To combat the swelling in my foot I’ve been getting buckets of 2C sea water; more uncomfortable than wearing a wetsuit full of sand

Ben Edwards, crew 03.30 UTC 9th Sept Queen Maud Gulf

One word, grrrrrrrrr.  You know I told you about my ankle yesterday?  And how I was restarting the physio?  Well.  I did that, in fact, I rather overdid it.  I have damaged my ankle, any movement of it causes pain, and not the,ind of pain that says you’re doing the right thing it’s just uncomfortable. Pain that says you’re damaging it even more stop now you moron.  I am not completely incapacitated, I can still do my watches, but putting sails up and down and things are definitely out.  I’m not getting off, just to reassure any of you that were getting excited. I’m going to continue but I’ll need to be careful for the next few days and then follow the physio regime religiously.  I feel I should apologise to Rob and the rest of the gastro team at Addenbrook’s for having a medical problem on this trip that’s completely unrelated to my gut, which as you know, I’ve been causing them grief about for years.  Sorry.

To combat the swelling in my foot I’ve been getting buckets of sea water and putting my foot in them for two or three minutes.  While this has had a huge effect on how stiff that foot has been the water has been just under two degrees and therefore the treatment has been more uncomfortable than wearing a wetsuit full of sand, trust me on that one.  In the meantime we’ve been moving along and came across the only other boat we’ve seen in the North West Passage.  About sixty foot long and obviously built for very tough conditions we passed the motor yacht Polar Bound on its way to Antarctica.  Sounds odd but apparently they’re going through the North West Passage the other way and are then going to go down the Pacific to Antarctica.  Good luck.

According to the very affable man we talked to over the radio a place we have to go through called the Bellot Strait was very clear when he was there.  The Bellot Strait cuts hundreds of miles off our journey, is about eighteen miles long and only a couple of miles wide.  I hope we can get through.  In the meantime though I’m going to sleep.  Bye.