August 23^rd, 2026

Northwest Passage

Today is our final day in the Northwest Passage.

There is still some ice around, but nothing like we have been experiencing, and nothing to block our path out into the open sea.

We have made it! We are the 466^th ship to have ever done this. Wow!

Now we can sit back and relax and enjoy the sea days until our next port, Nome.

But in reality here is no time to actually relax, there is simply too much going on both inside the ship and out on deck. We have continued to need to keep our parkas handy as you never know when you will need to dash outside and what you might see.

We needed them this morning because there hanging out on an ice floe was a huddle of walruses. They are such strange creatures, but wonderful to watch, especially from a large ship. When we saw them whilst out in a Zodiac, I must admit that I was concerned if they got annoyed with us, they may use those tusks to puncture the boat and I had no idea how long it would take for it to sink.

And we also got to see gray whales, but we didn’t get any good photos of them.

Suddenly another ship appeared. Apart from one sailboat we have been totally alone on this cruise, and now there is a ship right near to us. It looked like an oil tanker.

Just when you thought it was safe to go inside, the ship came to a standstill and the Zodiacs were lowered. Could this be another Zodiac outing? Not for us. Olivia and the expedition team had organized boat races with different departments from the ship competing. No use of engines was allowed – they had to row the boats. Well this must be very difficult as some boats kept going around in circles, they all kept on bumping into each other, and it just goes to show that you have to hope that the engine of your Zodiac doesn’t break down as these boats seem to be impossible to keep going in a straight line when you are rowing.

We were in good form at trivia today and our team won – yay, the prize was a puffin. Not that I really need a small stuffed puffin, but it is very cute.

In the afternoon they showed the Oscar winning short documentary film The Elephant Whisperers. Now I love elephants, but what is the relevance to the Northwest Passage? All of the other documentaries that have been shown have been on arctic themes. Well it turns out that the director of this documentary is on board and she discussed the film after the showing. Very cool.

Feeling good about our success at trivia this morning our trivia team regrouped for the evening’s entertainment “Who Done it?” I thought this would be a murder mystery game. It was not. Seven of the expedition team had submitted snippets of information about themselves, such as “I slept in a tent with polar bears all around me” or “I was arrested at 17” and we had to guess who that referred to. Then the expedition member who had done that would tell us the story around the event. I think we got more incorrect than correct but it was great fun, and we learned a lot about the expedition team. They certainly all have very interesting backgrounds!