63°05’N, 62°28’W—Fog has lifted. Expect light winds from the west tomorrow! Some GIANT (city block or bigger) bergs; some normal office building size. These must be seen in person to comprehend the grandeur.

8:00am Sunday morning, and a good Sabbath to everyone. At the end of the day (beginning?) we turned left to follow the routing suggested by the Canadian Ice Service to Pond Inlet. The decision came down to the ice report for the opening of the way through mostly open water (bergy) and that the water maker loss is not a safety issue. It is a nuisance and very inconvenient, but the damage caused by the water intrusions have been repaired or worked around. We will work on shipping in more parts to Pond Inlet.

Kip & I are on watch while Shane & Pat are getting some much needed sleep amidst fog with approximately half a mile visibility and the sun trying to break trough overhead. I was on watch over the “dark” night and it was like a sunset the whole time with the sun just below the horizon! Everyone is in pretty good spirits. Pray for that as well as no more failures.

The pictures show an iceberg on the horizon, how they look when we first spot them.  Also you can see how they show up on the radar. The rings are set at two miles out so the one on the left, in the picture, is five miles away and the one on the right, in the picture, is eight miles away.

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We finally left Iqaluit this morning under sunny skies and light wind, though it still was out of the SE. We fought through several bands of ice to get to open but bergy water. Were we ever happy. Everything was repaired and working except the aft alternator which was bathed in salt water from the water maker failures. We were encouraged by Psalms 91 and 20 and Hebrews 13:5-6 from Kip’s devotional; then trouble hit again. We started to make water and it failed again in less than 2 hours; though this time the failure was in a different part; this time in the pump module though the failure was a similar material defect. We went from such elation to being totally bummed out and discouraged. We are currently running out of Frobisher Bay in clear water. It is hard to see any stars because it is twilight and at 11:30 the sun is still setting.

We spoke to the Canadian Ice Service out of Sarnia, Ontario today and they said the Passage is opening according to schedule in the traditional route as predicted. We’ll report next steps tomorrow.

PS. Had Arctic Char for dinner. It was delicious; like salmon but richer with more oil and yet without an oily, fishy taste. Pat saw some people coming in from a day of fishing and asked them if he might buy some Arctic Char from them. They said they had plenty in the freezer and went home to return with three fish for us! We gave them Peets coffee in exchange and they seemed as pleased as we were! We again ran into so many people who delighted in going out of their way to help us.