THAT STORMY ATLANTIC - AGAIN

Rev Bob Shepton

(The postscript to Bob's Greenland Sagas in Flying Fish 2001/2 gave a brief preview of Dodo's Delight's latest Atlantic passage. Reading the full story, it's little wonder she needed that 'bit of TLC' mentioned in the concluding paragraph...)

It had been a good ice year in the low Arctic, but there was still the Atlantic to cross. Peter, a Danish friend in Aasiaat, West Greenland, commented "September is not a good month to cross the Atlantic". By the time we had worked our way down to Paamiut to make our offing it was 20 September. And he was right.

But why were we there? I had left Dodo's Delight, my 33ft Westerly Discus, in Aasiaat for the winter, and in spite of an untimely strike by Greenland Air the crew managed to assemble there in early July. We made our way to Akuliarusinguaq at the northern end of Uummannaq fjord, our aim on this first project being to climb, on skis, some remote 2000m summits close to the main Greenland icecap and further in from our explorations there in 1998. A hard slog from the boat ensued, as we carried rucksacks loaded with all the necessary gear up the big glacial river valley, over a raging torrent via an ice bridge, up a rock slab, over moraines and across a glacier, finally reaching the main approach glacier on the third day. We attached skins to our skis and skinned up the glacier to establish a high camp. We were into new territory now, and I cannot begin to describe the feeling of knowing that you are somewhere nobody, ever, has been before in the whole history of God's good earth. Over the next two days we surmounted six 2000+m summits on skis, and one at 1880m which had never been climbed before. It only took us two days to get back to the boat - we found a better way around the snout of a glacier, plus we were getting short of food by then!

And so it was round to the Upernavik area, where we put up two new rock climbs from the boat in this area of such huge potential. The Old Man sallied forth with the lads on one occasion - it was a rude shock suddenly to be faced with a pitch of extreme difficulty after such a long layoff from serious climbing! Andy and Mat, present and past members of the expeditionary staff at the international Aiglon College in Switzerland, flew back from Upernavik. Peter ('Maxi'), another staff member at Aiglon, stayed aboard, as did Brian the Mate. Polly Murray, the first Scotswoman to climb Everest, flew in along with Tash, and Brian's wife Pat also joined us so we could have two boatminders on board for the next project. Crew logistics in the planning for this expedition had been the usual nightmare!

We took our departure for Bylot Island, motoring and sailing north to get round the top of the Middle Pack, or West Ice as the Greenlanders call it, that band of pack-ice which stays stubbornly in the middle of Baffin Bay sometimes for the whole summer. Imagine our surprise when well north in Melville Bay we saw Northabout approaching from the south. We had met up with Paddy Barry and his all Irish crew in Upernavik on their way to the North West Passage and they had entertained us and the slightly bemused Inuit population to an impromptu open-air concert in the town square on Sunday evening with Irish fiddle, guitar and song! But in the friendly exchanges between boats moored up together, Polly had inadvertently left her valuable camera on board Northabout. Now at 75°30'N we were able to effect a handover as we motored alongside. We bade each other farewell, they continuing initially to the north west for Thule and Qaanaq, we turning south west for Bylot Island.

We were stopped 30 miles short by heavy pack-ice. After drifting up and down off the heaving, steaming pack for two nights and a day we were able to make our way around a nose sticking out to the southeast. After another night of drifting off another band of pack, we eventually anchored to the south of Cape Walter Bathurst. Next morning we were beset by pack-ice moving very rapidly into the bay. We pushed and shoved with the big sweeps we had brought from Iona for such a purpose, to keep a space open for the boat amongst the floes. Fortunately as the morning progressed the ice relented, and with more pushing and shoving, weaving and dodging, we were able to retrieve our anchor and make our way out to open water. It had been a nasty moment. One wonders how the old sailors managed in these waters without engines - it is easy to see why many were lost. But next day we were even able to get up north to Cape Liverpool where Tilman had started his traverse across Bylot Island. To repeat this, on skis, was the object of the exercise, with the girls adding a new traverse.

