Dear Friends,
This is a pre-departure orienting entry to my 2013 journal of a summer Arctic sailing trip, which will stretch from August 14 to September 15 more or less.  My last Arctic trip, aboard the same sailboat (Elskov) was in the summer of 2006. We left from the same harbor — Baddeck, on the Bra-d’Or Lakes in northern Nova Scotia — where Elskov passes the winter. That was a seven-week loop to St. Johns, Newfoundland, up the western coast of Greenland to Disko Bay, then over to Baffin Island and down the coast of Baffin Island and Labrador, down the west coast of Newfoundland, and back to Baddeck. This year Finley Perry, our skipper, decided to go to another region where yachts are exceedingly uncommon — Hudson Bay. Currently he’s up there somewhere in Hudson Bay, having reached Cape Dorset on the south coast of Baffin Island (the northern side of Hudson Strait) about one week ago. I’ll fly to the southern side of Hudson Strait on August 14 and join them for the trip back to Nova Scotia.
I’m assuming you can look things up on maps.google.com. But I’ve included a rough chart of the route to date. In each posting I’ll provide my current latitude and longitude for you to plug into Google maps.

Once you are in Google Maps, you can look up Quaqtaq, Quebec, Canada (as shown below).

That’s our point of rendezvous. I’ll be reporting on what we find as we make our way south, making the transition from high Arctic permafrost, across the treeline, and south to the boreal forests of southern Labrador, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia. The internet connection is slow and expensive, so I can send text but not photos.  I’ll try to provide vivid reports. Stay tuned!

Here’s a close-up view of the Elskov.