north of the Yukon in the Beaufort Sea. This morning we did another Zodiac cruise amongst the ice, mainly looking for seals. It is amazing to think we are 60 miles from land, cruising in small boats amongst the ice. The weather is clear and calm but very cold. Cruising in the ice… Bearded Seal.. The male Polar Bear we came across yesterday was sound asleep after polishing one of these seals off for lunch…..
Today we headed north-west and into thicker and thicker ice. We headed to a large ice floe that we hoped to land on and walk around. Unfortunately (or fortunately) the ice flow was infested with polar bears! We came upon two males and a female that were sleeping off a feast after killing some seals. For obvious reasons (even with guns onboard) we did not land on the ice and venture around. We spent several hours just sitting amongst the…
This afternoon we headed back into the ice. It is only going to get heavier as we make our way towards Nome over the next 5 days. Before dinner we had the opportunity to stop and launch the Zodiacs for a cruise thru the (loose) ice. The ship dropped off 11 Zodiacs and followed behind as we cruised thru the perfectly calm waters among the ice, and then picked us up after 2 hours. Leaving the mothership behind.. Curious…
After leaving Ulukhaktok we headed SE to Freshwater Bay, where we spent the rest of the morning kayaking. Hand drawn course into Freshwater Bay. There are no electronic charts for this area and the soundings on the paper charts are “not considered reliable”. The ship is equipped with a forward scanning sonar that covers the front 180 degrees. The approach was tricky , even went almost no wind, and there were some very shallow areas around the entrance. …
Around 9:00 this morning we arrived at the small community of Ulukhaktok. This is by far the smallest community we have visited so far. While a full day of activities had been arranged in advance with the community elders, the decision was made this morning not to land on shore due to COVID concerns. We do have several cases on board amongst the crew and some passengers. Everyone is very careful and they have pretty good procedures for isolating and…