Future Capital Partners and Bear Grylls - Northwest Passage

(Sent from the Passage on Tuesday 31 August)

Ok we have made it to Resolute Bay!

Been an amazing day of fighting our way through the thick sea ice and fog for the first time!

We left Beechey Island in calm seas and almost immediately ran into a pretty substantial beam sea and Tim helmed so well through this.

We made it across the sound and the huge cliffs loomed out of the sea and mist with the sun finding a small gap in the clouds to illuminate the land and guide us through.

We stopped briefly at the long line of deep sea ice and had a cup of tea to take stock and ready ourselves for the next phase and our first real time in amongst it all...

as soon as we started moving it became a game of chess to weave our way through the maze of floating ice. We were at a crawl with Ben helming, Dave on the roof with the binos and Tim on the foredeck with the boathook pushing the ice left or right to make a path.

We finally pushed through on one engine with the other engines raised to avoid damaging all of them if we had an 'incident!'

Eventually we found a clear-ish channel of smaller ice and could open it up and pray! The hull pushed the little bits of ice aside and we were soon flying around the edge of the ice pack heading for Resolute.

Finally we had to turn north back into the sea ice and weave once more towards Resolute.

Then suddenly the ice opened and out of the dense fog we could see the natural harbour of Resolute Bay the most northerly point in the Passage.

We refuelled on the shingle shore, dropped anchor and are now holed up in building sorting kit out and readying ourselves for a 6am departure where we now head south into Peel Sound and this is where it will get even more interesting!

Well done my team- legends one and all!

Bear

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All,

We've had an epic day. We encountered big seas and gloomy fog across the Wellington Channel, only to break out of the fog and discover a wall of ice in front of us as far as we could see, covering 70%-80% of the sea surface.

With patience and a little raw power from the throttles here and there we pushed ice out of the way and snaked our way through to open water an hour or two later. 

After 15 more miles of 20%-40% ice we found Resolute Bay in the advection fog.  What an achievement! Resolute is one of the furthest outposts in the Arctic, and the must-pass-thru location for anyone attempting to reach the North Pole from Canada. Excitement and relief both.

We drove the RIB up on the beach and coaxed our scheduled petrol truck down to the water so we could run 2000 L of fuel into our 8 tanks. We swapped out propellers, bled the air on the shock mitigation system, and then put the RIB out to anchor so we could sleep under a roof on land for a night.

Summary is, we're having a blast. Trip of a lifetime. Lots of joking and laughing, and then the occasional very serious moment which keeps us on alert all the time. Everyone is in great spirits.

The entire team is terrific. Support and logistics people have been tireless in prep and prep and more prep. They've been on constant alert.

We couldn't do this without the team on land making it all work.

Tomorrow we're departing early. Not at sunrise, because that's pretty much right after sunset. We've got our longest day yet in front of us, and all we know for certain is that there is a large ice field just outside of Resolute Bay that I can see from the window of our motel. But we're rested and ready for it.
 
Dave Segel

(Sent from the Passage on Monday 30 August)

All

Broke camp early. Set for Beechey Island. Historical sight where Franklin buried of three casualties of his expedition in search of the Passage 250 years ago.

We powered along the Devon Island coastline at 41 knots, 74.5 degrees North of the equator, with seals and whales and birdlife all around.

Glaciers poured ice into the sea. "Bergie" water (floating with sea ice) required everyone to be on alert.  Fog rolled in from the left, then closed from behind, then loomed in front.

Late in the day and several hours late, we made our rendezvous with the support vessel. Tonight is for repairs and prep for our journey to Resolute tomorrow. 

+ Forecast sea state: not known.
+ Ice condition: variable - clear to 9/10+ coverage.
+ Conditions in the high arctic can worsen rapidly.

We have every confidence that our RIB can deliver all that we need, but this journey isn't going to be that simple.

We have been fortunate so far. Keep praying for us.

Bear and team

(Sent from the Passage on Saturday 28 /Sunday 29 August)

John et al

All is well it's 10:30 pm we are setting up camp at Pond Inlet, NE bank of the bay's mouth. 182 nautical miles today. Gorgeous. Flat seas and huge icebergs. 

