Early start to walk to the airport at the top of town, no taxis in Pond! We are booked on First Air, feeling lucky for our confirmed seats although they cost as much as a return trip from Victoria to Europe. And that’s a two and a half hour flight only to Iqaluit, taking off on a gravel runway with no control tower. This said we are pleasantly surprised by a wonderful Starbucks coffee and a delicious sandwich. Service is good in the true North. Also, you can board without a security check and walk unescorted to the plane. Today, we are lucky, flight 883 coming from Arctic Bay is only 30 minutes late.

We have three more flights after that to get home. After a stopover in Iqaluit, the next one will be on Canadian North to Ottawa, then two more with Westjet.

There are two other boat crews in the airport. Like us they will not pursue the NWP this year. One boat is going to Halifax and the other somewhere South, both leaving some crew members off. One of them mentions that 2018 is the coldest summer on record up here since the sixties.

It sounds like everyone has listened to the Coast guard warnings.

Fredoya leaving Pond inlet photo Cam Knight

We feel bad to abandon the rest of our crew. The plan is for les Marseillais to get off in Nuuk, Greenland. Meals will be dull without their unique sense of humour impenetrable to anyone not born and bred in Marseille and impossible to translate.

Harry is to go as far as St John’s, Newfoundland recrossing Baffin bay twice to help the Freds and meet up with his wife in Boston. We will miss his adventure stories and good company.

The Freds are talking about the Azores, the Canary or the Antilles. They need to fix the autopilot, the left rudder and a few other things urgently before going off shore again. Our friendly and hardworking hosts deserve some downtime and a bit of luck.

We had no alternative but to heed to Mother Nature, we’ll be sailing our 40 foot Dufour up the BC coast again soon and hopefully enjoying a bit of Indian summer weather. It’s not so bad at all, who knows, we might even -in fact likely- spot whales!