Polly and Tash started first and Brian acted as sherpa for the initial carry-in of the heavy packs to the first glacier. He gave us an anxious night, as walking back on his own he got lost in the featureless terrain. He even claimed to have been passed by a polar bear a hundred metres away, but we knew he was hallucinating by then! But his exertions had the unfortunate result that Maxi and I found ourselves carrying those fearfully heavy sacks with skis, boots, tent, food and climbing gear on our own across the tundra, passing, it has to be said, big fresh polar bear prints as we went.

Over the next ten days we managed to repeat Tilman and Bruce Reid's traverse on skis, making the first ascent of eight peaks on the way. It was magnificent, primeval, unspoilt glacier and mountain country, even if the bigger rushing glacial streams were difficult to cross, especially with our sleds - really glorified toboggans - which we were pulling behind us to take the weight off our backs. The girls added a longer alternative north/south traverse of their own across the island - the Murray-Wright traverse - touching Tilman's route at one point for a few kilometres. As they had not taken enough of our special lightweight expedition food with them and were soon starving, they climbed no peaks! However they completed their longer traverse in only eight days, mainly skating on their telemark skis, even if they did then have to wait another two days on the beach with virtually no food before being finally picked up by Brian and Pat, who had brought the boat round to Pond Inlet in order to collect both teams at the southern end of the island.

In Pond Inlet we were looked after royally for a week by a Royal Canadian Mounted Police couple, and then sped across a Baffin Bay amazingly devoid of all pack-ice to Upernavik, before making our way south to Ilulissat to drop Polly off for her flight home. From Aasiaat we rolled and crashed down the Davis Strait against strong southerlies, motoring in the calms by contrast, before finally making for the coast for shelter and a rest. We visited the site of the old Moravian Mission and the incredible cemetery of ancient Inuit graves near Qeqertarsuatsiaq (Fiskenaesset), and were then gale-bound by the tail end of Tropical Storm Erin which had the cheek to track up our way instead of out into the Atlantic! We berthed against the dilapidated pier in the derelict Færoese fishing harbour on the island of Ravns Storø for 36 hours, in spite of the big tidal range there. We took the first part of the inner passage south, wending our way pleasantly through the gentler 'Scandinavian' islands of this part of the coast, passing close to the massive, wide, Fredrikshab Isblink glacier with its miles of unusual sandy shoreline at its long foot, and put into Paamiut for final stores for the Atlantic.

Generously laden with gifts of caribou meat, Arctic cod and crab from new found friends in this so-called 'worst town in Greenland', we put out from Paamiut at 0620 on 20 September. The initial game plan was to work south and even a little west as Tropical Storm Gabrielle had also spun up to Cape Farewell, and we needed to keep well away. It was still a bumpy ride for a while, and we kept the radar on in case of ice now that it was dark at night, but at last in the Labrador Sea, at 54°27'N and well to the south of the latitude of Cape Farewell, we were able to tack east towards the Atlantic proper. We were keeping a wary weatherfax eye on Tropical Storm Humberto to the south, a tight ball of multiple isobars, but it finally did the right thing and spun east into the Atlantic. Entries like 'all reefs out' and 'all plain sail' appeared in the log, which was unusual, and we even saw that strange white disc called the sun. Tash and Jessy, our Cornish artist who had joined us in Ilulissat, quickly brought their sleeping bags out to dry, and soon we were once again stitching the mainsail, this time at sea whilst it was still flying.

A period of calms and then wind gave way to increasing wind as a depression that had formed off Newfoundland tracked quickly towards us, ever deepening as it came and finally dropping to 957mbs, which I had never seen before. Fortunately this passed well ahead of us and gave us strong northerly winds and good sailing for two or three days. But then a secondary satellite depression circled back towards us and we fell into its eye. I had read about the dead eye of a hurricane or a deep depression, and a very unpleasant experience it turned out to be with absolutely no wind and a very disturbed, unpredictable sea. We bounced around like a cork, with no wind to steady us. Eventually it passed and we had some breeze, quickly becoming force 5, 6 and 7, giving way to force 8-9. Having tried running on the storm jib alone we finally ran before it under bare poles through the night, with the Autosteer wind vane self-steering still coping magnificently. The sea was lively but not too huge, and the gale in the right direction for once.