We made 80 miles more than our target camp.  Beached the boat, set up camp, and found a 3 foot wide whale vertebrae on our flat ground. Dave Smith is sleeping aboard the RIB at anchor, we four are tucking in to a tea and a boil-in-a-bag in our tent before bed.

Dave Segel

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Update:

We left finally 3pm. The sea state started off glassy calm with us all flying west through these narrow straits - amazing!

After 50 miles we headed north and hit these pretty big and steep white caps of a head sea- a steady reminder that we are getting deeper and deeper into inhospitable seas.

But the RIB just came alive and maintained a steady 35mph through this and handled so steadily. Impressive. We got a little cold and sheltered for 20minutes in a tiny inlet out of the wind and waves and then pushed on. 

As we emerged into lancaster sound the sea died thank God and we decided to push on across, reaching the north coast at 10pm at night.

We aimed for a small remote shingle beach, pushed the nose of the RIB onto the steep bank and rapidly unloaded all the camping kit.

By midnight we had eaten a few boil in the bag sachets, got the tent up and hard started a drift wood fire of a few planks with nails in it. There are no trees anywhere so it is pertinent to think this wood could realistically only have come from old shipwrecks.

We did a few polar bear drills and stashed all our food 100m's away and settled in at 2am.

At 3am we were in 60mph winds and our tent felt like it was being blown to bits. But a climbing rope did the trick to buckle it down! Good call Dave on the rope!

At dawn we were in beautiful calm conditions again and pretty grateful. Trying to get off this shore to the anchored RIB in a heavy swell or wind would have been epic!  

We are now packing up quickly and heading West as soon as we can to Beechy Island - a forbidding place where Franklin buried the first of his three sailors....  

Bear

The delivery team finally arrived in the RIB at 2:30am this morning after a monster leg! Well done John, Ben and David!

Tim, Dave  and myself are now in transit north to meet up with the RIB at Pond Inlet and we are waiting for the support vessel as well to arrive..

Here is Dave Pearce's email below as well.

Bear

- Hi all,

Hope all's well. I have arrived in Pond Inlet after more delays! Arrived early evening on the 25th, dumped my bags and went straight down to the beach for a quick recce for our RIB. 

Firstly, I had some good aerials views of the sea and coast leading up to Pond Inlet. The seas were calm and clear with the odd ice berg. It looks stunning and I am sure progress will be swift. I dived from one side of the plane to the other to see both sea and inland water ways. They look very clear and I remain optimistic of our route being somewhat clear. 

I think Pond Inlet is close to the same latitude as Resolute, our northerly point, so again I think seas will hopefully be clear but with the sporadic, stunning ice berg. Fingers crossed. The channel off Pond Inlet, too its North is very clear of ice. It is hard to judge the sea ice issue but I think it is clear. I could not see any 'chock points' to make an assessment of ice build up but my feeling is optimistic. The short term forecast is good and getting warmer with highs of 10 degrees C.

Secondly, mooring at Pond Inlet, there is no dock. Mooring is at sea and seemingly by anchor.  I have a house number for a guy and his tender to get out to the RIB. The beach is good to bring the RIB onto less me doing a full submersion in wet suit for an incline and bed visual/recce!...flash backs of military days......but from the beach it is good to get the bow in and unload. The beach is sand.

Although there are light winds today, surf seems limited but not that sheltered as the name of the place may suggest. The main beach is to the west end of the town and just past the obvious Pond Inlet words (marked out with white stones) on the hill side close to the shore. There are local fishing boats there.

The town is sparse and supplies limited. I will start preparing food tomorrow and buy the store out of nuts and oat bars! I think the delivery team may want a beer on arrival but at the moment there is nothing.

As you would expects the pace here is slow and getting information is nothing short of applying thumb screws.....but it is stunning, remote, rugged and atmospheric.  Big news is the chest punching and jestering for sovereignty of the NWP between Canada, US, Russia, Dans and to a degree, Norway....fascinating!

Dave Pearce

David Smith (from Shockwave) testing shock absorbers for the ICE - the world's first fully suspended cockpit, which we will use in the trip. Amazing!