If the late ’80s had been dark days, by contrast the turn of the millennium

certainly belonged to legendary figures. The Club had not lacked heroes over

the previous 40 years and the efforts of Hum’s Chums just to qualify were

often outstanding by today’s standards – it would be hard to match Ben Carlin’s

circumnavigation in an amphibious Jeep, or the Smith brothers with their Atlantic

crossing in a half finished virtually open boat. It is doubtful if Rosemary Mudie’s

balloon/gondola epic will ever be repeated, and Bill Tilman’s and David Lewis’s

Antarctic exploits have rarely been matched. It would be invidious to try and

record all the truly outstanding voyages by members, as inevitably some went

unrecorded in the Club’s annals and others have today become commonplace

when they were undoubtedly laudable in their day. Few would question the

courage of Francis Chichester and Alec Rose, capped of course by Robin Knox-

Johnson, and although Al Petersen’s circuit did take him three years it was a

most outstanding voyage in its day. But by any standards they came thick and

fast over the late ’90s to the present, giving the Awards sub-committee an

abundance of choice for the various trophies.

We glanced at the Flying Fish which rounded off the jubilee years and that

alone told of the diversity of both the members and their activities, but a closer

look at a few recent extraordinary exploits serves to exemplify the advances in

cruising over the half century of the Club’s existence. And that the Club has

played a significant role in this development is beyond doubt. As we have already

argued, the exploits of the few spur on the rest, the swapping of yarns at rallies

gives others the courage to go further, and the amazing records of the more

intrepid tempt others to push their limits.

Paradoxically, one member whose extraordinary defiance of age has allowed

him to sail singlehanded well into his eighties, Mike Richey, confounds the

advance of technology by sailing his most uncomplicated boat at an age when

many have long since hung up their sextant. Mike cannot qualify as one of our

heroes by pushing through the ice, since he confines his sailing almost entirely to

the mid-latitudes – indeed it is doubtful if he has ever encountered an iceberg. The

recent change of rule had disbarred Jester from the Millennium OSTAR equivalent

on the grounds of size – she is 25ft overall – but Mike was invited to enter as a

special dispensation since the boat had not missed a race since its inception. It

was a brave move on the part of the organisers as he was then 83 and Jester

has no engine. Even Mike had begun to question the wisdom of continuing:

‘I have sometimes wondered, as I sail merrily into my dotage,

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The low-tech Jester shows her paces

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whether the trouble is ultimately going to be not being able to

hoist the sail, or just losing the thread, forgetting where one is

going, and why. For the moment I will leave it at that but it does

seem to me, as the years roll by, that it is now the mission that

tends to be questioned rather than one’s ability to fulfil it. That at

any rate seems to have been one element in Jester’s somewhat

abortive singlehanded millennial transatlantic race last summer.’

But it was to be the very low-tech elements that were his undoing:

‘Events from 15 June onwards bear all the marks of what the

scientists call chaos theory. Pre-heating with meths the burners

on the paraffin cooker, the boat took a lurch which spilt the meths

and started a fairly familiar blaze, generally of no consequence

since it can be put out with water. However, now the heat was

such that the plastic pressure gauge on the fuel tank melted,

releasing a jet of lighted paraffin. I was able to put the fire out

but was from then on, until I could mend the gauge, reduced to

a diet of uncooked food. After a day or so I contrived to patch

the pipe up with heavy duty sail tape which seemed to work, but

whether securely enough to last the passage seemed doubtful.

Somebody seemed to be telling me something, for later that day

I stepped into the control hatch from aft and trod on and broke

the blow torch, the only alternative way of pre-heating the stove

to meths. I measured the amount of meths left and estimated it

would last about ten days. I decided to divert to Ponta Delgada

in the Azores, then some 470 miles to windward. This effectively

put paid to the idea of a trade wind passage, and probably of a

fast passage of any kind.’

