Stranded Cape Dorset group makes it home

A group of 22 Nunavummiut became stranded on an island in the Hudson Strait Oct. 3 while boating home to Cape Dorset from Kimmirut. (GOOGLE MAPS)

Updated 5:30 p.m.

A group from Cape Dorset that had been stranded on a nearby island since Oct. 3 made it back to the Baffin community safe and sound late Oct. 5, said the Government of Nunavut’s protection services.

The group of 22 people, including eight children and a toddler, had travelled in three boats from Cape Dorset to Kimmirut to attend a wedding last week.

But. on the group’s trip home, the travellers hit high winds which forced them to land on a nearby island, roughly 120 kilometres east of Cape Dorset.

That’s where the group camped out in a cove over the weekend until the weather calmed enough to travel home Oct. 5, said Ed Zebedee, the GN’s director of protection services.

The group first made contact with search and rescue midday Oct. 3 by sending out a signal on a Spot tracker device. The group also made a call to Cape Dorset with a satellite phone before its batteries died.

But with four to five-foot high waves along the Hudson Strait, search and rescue crews from Cape Dorset could not risk heading out to find the group.

Later that same day, Zebedee said his department requested help from the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre in Greenwood, Nova Scotia, which sent a Hercules to deliver heating fuel, food and a radio to the group that same day.

Zebedee said the group was fortunate that the weather cleared enough to return home when they did — with Environment Canada showing more rain and windy temperatures for the region this week.

If the weather hasn’t cleared, protection services would have organized an air rescue from Iqaluit in the coming days.

This story was corrected from an earlier version which said the group remain stranded on the island Oct. 6.