YachtTeleport.com

Well, here we are back in Cambridge Bay, Victoria Island in the Canadian Arctic! We're having wild goose-egg omelettes for breakfast, out the window I can see the ice covering the bay is starting to recede from the shore a little, and drifting in and out through the mist that's hanging over the ice I can see Teleport perched happily on her cradle on the distant hillside. Though the air is now perfectly still and the temperature a balmy 16 deg C with the sun blazing 24hrs/day in the bright blue sky - some of Teleport's wrapping tarps hang in silent shreds, and the lashing ropes have chafed deep grooves right through her green paint - even through the first layer of fibreglass on the hull – hinting at the torment she's endured while we've been away. Blizzards raged during the bitter winter's perpetual darkness, and the temperature dropped to a breath-freezing -60 deg C with wind-chill.

Apart from these minor cosmetic damages however, from the out side at least, Teleport seems to have survived. It was the inside we were worried about though, fearing condensation may have accumulated water in the bilge, which through freezing and thawing could have wreaked all kinds of havoc. Feeling like a pair of ancient tomb-robbers we brushed off the dust, cracked open the lock and clambered down into the darkness below. Lifting up the floorboards I reached anxiously down into the bilge and... it was dry. Perfectly dry – drier, in fact, than it was when we left! Such relief! =)

We left home on Monday 25th June – a couple of days after my 29th B'day and a great nautical-themed farewell party – and began the 4-day saga to get to the arctic. Nine hours to Taiwan, where during our 15-hr stopover, Jess's friend Sarah kindly took us around to see the sights, fed us deep fried seaweed and other local delicacies, and then ten hours to Vancouver where we had to overnight, then an hour to Calgary, then two to Yellowknife where we overnighted again, and then finally - big thanks to Nunavut Tourism who provided the tickets - two hours on a prop plane into Cambridge Bay!

As we crossed from the mainland out over the frozen Arctic Ocean, it was amazing to imagine us sailing – hopefully in just a few weeks - across this expanse of what is now unbroken ice. We arrived to find our French sailing friend Luc waiting for us at the airport – he sailed into Cambridge Bay a little after we did last season, and he too left his fibreglass yacht 'Roxane' nearby Teleport for the winter. Rather than build a cradle for Roxanne though, he just had a pile of earth & stones mounded up, and simply had her laid over against it, standing on her keel. Wonderfully simple, but not something I'd be game to try with Teleport. You can follow his adventures here: www.lesnavigationsdelucos.com

After checking out Teleport, we only had to walk about 10 meters with our bags before someone kindly gave us a lift into town – I love how friendly people are up here! Our friends Keith and Patricia Lear who we stayed with last season after Teleport was on the cradle have kindly said we can do the same this season, and so we dropped our bags and walked around town catching up with all our old friends for the afternoon, including having a muskox burger for lunch. It's good to be home – this is my sixth time here in Cambridge Bay, and we love it!

That very first evening we went with Keith & Patricia out to their cabin on the coast outside of town (basically everyone in town has their own little cabin 'out on the land' to escape to on weekends etc) and wandered around on the sea ice, spotting seals popping up through breathing holes, and enjoying a hearty dinner. It's such a beautiful time of year, the tundra is a carpet of poppies and purple flowers and everywhere is coming to life. We found a Peregrine flacon nest too (just on the ground as there's no trees up here) and left the GoPro camera there and got some great footage of the falcon coming back and sitting on the eggs. Keith and I spent a few hours putting some recycled corrugated iron roofing and flashing on his little shed out the back, and replacing a window that had been broken during the winter.

It was going on midnight (so my watch said, though it was still sunny) by the time we hopped on our ATV / quad-bikes and headed home, and part way back Jess and I veered off to find an arctic fox-den we'd been told about and ended up spending several hours photographing a whole family of them. The Mum and Dad – who kept running too an fro collecting lemmings and other tasty meals to bring back for the seven or more boisterous pups scampering and playing all around the den. It was so adorable. To my amazement, one of the adult foxes suddenly bounded right up to me, standing up curiously on it's hind legs checking me out less than two meters away! Over the next half hour it kept coming closer and closer, test-biting the end of my camera lens hood, and even running off with it at one point! (Thankfully, it dropped it when I shouted at it.) Just amazing – I've never seen an arctic fox so close or even heard of them doing this. It was pretty special.

