After a couple of days at the abandoned Fort Ross trading post on Somerset Island, Ella Hibbert and the Yeva have again set sail. They traveled westward through the Bellot Strait to the Franklin Strait between Prince of Wales Island and the west side of the Boothia Peninsula. As they proceeded south of Prince of Wales Island, Franklin Strait opened up to become Larsen Sound.
Right now (3:00 pm EDT), the Yeva is deep in the Northwest Passage and is sailing south-southwest across the Larsen Sound. They're about halfway across, roughly 150 miles from Fort Ross, and at their present rate should pass sometime later today into Victoria Strait between the massive Victoria Island to the west and King William Island to the east (Prince of Wales Island, King William Island, Victoria Island . . . you get the feeling this area was first explored by the English?).
Fun fact: Victoria Island is the eighth-largest island in the world (83,897 square miles), larger than Great Britain (80,823 mi²) and nearly twice the size of Newfoundland (43,010 mi²). Despite its size, the island has only about 2,000 residents, most of whom live in Cambridge Bay on the island's south coast.
The island is full of bays, coves, and inlets, and I imagine that Hibbert will anchor the Yeva somewhere along Victoria's coast for some well-deserved rest, possibly in the large and complex Albert Edward Bay on Victoria's east coast or down in Cambridge Bay, where she could get some supplies, fuel and water.
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