(Bill Noon, a 31-year veteran of the Canadian Coast Guard, is a captain on the icebreaker Sir Wilfrid Laurier as it completes its 2012 Arctic mission and offers a two-week support stint to the Parks Canada-led search for the missing ships of explorer Sir John Franklin.)

Day 20 Sept. 11, 2012: 0700h

It is with great pride that I commend all of the partners involved on this year's project.

It has been a pleasure for the Canadian Coast Guard to have provided the logistics support to Parks Canada's underwater archeology service, Fisheries and Oceans Canada's Canadian Hydrographic Service, Environment Canada's E-Space program, the University of Victoria's Ocean Technology Laboratory and the Government of Nunavut's Department of Culture and Heritage.

And while they didn't get a lot of space in this blog, other partners who contributed greatly to ensuring the success of this project included the Arctic Research Foundation (which provided the Martin Bergmann to this project), the Canadian Space Agency, Environment Canada's Ice Service, the community of Gjoa Haven and the Inuit Heritage Trust.

While we may not have found the lost ships this year, we found new clues, charted new waters, forged new alliances and rediscovered our past (and we can mark off new areas where there are definitely no shipwrecks).

On behalf of the Canadian Coast Guard, I thank everyone who joined us on our journey and I wish you fair winds.

And while CCGS Sir Wilfrid Laurier heads out to return to normal operations, we'll be watching the Martin Bergmann for another week or so, and perhaps, just perhaps, they can finish what we started.