At tonight's briefing and recap they told us it was going to be windy throughout the night and for the day tomorrow, really windy! I didn't have "Storm at Sea" on my list of adventures I wanted to experience, but I guess I could add it.! We were advised to put computers and other electronics is a safe place, yikes! The purple on the map shows high winds, the white line is our route.
I enjoy the evening briefings, they have been both informational and fun. Tonight along with the practical information about the events for tomorrow and the raising winds and swell, we learned about the Whisky War, hidden lakes and the Canadian Mounted Police. The Whiskey War was a "battle" over the boarder between Denmark and Canada and who should have control over Hans Island. Fascinating and funny. (worth googling it for the whole story). Another presentation told us of the liquid lake under Greenland. Lastly, we learned about the Canadian Mounted Police and saw pictures from the Canadian Mounted Police calendar. Who knew they once had a calendar. Thank you to the expedition team for the smart and fun presentations!
There weren't any boat tours planned for this morning, so we slept in a bit and I watched ice bergs glide by from the bike in the fitness center.
After lunch we arrived at a place that's not really a place. The ice pack. It's a moving, shifting always changing home to polar bears, seals and birds. We went for a zodiac ride to explore the edge of the ice pack. It was beautiful. We didn't see any bears or whales, put an Ivory Gull flew over our zodiac twice. According to our guide, they are quite rare. Again I missed a picture of it, so here's another cheater picture from Audubon.
Before leaving the ice pack the Captain took the nose of the ship into the pack. We stood on the observation deck and watched the ever changing, melting, freezing, raising and falling home to the polar bears pass around the bow of the boat. Champagne.turned the event into a party
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Here's another Arctic sunset to say good night. The furthest we went north on this trip was 76° 39.021' N Here, the sun sets, but it never gets completely dark.
