8/7/26: The Button Islands

Today we awoke with the knowledge that, unless something went very awry, we would be anchored and ready for a full night's sleep by the end of the day. A thought that brought all of us, and certainly myself, some solace as I had just been informed that I have navigational conversations with Skip in my sleep, which seems a good sign that a break would be appreciated. The weather and scenery were all of a sudden as if we were five degrees further north than we were yesterday, as the wind grew a new chill and the water that had been largely devoid of ice until today was now teeming with icebergs and little floating bergy bits. The Labrador Current that had slowed our progress so significantly on the way up the coast switched near the top of Labrador and propelled us closer to our destination: The Button Islands. Now that we were closer to shore the wildlife also changed to seabirds, seals, and even the occasional otter. Right before the Button Islands is the Gray Strait, which flows very quickly from east or west depending on the tide, and luckily for us it was flowing west by the time we arrived, which was the direction we wanted to head. The current flowed at almost 5 knots, which made the last 7 miles of our journey across the strait fly by, and before we knew it we were in the islands. The islands themselves are very barren, and without close examination there aren't even any signs of plant life. I imagine in the winter and covered in snow the islands wouldn't look terribly different from large snowdrifts. The cruising guide mentioned that there are polar bears that like to summer on the islands, but on our journey to our anchorage we saw none. For our anchorage we chose a very small little slice into the islands that is almost a perfect rectangular cutout 100 meters long, 15 meters wide, and with 10 to 20 meter cliffs coming straight out of the water on either side. Once we got inside we dropped our anchor and put out all five of our shorelines (including one line meant for the backup anchor) and called it an end to our passage. To celebrate, I pulled out my new drone and took my first pictures and videos on it. I even managed to land it, unlike the last time I flew a drone, which was the final flight of my old drone. We didn't go ashore immediately as we have to do some polar bear reading before we go ashore and some polar bear practice once we first get ashore, and I think we're all too tired for reading homework.