Berrimilla Down Under Mars Status Report 6 August 2008
6839 11339
Disconcerting being this close to land – especially when you can’t see it! About 200 to CB where it starts in earnest. This is really just a position report – comms too difficult for more.
Later – now 1528Z @ 6826 11310 unable send this stuff by sailmail – will try iridium. Around the next corner, past big DEW line station at Becher Point. I wonder whether anyone saw us go by about a mile offshore. Pat, tks for wx and ice – pse copy to speedy as well. We must organise an iridium sked for the next bit. About 180 to CB
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6839 11339
Disconcerting being this close to land – especially when you can’t see it! About 200 to CB where it starts in earnest. This is really just a position report – comms too difficult for more.
Later – now 1528Z @ 6826 11310 unable send this stuff by sailmail – will try iridium. Around the next corner, past big DEW line station at Becher Point. I wonder whether anyone saw us go by about a mile offshore. Pat, tks for wx and ice – pse copy to speedy as well. We must organise an iridium sked for the next bit. About 180 to CB
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radio email processed by SailMail for information see: http://www.sailmail.com
POSTED BY BERRIMILLA DOWNUNDERMARS AT 13:24
Inuit
The Arctic people..Inuit.(Eskimos) It is the same language,culture, people from Nome to Greenland. That’s over 3000 miles Add the historic extremes to the Saint Lawrence seaway and you have 4000 miles.
In the days of Eric the Red and the new colonies on Iceland and Greenland, a culture was exploding at Barrow. Whales were abundant and the years supply of food could be put away in a month following a single whale hunt. The frozen ground provided a great freezer.The rest of the year was spent on the social and cultural development. The population exploded.
A large group split off on conquest to the east. They killed, conquered, absorbed everything in their path. There is one written record of this event. The colony on Greenland was attacked by hundreds of umiaks and kayaks. Western technology surprised the Inuit and they retreated to regroup. A ship was dispatched to Iceland for help. When help arrived, no one was left. Nothing. The Catholic archives has the account. I have never read it. Inuit spread to the Saint Lawrence seaway and stopped.
800 years later, that’s all we know. One of the greatest conquests of all time. (In terms of distance).
There is a row of tent rocks on an empty island, as the land rises after the glaciers left.
The Berrimilla will not blink when she goes by.
Pat
POSTED BY BERRIMILLA DOWNUNDERMARS AT 04:19
The Central Arctic
Hi all, Hope this gives you a feel for what is to come…
The American Arctic has several very different regions. Most of the old documentaries are of the Central Arctic. That is the place the Berrimilla is about to enter.
In grade school, every Friday, they showed us films of ‘The’ ‘Eskimo’ that lived in small snow igloos, never had to discipline their children, were extremely peaceful never knowing war, and had to hunt all day on these incredibly expanses of unbelievable flat ice to bring home one seal. I would look out the window at these mountains of ice pressure ridges. I knew several older people who were on the last ‘raids’. They would sail over to Russia, find a village, kill all the men and steal all the women. Children were negotiable. I remember seeing 3 feet piles of human skulls from a place 60 miles from Nome, from the Russians last ‘raids’. Hell; we had several human skulls in our living room. When people went hunting here they would return with many many seals and have tales of the time they got 100 seals. No one knew what a snow igloo was. Igloos here were made of sod. It was so different… where did they come up with this peaceful nomadic non since?
The Bering sea is alive with people, weather, sea mammals, life and death. It is a boiling soup of trouble and food. The Bering sea culture extends to the Mackenzie river.
The Central Arctic is where one has to spend all ones energy just to stay alive. There are no real storms. The sea ice freezes (relatively) flat. Villages are spread out hundreds and hundreds of miles. There used to be no villages. There is little food. People were nomads and found their food by walking hundreds of miles. Always on the move. Musk-ox on Banks island, caribou on migration hundreds of miles south and west, seals miles out on the ice in the dead of winter, fish in the rivers in the spring… this was the stuff we saw in all those movies. Truly a barren land. I have walked for miles across some of these arctic islands and have not seen even lichen on the rocks. No moss, no grass, no soil in the cracks in the rocks… nothing. There is no erosion on the beaches. In fact, there are no beaches. The water ends, and the shore just goes on and inland. Things do not decay. Artifacts from the Franklin expedition era are still scattered about. We once stopped to make camp at a perfect site. The area was on a glacier rebound, so every 100 years a new level sprang out of the sea. A short walk up the hill we found a camp fire. odd, considering there is no wood. This was followed by 6 to 8 levels of large Inuit type tent circles or rocks in groups of 2 or 3. Above that was 20 levels of very small Dorset tent circles, all singles. This line of tent leftovers represented a couple thousand years of visits. Every stone was in its place.
Everyone left a mark and every mark will stay… This is the Central Arctic.
The tiny ship from down under will be in the quiet zone… and they will be very very alone, and they will feel the history.
I kind of liked it, after living in the strait.
Pat
POSTED BY BERRIMILLA DOWNUNDERMARS AT 02:51
Woody Allen 6910 v11623
80% of success, said the Sage, is just turning up. I think we can say that we are here – for us, the next 80% will be whether we can be where the ice isn’t between Cambridge and Bellot Strait. Speeds, if you are reading this and not in the pub in Dittisham, perhaps you could post Pat’s thoughts on the ice from Cambridge – good stuff and shows the complexity of what we have to do rather better than I can.
These will be short from here to CB and perhaps beyond. Hoping to meet Eleanor, via HMP and Resolute, in CB. That would be a special r/v! Carla, Spaceman up there supervising! Lerizhan, perhaps?
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POSTED BY BERRIMILLA DOWNUNDERMARS AT 01:22