We slept 'till midday the next day without realising (we'll get used to this sunlight eventually), visited a few more good friends including Brent Boddy who'd just come back from an epic dogsled expedition in Greenland, and his partner Jeannie who'd returned from participating in a 13-day, 233km walk from Omingmaktok to Cambridge Bay, raising over $100,000 for cancer research. It also turns out Jeannie is now the mayor of Cambridge Bay, and Keith Lear the deputy mayor – seems we're well connected up here! Haha. Congratulations to both!

That evening Jess and I ATV'd back out to the fox den, this time armed with a GoPro camera. I set it up on a rope tied to a heavy rock (in case they tried to run away with it down into their burrows) and placed it near one of the holes. It didn't take long before several curious fluffy foxes popped up and started to examine it, chew it and try and scurry away with it – we got some beautiful footage! Unlike the polar bear last year, they didn't even scratch the camera! Jess has put together a beautiful little one-and-a-half minute video compilation of the arctic fox experience which you can see here: Arctic Fox Video

The next day was officially 'Canada Day', and we were invited 'round to an amazing lunch at our friend Athlyne – she must have been baking for days – the amount of gourmet food she produced! It was wonderful! Thanks! Speaking of wonderful food, the Arctic Char (fish very much like a salmon) are starting to run down the river and out into the bay, and we tried out luck beside the scores of other locals casting our lure out at the river mouth, but didn't manage to catch one – yet. Once the ice melts a little further from shore, all the locals will set out their nets running perpendicular to the shore to catch them as they follow the coast along. It's rich pickings, and we can't wait for some fresh Char – my favourite fish in the world.

Testing out our drysuits, Jess and I swam out to the receding ice edge and climb up onto it (harder than it sounds, requiring an awkward 'walrus-flop' kind of movement to get onto it without breaking it).

Keith & Patricia have been our forwarding address for deliveries, and it was a bit like Christmas when we opened up all the boxes the other day, including rolls of charts, several pairs of cool goggles from Dirty Dog (some tinted for snow, and some clear goggles for extreme weather sailing which work a treat), our awesome sets of Henri Lloyd Ocean wet weather sailing gear (jackets and 'hi-fit' pants) which will be amazing – thanks so much GORE-TEX® and Henri Llloyd – and last but not least, our shiny brand new head for Teleport's engine! It's going to look quite out of place atop our rusty 1976, single cylinder, hand-start engine (it's amazing we could even source a new head for it!) but I'm so excited, as the old one rusted through (as some of you'll remember) last season on the way to Greenland, and the only thing stopping the sea-water cooling water from entering the cylinder since then has been a gob of glue which heroically held-firm all the way here, but not without perpetually stressing me out. I also got with it a new injector, injector pipe, and a temperature gauge (a luxury we've not had until now).

So with the bay ice melting fast, it's time now to get stuck into our lengthy To-Do list, so that we can re-launch in a couple of weeks, and hopefully set sail out of here onwards to Alaska by the end of July. The job list includes pulling off all the tarps, re-installing the batteries (which have been in safe-keeping in a warm basement), re-installing our Air Breeze wind turbine, our propeller, all the electrical gear that we stripped out last season in case of vandals, mounting a wireless windspeed indicator that my Dad gave me, ordering our 2 months of food provisions, re-paining the chafe wounds in the hull, oh yes, and replace the whole engine head, injector, temperature gauge etc. Better get started hey! I'm a bit nervous that if I accidentally damage something in the engine it would take ages to order in new parts... fingers crossed. It's quite a major operation!

Best of all – Jess has just finished uploading our latest VIDEO UPDATE covering our last-min preps back in Australia up to the present moment! It's great! It should be embedded below, but if not, you can always see it on our VIDEO page.

Enjoy!

P.S. sorry this update is a) a bit late, and b) a bit dated now, we've had issues getting internet the last few days.

SAVE THE ARCTIC - The melting Arctic is under threat from oil drilling, industrial fishing and conflict. If you care, please join Jess & I in signing this important petition fighting to DECLARE A GLOBAL SANCTUARY IN THE ARCTIC - http://SaveTheArctic.org/