This stop did not infringe the rules, and Mike was able to carry on:

‘Thus, on 7 July, having waited an extra day to celebrate my

birthday with friends ashore, Jester headed west again, before a

fine northeasterly breeze that was to last for almost two weeks.’

But then:

‘The wind backed remorselessly and after several attempts to

break out of the pattern on either tack, I decided to take stock

once more. We were now about equidistant from Newport and

Ponta Delgada, but so far as I could see only making up towards

Nova Scotia would get us nearer America. It would be a long

haul. Further, it was getting late in the year to arrive on the East

Coast and would soon be getting late to leave the Azores for

England if the September gales were to be avoided. On 24 July

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at about noon in about 36·5°N 47·5°W I turned the boat around

and headed downwind for São Miguel. I had no regrets at the

time but I soon became troubled about whether I was doing the

right thing, whether I was not simply accepting failure.’

On arriving back in Plymouth after three months away Mike said that he felt

like the New England whaling captain who, returning after a year or so away

remarked, ‘No, we saw no whales but we had a damned fine cruise’.

Now, at the age 87, Mike has finally come ashore but that has not deterred

further recognition of his place at the forefront of navigational development. He

had already received just about every honour in the navigational world but last

year they invented a new one, the International Association of Institutes of

Navigation making him the first recipient of the Necho Award. The citation read:

‘It would be quite unrealistic to ascribe the state, and standing,

of navigation today, in comparison with that of fifty years ago, to

any one individual or particular achievement; but it is certain

that the name of Michael Richey would stand high in any list of

those who made possible that advance.’

Although we don’t often hear from John Gore-Grimes – he hardly has time to

write between his Arctic exploits – what we do hear is guaranteed to thrill. John

has become addicted to ice and is never happier than when pushing north in the

pack. Now he does it in the relative comfort of his specially strengthened Najad

441 Arctic Fern, but his early ice sorties were in his Nicholson 31 Shardana.

John gradually became increasingly ambitious and in 1988 got as far as 77º44'N

in an attempt to reach Franz Joseph Land. A repeat attempt the following year

took him to 77º51'N, and ten years later to 78º 22'N, but after five days trapped

in the ice he still did not reach his goal. When they left again in 2000 the ice was

favourable but the diplomatic situation was distinctly frosty. In response to

John’s e-mails the HQ of the Russian Armed Forces replied, ‘Due to regime

regulations foreigners are not allowed to enter the archipelago’. Nevertheless

they sailed, hoping the news would be better when they reached North Cape. It

wasn’t – in fact it was worse, as the local fishermen advised that if they proceeded

without permission they risked confiscation of the boat, imprisonment awaiting

trial and a likely $50,000 fine. But it was a good ice year and John could not

resist the lure. He takes up the story:

‘11 August was a day of thick fog and slack winds. We were still

headed for Cape Flora when suddenly a smart fishing vessel

appeared out of the fog beside us. A smooth-talking, polite Russian

called us on VHF, he said in a Russian/American accent. ‘Hello,

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my friends. Where are you coming from?’ The answer that he

wanted and probably knew already was ‘Ireland’ but I replied,

‘the North Cape’. ‘Oh, I see’, he said. ‘How many persons onboard

and where are you going to?’ ‘Six’, I replied, ‘and we are bound

for Nordausetland in Svalbard’. ‘Ah! I do not think you will get

there. There is too much ice’. ... ‘I wish you a good watch and

good sailing but please do not enter Russian Territorial Waters’.

... I wished him a good watch and good fishing but we believed

that the only ‘fishing’ done on that vessel was ‘fishing for

information’; it was bristling with aerials and had a very large

radar scanner.

During the afternoon we altered course for 81ºN 40ºE to keep

clear of the territorial waters of Franz Josef Land. As I looked at

the chart I spotted a small dot. It said Victoria Island beside it.

On checking the Arctic pilot we learned that the flag of the USSR

had been hoisted on Ostrov Viktoriya in 1933. I had an

aeronautical chart showing the world above 80° and the island

appeared clearly on it at 80°09'N 36°4'E. No one on board had

ever heard of this island before.

