YachtTeleport.com

Day of departure: My now fiancée Jess and I woke full of excitement at 3:45 AM on Monday 30th July, did a last minute weather check, hugged all of our many friends who amazingly woke at 4AM just to see us off, and and cast off from the dock at Cambridge Bay. Unleashing the full might of all eight horses inside our noisy little one-lunger we *tonk* *tonked* clear, hoisted our beautiful tan junk-rig sail, silenced the horses and slid effortlessly away from town at a pleasant 4kn. Looking back, we could see other friends waving from their doorways, and the research ship Martin Bergman tooted it's horn (just to ensure no one was still sleeping). A few moments later, our French sailing friend Luc reversed his yacht Roxanne out too, and followed us out of the bay. We're off! Next stop - Holman (now called Ulukhaktok), a bit less than 400 nm (800km) away, approx 4 days teleporting away.

In no time, Luc caught up to us (because he was motor-sailing - that's my excuse. No really, he was.) And I put one of the chocolate muffins that our friend Patricia baked for us, into a plastic bag duct-taped to the end of our ice-pole and beckoned him back. Sheeting in so our sail wouldn't become tangled in his, Luc looped back and we merged right beside each other (quite unnerving at 4.5 kn), and passed the muffin over to him. With that, our friend accelerated away over the horizon.

The GRIB weather files showed 4 days of wonderfully following Easterly winds at a pleasant 10-15kn, but for the first day, the wind came from any which way, and slackened right off, and when our speed dropped below 2.5 kn in the afternoon we reluctantly released the team of horses again to thunder away inside our engine box all night. To my delight though, I discovered that I could actually pitch our variable-pitched propeller much further than I usually would, and despite it making noises that I thought used to be the blades cavatating, it actually gave us heaps more speed, and we were soon rocketing along at about 6kn with the engine only working at about 85% capacity. Oh yeah!

Back into our shift-work of watch-keeping, 2-hrs on, 2 hrs off by night, it was beautiful (yet slightly worrying) to see that the sun does now slip *just* below the horizon for an hour or around midnight, and while it doesn't get *dark* yet, it will soon. The full moon rose like a huge orange orb from the sea behind us and it was all very pleasant, slipping along between the impossibly flat coastline of Victoria Island to Starboard and mainland Canada visible to Port. We both got into reading some of our e-books, even did a few bouts of exercise routines in the cockpit (so much good food over the last month!), and though it was dead calm - perfect whale spotting conditions - we saw nothing but a couple of seals for the whole trip, which was surprising. If it wasn't for odd patch if snow ensconced into some of the cliff crevices, and the occasional bit of old sea-ice pushed high and dry on some of the beaches we passed, you'd never know we were in the arctic. There's certainly zero ice in the water, thankfully! Every time it looked like we were starting to get a puff of wind I'd de-clutch the engine and see if we could sail, but alas.

On the 2nd day the winds arrived, and blowing 15kn from astern (up our bum) and our massive junk-rig sail let all the way out to 90 degrees (a benefit of having an unstayed mast), we positively rocketed along all day under perfectly clear blue skies, reaching speeds of 7 even 8 kn, without anything even feeling overloaded. One point we even reefed a little, and still flew along at 6.5 - 7kn. I think there must have been some current-assist with us, but the end result was we broke our daily teleportation distance record, appearing 130nm (260km) from where we vanished 24hrs earlier! Jess is becoming quite the sailor now, happily reefing the sail when things get a bit too exciting, and hoisting it all the way back up again later which is wonderful! I spend one afternoon waterproofing, soldering & pulling wires through bulkheads etc installing the tiny little HD video camera above the cockpit that now perpetually records and re-records over itself, so that if something awesome happens, we usually miss filming it, but now we can just lazily go back anytime within a few hours and grab the video files before they are over written! very cool.

The tail winds built the seas a little though, and by the end of day 2 we were rolling quite a bit, and cooking our arctic char (thanks Colin!) for dinner was quite the challenge - I had frying pans tied off with ropes forward and backwards, and still the juicy fillets kept trying to slide up and out of the pan with every roll. To my surprise though Jess barely even sick, without even wearing one of her sea-sickness patches! Leftovers I made char fish-cakes for lunch the next day, and by now we were also able to start snacking on our dangling fillets of 'Biffy' (dried char) that our mates Dan & Tom passed to us just before we left. It may sound disgusting, but there's nothing better than chewing on bits of semi-dried raw char, with a little salt!

