Northwest Passage Canada 25 Aug - 7 Sep 2006

This was my first ship trip to the Arctic and was on the Akademik Ioffe, a Russian, ice-strengthened ship.  We were about to make one of the first transits of the NW Passage in a passenger ship.  And it was 100 years since Roald Amundsen had completed the first transit.

August was a good time – the ice had retreated, increasing the likelihood of success.  
We flew from Ottawa to Resolute, a small town in Nunavut, well north of the Arctic Circle – I would be there again in 2016.  We stopped in Iqualuit to refuel, and as we flew north over Hudson Bay, we could see icebergs in the sea, far below us. Bery exciting – I’d never seen an iceberg.

And there were lots more firsts & new discoveries on this trip: 
•    My first zodiac ride – a great boat that can take you places you can’t easily reach.
•    My first sighting of a bowhead whale – unfortunately it was dead & floating upside down on the sea, probably killed by a ship strike.  These large animals live a very long time, and we wondered whether he had seen Amundsen sail by 100 years earlier.
•    My first sail through sea ice – the area we were in was uncharted.  So while we waited for the Canadian icebreaker, the Sir Wilfrid Laurier, to come to lead us through, we took soundings to add to the charts for future sailors in this area.  One of the benefits of being on a Russian ship that can look at the ocean floor.
•    My first polar bear sighting – a mother and cub quietly walking along a rocky outcrop.  Gorgeous.
•    Through the NW Passage, via Victoria Strait (a southern route) through to Cambridge Bay. 
•    We were the first zodiac to head up an unnamed inlet (a squiggle on the chart) where we landed on a beautiful and massive plain, covered in wild flowers that oozed essential oils as we trod carefully towards a higher point.  We saw caribou and musk ox off in the distance.  And walking back to the zodiacs, came across a very old “camp site” with rudimentary tools, that might have been used by the Thule hundreds of years earlier.
•    My first landing at Beechey Island to visit the gravestones of 3 sailors who had died on the Franklin Expedition in 1845, and then to nearby Caswell Tower, a massive red rock that rises above Radstock Bay.  It was all so different to seeing it snow-covered in 2016.
•    Visits to local communities at Holman/Ulukhaktok
•    Visual encounters with two large icebergs, now at sea-level!
•    Seeing polar bear foot prints in the sand when we landed on a beach - we'd seen him there earlier.  
•    Holding a Narwhal "tooth" that we found on the same beach.
•    Being the 35th ship in history to transit the 24 nautical mile Bellot Strait.

How could I not return!