Hudson Bay Expedition – Tour the Boat

Canada, Nunavut Territory, C-Dory expedition boat trapped by sea ice on shores of Vansittart Island along Frozen Strait

This boat. This 22-foot floating fiberglass money pit. For the summer it’s my home, my office and my bedroom. It’s also my jail cell and my ticket to adventure, my shelter through the storms to come and my private little shop of horrors. I’ve often compared her to a VW camper of the sea, but without the Teutonic design excellence, mechanical reliability or Grateful Dead stickers.

When I started thinking about it in 2007, I knew absolutely nothing about boats. That was, to my surprise, not the hurdle you might imagine. In America at least, you’re still free to plunk down your money and go out and drown yourself any old time you please.

I bought my C-Dory used from Pastor Kirby in the summer of 2007. To his credit, he never actually said he only sailed it to church on Sundays. In a bit of Lutheran humor he dubbed her C-Sick. I had a hell of a time scraping off the letters, but I managed. She’s never been re-christened, and sort of like the run puppy who isn’t supposed to make it and goes through life called “dog, ” she’s just “the boat.” A variety of modifiers can be added according to how badly the trip is going.

We’ve explored the Southeast Alaska’s glacial fiords and humpback feeding grounds, Kodiak Island and the grizzly bear coasts of Katmai National Park, and this will be her third summer photographing polar bears and arctic wildlife in western Hudson Bay. I think the manufacturer built her with lazy summer days cruising through sheltered Puget Sound, not bashing through pack ice and dodging arctic gales. And with more than 11,000 nautical miles on her, she’s showing her age a little.

But I’m guessing we’ve got more than one summer’s adventures left between us.

I’ve put together a quick 90-second tour of the boat’s interior, to give an idea of my home away from home.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 28th, 2015 at 10:00 am. It is filed under Gear and tagged with C-Dory, Canada, Expedition, Hudson Bay, North America, Nunavut, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.