EPILOGUE

We got home on August 14th.  On August 24th we saw the news that the Akademic Ioffe had gone aground on the Gulf of Boothia.

 
 
The Ioffe had just completed the next cruise after ours with the passengers we saw arriving in Pond Inlet.  Their cruise is shown as the black lines on the map. Now a major problem had been created for them as they were supposed to start and finish in Resolute Bay.  This new map shows that part of the map you have seen before.  This cruise suffered many diversions and the ice that had stopped us from getting into Resolute Bay was still there and the Ioffe had to change course at the end of this cruise to reach Kugaaruk with an airport where we had stopped en route to Yellowknife, a long way from Resolute Bay.  The passengers were taken off the ship and new charter planes were arranged to get them to Edmonton.  New passengers then boarded the ship.

On their first morning at sea after leaving Kugaarak at life boat drill time the Ioffe hit and got stuck on a rock and was grounded. There appeared to be no serious damage but clearly the cruise was in trouble.  Three ships came to the rescue.  The first was the Sergei Vavilov which had also had problems with ice.  It was supposed to have called into Cambridge Bay (see map) on August 24th but ice there had caused it to divert to Kuguaaruk where new passengers we loaded.  As a result it was near the Ioffe.  The second ship was the Coast Guard ship Amundsen which we had seen earlier in Pond Inlet and the third ship as the Coast Guard ship Pierre Radisson.  All the passengers on the Ioffe we transferred to the Sergei Vavilov and they were taken to Kugaaruk and arrangements were made to fly them back to Edmonton.  

 Later news told us that the Ioffe had been refloated.

Back to the start

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