The fog rolled in and the wind disappeared. Visibility was down

to one cable but we could still see the fulmars swooping out of

the fog as they circled the boat. There were puffins about and,

for the first time, we sighted little auks. The presence of these

little birds is usually a sign that ice is not too far away. The sea

temperature at 79°04'N was +2°C. All of the ice signs were there

but as we were to learn later, the ice front was still about 38

miles to the north of us.

We turned off the sat-phone and the VHF as we entered Russian

Territorial Waters. All transmitters and receivers were turned off

with the exception of the occasional use of the hand-held GPS,

for fear that they would betray our position. There was a quiet

anxiety aboard. At 0240 on Monday 14 August we sighted Ostrov

Viktoriya. It looked like a large berg with snow and ice cliffs

falling down to the sea. The water temperature was –0·2°C. As

we got closer we could see the summit of the island which is 344

metres high. At the top there was a building with a round

casagrane dish on it. As we came to within four miles we scanned

every bit to see if there was any sign of human habitation. The

depth suddenly dropped and we moved away to round a low

point at its west end. If the place was occupied we knew that we

were in deep trouble but using the binoculars we could only see

signs of wreckage and dereliction. Robert carefully looked at a

hut which seemed to have windows and a door and as we got

closer he could make out that the windows and doors had been

forced open by ice. He trained the binoculars carefully on this

hut to see if there was any sign of smoke or perhaps the shimmer

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Pause for ice – Arctic Fern near Svalbard

284

of diesel fumes from the chimney. There was none.

Our hand-held GPS gave a position of 80°09'N 36°43'E and the

walruses played around us with amused curiosity. Our difficulty

was to row ashore in a rubber dinghy without getting a playful

puncture from one or more of the walrus tusks. Reggie, Robert

and I rowed ashore when the walruses departed to play their

games in another part of the ocean. We were armed with a ·375

rifle and a shotgun with cartridges fitted with heavy stainless

steel shot in case of polar bear attack. A young polar bear jumped

out of the snow and dashed over the brow of the hill.

This station had been one of many which were set up to spy on

the West and, later, on NATO activities along the Norwegian border.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union both money and motivation

ran out. This extraordinary place was a frozen museum of the

cold war. In among the Nissen hut dormitories we came upon the

dead body of a full grown polar bear. It cannot have been dead

for long because the skuas had not started to feed on it. In fact

the poor bear would have made a bad meal for the skuas because

there was hardly a pick of flesh on it. It looked as if it had died

from starvation. To reach 80°09'N without ice is an unusual

experience. Apart from the remote chance of picking out a young

walrus there was nothing else to eat on the island. The seals had

gone north to the ice edge. The prospects of survival for the

young bear looked bleak.

After a quick swim, we set off from Ostrov Viktoriya and steered

090° true E.’

John has been back again since this sortie of course, but 2003 was just a

routine run around the northern islands. After calling in at Akureyri on the north

coast of Iceland he made two stops in east Greenland before continuing to

Spitsbergen. On the way home he called at North Cape and the Faeroes and

then headed back to Dublin. In seven weeks they had made almost the equivalent

of a north Atlantic circuit, much of it in ice, but that is the way John likes it.

And now a legend of whom we have heard before, but whose latest exploits

certainly qualify Denise Evans for our pantheon of latter day heroes. Denise is

the widow of Sir Charles of Himalayan fame, having been the deputy to Hunt

on the 1953 Everest, expedition for which he was knighted. Charles and Denise

were both sailors and climbers until illness forced his retirement, first from the

mountains and later the sea, but he backed Denise in her ambition to explore

further and further under sail right up to his death in 1995. Her Barton Cup

cruise in 1991 to the Magellan Straits was described in Chapter 13.

