Aputiteq and drifting though the night

After the long passage thru the ice, it was nice to finally get into the bay on Aputiteq. The bay was unfortunately too deep for us to anchor, so we pulled up alongside the smooth rocks and tied of to them.

But due to the big difference between low and high tide we couldn’t stay there overnight, so we gave our self a couple of hours to explore the island, before we had to move the boat.

The amount of buildings, pipes, tanks, generators and all the other stuff that were built to run this station back in the days were astonishing. But again, that no form of measures was taken when the station was shut down, to preserve the buildings from getting destroyed from whether or polar bears. If so, we’re guessing most of the building could been used for something else today not just rot away.

After the encounter with the polar bear a couple days earlier, we now brought weapons every time we went ashore. After just 5 minutes ashore, we came across a big pile of polar bear poop and what seemed to be the area where the bear stayed. Now we were on high alert, we didn’t know if the bear had run away when we came or if it was hiding in one of the houses.

We also found what seemed to be where the polar bear dragged its catch to, for then to kill and eat it.

After all this excitement, we had to leave. The tide had come in and we couldn’t stay along the rocks any longer. We had to decide, since there was such a long distance to the next place we were going to stop. We either had to sail thru the night or go offshore, outside the ice belt and drift there until the next morning, then we could go thru the ice in daylight. We choose to go offshore.