In the morning the wind moderated and we again enjoyed pleasant fast sailing in force 5-7, though a wave smashed into the Lifesling astern and carried it away. We managed to retrieve the line and Lifesling, which were attached to the boat, but lost the cover in the process. We were now getting towards 20°W, but were soon thwarted by another gale, this time in the wrong direction. We tried heaving-to on a backed jib, but having once lost a mast at sea I am perhaps over-sensitive about the rigging and the sheet did seem to be putting a lot of strain pressing inwards on the cap shroud. So we lay-ahull under bare poles with the wheel lashed over for twelve hours, lying broadside on to the seas which fortunately were not too huge. I see Tash wrote in the log in her characteristic italic script, 'wind up and down from 19-49 knots' - this excellent crew never did lose their sense of humour!

It was during this part of the passage that we experimented with the trysail, and after some 89,000 miles of sailing I think I have at last found a use for it! My problem has always been that, with the foot and clew flying or loose-footed rather than attached to the boom, it has been difficult to control its setting to make it an effective driving sail in strong winds. True, when we jury rigged half the mast to sail back to the Falklands from Antarctica in 1994 we did use the trysail as a small mainsail without a boom for the 700 miles, but it really only gave some balance to the No 1 jib, set on its side and sheeted back to a stern cleat, which acted as an effective reaching sail and did the work.

Now we discovered that, by shackling a block to the end of the boom, we could attach the trysail to the boom and then control the set of the sail according to the wind by sheeting the boom in and out with the mainsheet. At first the line from the trysail was taken via the block on the boom to another block at the stern and thence to a cockpit winch, but this made controlling the boom with the mainsheet difficult because the tension to keep the trysail flat worked against it. However, when we rove the line from the trysail through the block on the end of the boom and thence to a handybilly (block and tackle) hooked to the boom's for'ard end to tension it, it all worked a treat. We could control the set of the sail using the boom and mainsheet, and how flat or full it was with the handy-billy on the boom. So we could use it at the times when we felt we needed a fourth line of reefs in the mainsail, either on or off the wind. Of course with severe gales and huge seas other tactics might be more appropriate, but it did beg the question as to why sailmakers don't give us four lines of reefs in the mainsail in the first place!

We fell into the eye of the depression again and slopped around, but then the Atlantic decided to be kind. There were even entries like 'Great sailing. Beam to close reaching. Sun and wind. Big cumulus and strato-cumulus', as we bowled along, reefing and unreefing, towards the next mythical magic mark of 10°W. When the wind began to head us and push us too far north we tacked south towards the Rockall bank. 'Clear night, good speed,' but it kept us guessing, with entries such as 'wind up, 3 reefs, No 3 jib' and even 'trysail and No 3' - with the trysail sheeted to the boom of course! But next day there came the time honoured shout of 'Land Ahoy', and Brian informed us it was Hecla, which happened also to be the name of his own boat! The wind backed astern, allowing us to goose-wing and then broad-reach towards Pabbay just north of Barra Head. Jessy conjured up a real Cornish cream tea from we know not where, and we turned further onto a reach to make our entry through the Sound of Pabbay, in daylight for once.

We shot across the Minch with northwesterly 5 and 6 on the quarter, passing a brightly lit fishing boat in the dark rainswept night off the Isle of Coll - our first sighting of a boat for over 2000 miles - before putting into Tobermory with eyes forced shut against the horizontal sleet, to moor up against a raft of fishing boats on the ferry pier. "They won't be going out in this weather", we predicted, and when they started their engines at 0600 the boat was showered with soot. Welcome to Scotland! But they did also shower the deck generously with scallops for our breakfast.

(2576 words)