Her next cruise, shortly after Charles died, when she sailed to and climbed a

mountain in Greenland which he had always wanted to climb, was only marginally

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less arduous. In 2001she went the other way and sailed to Spitsbergen, with

the express intention of making a passage through the Hinlopen Strait. Again

she had a cargo of hairy young whose brawn made up for their lack of

experience, though space aboard Dunlin of Wessex, her trusty Tradewind 33,

must have been at a premium.

The passage to the archipelago was without incident and they worked their

way clockwise to the entrance to the Strait only encountering small amounts of

ice but plenty of fog. A weather window opened with the Strait flat calm and

ice free, but a gale was in the offing so they had to go or fly for shelter. They

went, and had to use the engine for most of the 120 mile passage to the next

good shelter in the Freemansundet, but before they reached it they encountered

broken ice and fog. Denise describes the next three days:

‘The entrance to Freemansundet was only about twenty miles

away and we needed to decide whether to go on into the sound

in nil visibility, trusting we could get past any ice that might be

there, or head southeast in the hope of finding open water.

Speaking to the weather station in Tromso on the MF we were

disturbed, though not surprised, to get a gale warning of NE force

8–9 by midnight. Our barometer was still reading 1010 millibars.

There were no new ice reports, the state of Freemansundet was

still unknown and with a gale coming on my reaction was to head

for open water, if it could be found.

During the afternoon and evening the NE wind picked up

steadily. Reefing down in good time, we were able to keep on an

easterly course through very open drift. Visibility improved for a

while, allowing us to see a couple of hundred yards ahead, and it

was a great thrill to spot three polar bears, probably a mother

and two cubs, huddled together on a small floe, looking thoroughly

dejected. We were none too happy ourselves as the space

between floes diminished. Jeremy climbed to the crosstrees to

look for a way through the pack to the south, but the ice was

thicker there. Taking in a third reef as the wind reached gale

force, we went about. The best thing to do, it seemed to us, was

to tack to and fro until the gale abated or visibility improved. In

that way we could explore the limits of our confinement but keep

in relatively open water in the middle of the strait. Dunlin will

beat into force 8 but no more, and it was fortunate the gale

never reached force 9. After about two hours on the port tack we

would come up against a barrage of ice, looming white through

the fog, and go about. It was like a sinister game of blind man’s

buff and we covered many extra miles.

Taking two-hour spells at the helm, we kept up our tacking

strategy for the rest of that night and the whole of the next day,

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snatching what sleep we could, fully dressed. It was miserably

cold on deck in the sleet and snow, which quickly clung to the

rigging and formed slabs on the mainsail, only to be shaken

down over the helmsman at every gust. Handling wet, icy sheets

made our fingers numb and useless in a matter of moments. I

could imagine what it must have been like for the early navigators,

having to over-winter in some frozen fastness, hemmed in by

the pack.

By the evening of 1st August we were once more about 20

miles northeast of Freemansundet when the wind dropped briefly

and the fog lifted, so we laid a course for the entrance to the

sound. We had been on the go for about five days, the last three

without proper food or sleep, and I was determined to anchor if

it was at all possible.’

It would be wrong to leave Willy Ker, out of our roll call, although his 2003 cruise

was modest by his standards. One of his boyhood heroes was Gino Watkins, who

had explored Greenland’s east coast in open boats some 70 years earlier,

eventually being lost while hunting seal alone in a kayak. There had been a

wooden memorial cross above the fjord where he was drowned and Willy

wished to pay respects to his legendary predecessor. He had tried on three

previous occasions to reach Ammassalik, where the cross was said to stand,

but had always been forced back by either ice or pressure of time. Having

reached the age of 79 Willy deemed it prudent to ship a young hand instead of

his usual solo cruising, so took his youngest grandson as far as Iceland, there

swapping him for his older brother. Willy’s confidence in Assent, his well-

travelled Contessa 32, is impressive:

‘After a day’s shakedown, we were away at noon on 31st July.