Of course, it turned out that our Solara Field Tracker (the thing that pings our position back to the map on our website every hour) turned up in Cambridge Bay a few hours after we left - dammit - and if our friends then posted it to Holman we'd probably miss it there too, so a quick satellite phone call resulted in our friends managing to get First Air to put on their next jet leaving Cambridge Bay heading for Holman/Ulukhaktok via Kugluktuk the next day. Woo! In the meantime though, we've been daily emailing our position to the Canadian Coast Guard. Speaking of air-travel, that evening we heard a loud buzzing drone approaching us from behind and looked back just in time to see a big town-otter aircraft bearing down upon us, right down low, and roar right past us, the pilots smiling face pushed up against the cockpit window as he roared past! I think it was an Air-Tindi plane. Anyone know who that would have been flying? Did they get any pics of us from the air? That'd be so cool!?

The winds increased to around 20 - 25kn on day 3, and we continued charging towards Holman in perfect power-sailing conditions. Another record day, without the need to motor. Each day I pumped the water leaking into our bilge into a bucket and measured how much had come in, to check we weren't sinking any faster than normal. It seems we're taking in water at a slow and steady 4L every 24hrs, but at least it's not getting any worse (or better, sadly, haha).

We ripped into Holman/Ulukhaktok 4:30 AM on Thursday - exactly 3 days after leaving Cambridge Bay - ducking briefly into Queens Bay and then opting instead to anchor down the back of the better sheltered Kings Bay next-door instead, as the winds were getting more and more boisterous. Anchoring in 20 feet of crystal clear water, surrounded by incredibly picturesque, genuine mountains - it's such a beautiful spot! Still copping a full 25kn wind, I put on the anchor watch alarm on our VesperMarine AIS Watchmate system and we both turned in for some much needed sleep.

At 11 AM we woke, had brunch, launched the dingy, and headed ashore whereupon we were inundated with lovely friendly people calling out to us, welcoming us. To our complete bewilderment, not only did it seem everyone in town knew we were coming, but they were expecting us - one lady even said she was relived we'd finally got here, as she was starting to worry!?! When we asked how on Earth anyone even knew, everyone just said "Facebook". It was so lovely, we met the local school principle, even the RCMP officer drove up to us, got out, and paced over to us impressively flipping open his notebook to (it turned out) just write down our names and welcome us. We were shown the famous stuffed Growler Bear (half Polar half Grizzly bear - the first hybrid of it's kind ever recorded, which made headlines around the world a few years back), and we got invited to coffee and muskox with Adam and his wife, a local couple who were very keen to show us photos and videos from their trips out on the land hunting. We then went down to the gravely beach to wait for a 22-foot wood & canvas canoe to come in, piloted by a dramatic-looking old chap with white, Einstein-like, wind-frayed hair, a beautiful sled dog standing up on the bow, and four dead seals hanging from the side. Harold, it turned out, is quite the amazing character, and one of the friends Colin back in Cambridge Bay told us we should meet here. He owns the only 'sail boat' in town, a big black iron Dory - somewhat like a pirate ship - that he actually made from scrap sheet metal he salvaged from The Hudson Bay Company's old fuel tanks outside town. Having motored (and sailed) many a mile in it's day, shifting cargo etc, it now sits perched on the shore at the front of the beautifully circular harbour of Holman / Ulukhaktok. Harold has a little metal workshop in town, fixing hunter's guns etc - he's even made a few guns from scratch. An amazing guy, full of stories. On his way back out to his summer camp, (he spends summer out on a tiny island nearby, returning only to cache seals in the freezer for the winter), he stopped by Teleport, and he and his big dog 'Quetzalcoatl' (check out the meaning of the name!) came onboard and down below - by far the biggest dog we've ever had on board, but so well behaved!

