Update from Ben Gray and his sons Brad and Kevin aboard Idlewild in the Beaufort Sea, with URLs added: The crew of the Idlewild arrived in Tuktoyaktuk on July 10 and left for Herschel Island first thing the next morning. http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/Exhibitions/Herschel/English/menu.html Our family went home on the 11th -- we have immensely enjoyed having them with us for the first leg of the voyage. We left Herschel in good time on the morning of July 16 and settled into our scheduled routine. Kevin has 4 - 9 p.m. and 3 - 6 a.m. We got some beam seas right away (waves coming directly to the side) which caused the boat to roll a bit. Kevin did pretty well but had to lay down and get some rest too. He was a bit queezy. We went past Herschel Island where there was a drill ship behind. We chatted briefly to them. http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Beaufort-Sea We are learning more about the ice and see that it grounds out, hitting the bottom of the ocean which stops it from going further to land. We are seeing pretty similar to what the ice chart says. We expect some free water at least most of the way up the coast to Barrow. There is no fog and we are travelling nicely, although we don't really enjoy traveling around ice. The Sailmail seems to work a bit and we will keep working with it. By Sunday the 17th of July we got as far as 141d 03' west and ran into a solid wall of ice, wind 20 knots N.E. and fog. We tried to get closer to shore, but there were bigger burgs grounding at the 60-ft. water level and inside there were smaller chunks breaking up. http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/app/WsvPageDsp.cfm?ID=197&Lang=eng&recCnt=10000&startRow=1 http://ice.ec.gc.ca/sid/FECN09CWIS/20050719000000_FECN09CWIS_0002094660.txt If there was a solid line at the 60 degree mark we could get behind and it would be OK from the wind at least, but not today. We'll go back to Herschel for some calm water and anchor a while. It will take eight hours to get back there. Our weather report isn't exactly for this area but it looks like there will be wind and fog for a couple days. It has been colder than usual in Tuktoyaktuk this year and the ice is not out as far as we would like. We get ice information on the web but more useful for us will be local people and the Canadian Coast Guard. After August 10th there should be some commercial traffic that can provide good information. Because much of the ice is on the move, the information is like other weather information -- what you see is what you get and until you see it, you don't know. http://www.ccg-gcc.gc.ca/cen-arc/index_e.htm Background on name Idlewild: http://www.idlewildranch.com/ --Georgs