With Kap Dan 330 miles to the west and bearing 263°, the forecast

northeast gale would give us a fast passage. It was soon blowing

very freshly, with an awkward quartering sea, but with three

reefs in the main and the jib rolled down to a pocket-handkerchief,

we were making excellent progress. The log for 1st August read,

‘24hr run, 155 miles – just about a record for Assent’. We were

keeping our fingers crossed that the gale would blow itself out

before we had to dodge icebergs!’

But even Willy has to give in occasionally:

‘We were away early and went out into shallow fog, meeting

increasing ice as we approached Ailsa 0. The fjord was full of

bergs and bergy bits. However the sun came through and we

threaded our way to the head where we anchored behind a line

of grounded bergs near Gino’s base camp. It is a lovely spot with

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a first class Arctic char stream, and we had hoped to be able to

stay long enough to search for traces of the expedition, as well

as the memorial cross, but we then picked up a Navtex gale

warning for our area. Perhaps a steel yacht with a lifting keel

could have run up onto the sandy beach and been safe from

wind and ice. Regretfully we had to cut and run.’

Willy had fulfilled his ambition of at least visiting the site of Watkins’ demise,

even if he hadn’t found the memorial cross, so happily shaped a course for

home. On the way to Kulusuk to drop off his grandson at the airport they found

a cosy anchorage for the night:

‘When we got there we found a barrier of very big icebergs,

which I thought were aground, and we happily wriggled our way

into the fjord. There were some largish floes that gave us a

restless night, but the real concern in the morning was that the

bergs were on the move and the gaps had closed. I rowed the

dinghy down to do a recce and could see a way out; however by

the time we had got the anchor and were on the move, those gaps

had closed. Stuart doing lookout on the bow was not a bit ruffled

– “OK, grandpop, this way” etc – but I could see the rams jutting

out below and was mightily relieved when we were finally clear.

It was grand having Stuart with me and I was sorry to lose

him; now I would make my way home, by easy stages, via my

friends in Iceland and Ireland.’

Interestingly, ten years earlier most of the icemen were messing about round

Cape Horn and the Peninsula, but in the early 2000s they all went north. John

Gore-Grimes for his ‘milk run’into the ice, Willy to his beloved Greenland, Bob

Shepton to shin up a few icy mountains, Denise to cross off the Hinlopen and,

to complete the quartet, Paddy Barry and Jarlath Cunnane fulfilled another dream.

Paddy gives the excuse:

‘Jarlath, myself, and climber Frank Nugent, with our Antarctic

Shackleton re-run now three years behind us, considered that it

was time for another worthwhile outing, the North West Passage,

which only twelve vessels have completed since Roald Amundsen

did it first in 1903–6. Jarlath’s boat Lir, at 34ft being too small,

and my gaff-rigged Galway Hooker Saint Patrick being unsuitable,

we decided to build an aluminium vessel, purpose designed for

polar expeditions.’

It was a particularly good ice year, allowing them to get beyond Thule on the

North West coast of Greenland with relative ease while waiting for the ice to

clear at the start of the passage proper. Modern communications make it an

288

The tuneful Irishmen

The one that got away – or is Willy Ker describing

a tight lead through the ice?

289

altogether different game to that of the early explorers, whose only recourse

was to keep trying until they found a way. Paddy and Jarlath were able to

interrogate the various shore stations which keep satellite watch and even spoke

a passing icebreaker. Thus they were able to pick their time, but this does not

lessen the achievement:

‘On Tuesday 7 August at 0400 UT we rounded Cape Sherard and

entered Lancaster Sound. The North West Passage proper was

begun. Conditions were perfect – clear visibility, bergs only, flat

sea and light northerly breeze, cold. Our spirits were high. We

stood southwesterly to clear the pack-ice reported heavy on the

northern side of the Sound. Sure enough its hard white edge

could be seen, with the mountains of Devon Island behind.

Beechey Island, with its Franklin remains, was unfortunately

inaccessible to us because of ice, as was Resolute. Peel Sound

awaited, largely ice-free – marvellous. Peel Sound is a great icy