Audio Post Transcript

Hey, hey, this is TA calling in from Day Two of Labrador 2024 Rigolet to Cartwright.

And my goodness, have we had a day!

I think there’s only one direction for the trip to go though since this day was so good. There’s always more amazing things to see, but what a day.

We closed our day watching a most gorgeous sunset over Groswater bay and the sky was striated with clouds and the sea was reflective and we were sitting on some rocks.

And we just had a delicious meal of spaghetti Bolognese and pineapple carrot salad.

And that–was after seeing, I don’t know, 25 seals and having a minke swim with us for about 45 minutes, swimming under all of our boats and giving us each a startle when it would appear in front of our bow and it swam beside and under Mark’s boat for about 15 minutes or so to the point where Mark said, “Wow, maybe I have a minke as a pet.”

Just a spectacular time of a young minke whale interacting with us on its own terms.

We just kept paddling, and it kept coming back and coming back and coming back and minkes are so fast it’s pretty hard to catch them in a picture with us.

But we’ll never need a picture to remind us of that moment.

We travelled almost 20 kilometres, and we’ve settled on top of a point with crowberry and caribou lichen, so our beds are soft with beautiful views in all directions. And that’s good because this morning we also saw our first bear. So, we know they’re here with us. We’ve seen bear scat also around the beach from us here and there’s a well-worn animal game trail. So, this is their territory, and we do our best to steer clear of them.

Our food stays in the hard shell of our kayaks. We cook away from where we sleep.

And this morning I got to ask this bear who was probably just minding its own business, having its little breakfast, walking towards our beach with a little tap on a pot lid, got its attention and then another little bit of a tap and it went running.

So it was a very, very good bear, no evidence of any human interaction and sorry to interrupt its day but we didn’t want it to get any closer.

So yeah, so a bear, some minkees, maybe a mink, a little watery thing, lots and lots of seals and a mystery sea creature. And we’re not sure what it was, a large bulbous head, probably maybe a 10 foot body, swimming along, no dorsal fin and then it dipped under the water and we never saw it again. So if you have any ideas please let us know what you think it was.

I’ve never seen anything like it.

The seas today were mostly pretty calm, many times reflective.

Temps were chilly, we woke to a 6-degree morning and it didn’t probably get much warmer than 12 degrees through much of the day.

Sun came out midday, we had a lovely mac and cheese lunch on the beach and got a chance to dry out a bit because it did rain overnight and was quite damp, so it was great to get things dried out here at camp tonight.

So we’re starting to find our routines, find our rhythms, find our rhymes and we are drinking in the glory of the big land that we are travelling in, so grateful to be here and sharing this space with both land and sea critters and each other.

So that is our report from day two, hope you’ve had a great day wherever you are, and we will catch you from tomorrow.

Take care.

InReach Posted Camp Location

This is our current location on the Labrador 2024 Rigolet to Cartwright Expedition. All is well. Check out taloeffler.com for other posts about the expedition.

TA Loeffler sent this message from: Lat 54.228634 Lon -58.009679

View this location:
https://us0.explore.garmin.com/textmessage/txtmsg?extId=08dcc156-6254-8cf2-000d-3aa748100000&adr=qibi256suji%40post.wordpress.com