A disturbed night for all of us. Not that it ever got dark with the midnight sun to the North over the mountains on Bylot Island.

Coming through Pond Inlet was a steady stream of ice in varying shapes and sizes. One more significant "bergy bit" (and that is a real term with a definition more than 5m) was firmly aground, but the rest were coming through with a 2 knot current. Required a continuous anchor watch. A few of them were football pitch sized and required weighing anchor and milling around until they'd passed.

At the end of on of my watches one quite bit bit looked like it would pass inside us but then veered our way. The power of a big block of ice moving in the tide was impressive and dragged our big anchor back with ease.

Our plan was to wait a bit for the latest ice reports to show Navy Board Inlet more definitely clearing. We also got a helpful email from Peter Semotiuk (who is the acknowledged expert on NW Passage ice conditions) saying that it wasn't yet definite that we could make it through and on balance possibly to wait a little.

We all felt however that staying put in Pond Inlet wasn't going to be a relaxing option so we might as well head somewhere. We could have taken the long way into Lancaster Sound by going back round (the impressive) Bylot Island, or head West and give Navy Board a go. We've chosen the latter and will see.

So far several patches of quite dense ice but nothing impassable. Main drama was a bit of man overboard practice when I dropped my lens cap whilst climbing the rigging to get a better perspective of the ice and for a photo opportunity.