It's probably not true, but every local we ask how many sailing yachts have stopped here, have been telling us that we are the only the second they can remember - apparently one stopped briefly last year, and no one seems to recall any before that! Crazy! It's such a stunningly beautiful and friendly community of around 450 people (mostly Inuk), set amidst grand surrounding mountains that we've been climbing each night around sunset, fields of arctic cotton, sweet mountain-sorrel, lakes etc. We wandered around the site of the old town - across the bay - which was relocated many years ago due to lack of space to expand, and also (so we found out slightly too late) because the beautiful lake we quenched our thrust at the night before had Typhoid in it. Great. Reassuringly though, our friends told us that the Jesus figure from atop the old church is laying in the lake somewhere now, and so that has probably killed all the Typhoid. Phew. (Symptoms, anyone? How long do we have?)

On our 2nd morning here, Harold came by in his canoe and took us to his summer camp for a look, and then later in the day Luc finally arrived, about 26hrs behind us, and very tired. We'd been getting his position emailed every day, and had been surprised at how much further we'd been getting each day (we past him - without seeing him - early on and then in the end left him about 100 nm behind despite Roxanne being a slightly larger yacht at 32 feet!) But it turns out that being a solo sailor for this year's leg, doesn't even any form of wind self-steering gear, and his electric autopilot is not working up here due the proximity of the North Magnetic pole (makes most auto pilots rather erratic, however for those of you prepping for your own voyages, our new Simrad TP22 tiller-pilot seems to be doing quite a reasonable job at holding a vaguely course if you keep an eye on it), but Luc's seemed actually broken too, meaning he actually had to hand steer the entire time from Cambridge, from out in the cockpit. Brutal. Whenever he wanted to stop - be that to have lunch, download weather files, or grab just 6hrs sleep each night, he was forced to heave-to (basically set the sails a certain way and lash the tiller so that the boat basically stops dead and drifts) - which of course resulted in much less miles travelled each day. Hats off to Luc - that was doing it tough. By the time he got in, the winds were peaking at 30kn (still astern though), and it wasn't until later that day that we caught up with him, showed him around town, and had him over for dinner. He actually brought the food though - he's got an awesome food sponsor 'Plaisirs Gastronomiques' that makes gourmet pre-cooked meals in plastic - including, no kidding, boxes and boxes of 'Half Duck Confit' - dripping with flavours and spices and all. He kindly gave us a pile of boxes of goose, duck and stuffed snags before we left too! So yum! and So easy just to reheat in the pan! Yes it's a hard life out here. "No, No, I couldn't possibly have any more Duck Confit or fresh Arctic Char filets, no. Oh for some weevil-filled oats and dry crackers…" haha!

Today (Saturday) we've picked up our tracker that was jet delivered to the friendly Mayor here, Janet, (Thanks so much to all involved in expediting this here for us!) and assuming we get that all hooked up and running on our website thisarvo, we plan to set sail from here tomorrow (Sunday) morning. The weather files seem to tell us that we have until Tuesday evening to get somewhere further before a rather massive low pressure system sweeps across the arctic bringing strong headwinds for several days. We're intending to head first for a little protected bay called De Salis Bay' on Banks Island (the next big island to the west of Victoria Island), approx 80 miles (so we'd get there that evening hopefully), go ashore and explore for a bit, hope to find some Muskox, get some sleep, and leave sometime the next day (Monday) and make a bee-line straight to Cape Parry on the mainland SW of Banks to a nicely sheltered place called 'Gillet Bay' (an overnight sail) arriving - hopefully - safely in time to hunker down and wait out the blow. It sounds like an interesting place to explore for a few days anyway - an old abandoned Hudson Bay Company outpost. Luc will also leave Holman with us, but he'll go direct for Gillet Bay, but good news is it seems he may have fixed his autopilot issues!

Thanks everyone so much for all your wonderful messages you've been sending us through our website - we checked them every day at sea, and read them out to each other - it's a real highlight of the day, sharing this with everyone and hearing back from you all. Thanks =) Please keep them coming. Don't forget you can now follow our progress live every hour on the 'Position' tab on the website! Oh, and as always, we're busy filming everything for our next video update. We were wondering though, is there anything that any of you specifically would like to see / hear / learn about in the next video? How our wind-vane, self-steering gear works perhaps? Or how we download our weather GRIB files by satellite email in the middle of nowhere? What are GRIB files anyway? How does our stove work (poorly)? How do we reef a Junk Rigged sail? Anyone?

Cheerio

Chris & Jess