We spent the night surrounded by the ice as we had to wait for daylight to again be escorted by the Icebreaker Pierre Radisson. There are many areas of dense multi-year sea ice and as soon as there was enough light our journey to make it through Fury and Hecla Strait began again.
The weather gods continued to smile on us, as it was a beautiful morning with blue skies and sunshine. It was a great chance to spend lots of time out on deck taking photos of the beautiful blue pools in the ice and of course searching for wildlife.
We steadily made our way through the 190 km long strait cruising at a good ten knots behind the icebreaker. At times, the Strait was only 50 km wide and it was great to be surrounded by land again. The eagle eyes on the bridge found a polar bear slowly walking on one of the islands and it was great to see wildlife along the way.
In the mid-afternoon, we finally made our way to the end of Fury and Hecla Strait and said “Au Revoir” to the Icebreaker Pierre Radisson. Our local ice master Ray told Captain Skog that the Icebreaker’s Captain and crew were greatly impressed with how well the National Geographic Explorer handled the very dense ice that we had encountered the last two days. We were just immensely grateful to the Pierre Radisson for all their help to get us through all that incredible ice and now we can sail south to Foxe Basin!
