GREENLAND SAGAS OF THE MODERN KIND

Rev Bob Shepton

(Bob has written for Flying Fish no less than eight times over the past ten years, chronicling a succession of challenging - and often high latitude - passages aboard his 33ft Westerly Discus sloop Dodo's Delight. The summer of 2000 saw him return to old haunts on the coast of Greenland.)

I tell the sagas against myself. As the saying goes, 'There's no fool like an old fool', and I should have realised by now that to sail in remote regions, with ice, with novice crews might be a wee bit stressful. But then Tilman did it all the time, and this was intended as another voyage in the Tilman tradition, sailing to the west coast of Greenland and climbing mountains from the boat.

For me it seems that the worst part of any expedition or project is the preparation, and the worst part of that is often collecting the crew or crews. Fortunately this time Graham, a friend from ski instructing who was also a mountain guide, knew Paolo and Alberto, two Italian guides who, like him, were experts at the highly specialised game of big wall climbing. So with his Austrian partner Geli in support, the climbing team - who were to fly out to join us later - were in place long before the sailing crew. And here it was the usual thing: people were undecided, or had medical problems or commitments which might or might not allow them to come. Dudley gave a commitment early on to come as mate, but that still only made two of us. I finally managed to persuade Jim - who had sailed with me as a lad at the school where I was chaplain - that he should do an ocean passage, and then an Australian relative who had done a little sun-drenched coastal sailing off Perth but fortunately had no knowledge of the grey north Atlantic flew over, and an Australian friend of his who had never sailed before but thought it a good idea came too. So from being but two we suddenly had a full crew, even if slightly lacking in ocean experience!

No two Atlantic passages are ever the same, and the abiding memory of this crossing was of too little wind, in distinct contrast to last time when we had two gales, a storm and a knock-down! We took our offing through the Sound of Mingulay, and had to motor in high pressure for two days until the wind came in, at last. There followed three days of reasonable sailing before a huge high pressure system began to establish itself right across the Atlantic from Greenland to Scotland. This was most unusual, and by now we were beginning to get concerned about the amount of diesel remaining. Dodo's Delight is, after all, meant to be a sailing boat and only carries 35 gallons of diesel plus a spare container for emergencies. We inched along with the engine running on low revs to preserve fuel, sailing in anything above 4 knots of wind. It was fast becoming Ancient Mariner stuff, but at least we did have fresh water, for the moment.

Eventually our snail's pace across the ocean was replaced by three or four days of force 6-7, but right on the nose. There was a low pressing isobars hard up against a huge high of 1040 mbs - I don't ever remember seeing one as high as that before. We bounced and crashed with water over the top. Having been forced too far north, in lessening wind we tacked south, making little progress towards our destination. But next morning, 250 miles from Cape Farewell, we were at last able to lay a more favourable course. The sun even tried to come out, and Jim brought all his bedding up from the forecabin in an attempt to dry it out. In spite of my best efforts in the spring fitting-out the forehatch still leaked, but luckily even in these effete days one can still find tough crew! The Aussies arose from their bunks, where they had been confined for several days with mal de mer - doubtless Tilman, in his inimitable manner, would have had a pithy proverb here concerning those from down under, but to be fair they had manfully stood their watches however ill they felt, and at least nobody had asked to divert to Iceland to jump ship, as had happened to Tilman!

A small navigational error on the part of the skipper brought us a bit too far north towards Cape Farewell, and in the morning we found ourselves wending our way through bergy bits and growlers, but still with all plain sail. Unfortunately the wind then headed us again and became variable, and we had to sail and motor-sail, tacking our way round Kap Desolation and up the Davis Strait. There was a close encounter (fortunately not quite literally) with a big iceberg which loomed suddenly out of the mist dead ahead, giving the helmsman a nasty shock. But next day we found ourselves tacking in light airs and brilliant sunshine with the majestic, mountainous coastline of southwest Greenland and some scattered bergs in sight. As I wrote at the time in the log: "What more could you want in life? Well, a little more wind perhaps".

This crew seemed to drink a lot, but at least it was of water, and this we solved by pausing on one of the few clear sunny days in the Davis Strait, launching the dinghy, and picking up lumps of brash ice which we then brought back to the boat and melted down to replenish our supply. Sea ice usually gives fresh water of course, and was ideal lacing a wee celebratory dram! But finally we had to put into Paamiut anyway to replenish our diesel after all those calms, and here we met an old Danish retired ships' carpenter who was building his own gaff-rigged wooden sailing cutter. It is unusual to find locally-owned sailing boats in Greenland, let alone one built there, and in wood.

We took the inner passage approaching Nuuk to avoid a boisterous sea in the Davis Strait, visited old friends at the Boat Club there, and stayed a few days for rest and refreshment before continuing to tack up the Davis Strait in a mixture of strong northerlies or flat calms. En route we put in to the 15 mile long scenic fjord of Kangerdluarssugssuaq to climb a couple of unclimbed peaks, with the boat anchored below in Tilman style. Then from Ilulissat onwards the sailing crew gradually left and it was time for the hard climbers to arrive.

After picking up the first two and sailing north by easy stages for a preliminary reconnaissance, fortuitously meeting Northanger in an inlet on their way south after wintering in the ice at Ellesmere Island, we returned to the picturesque harbour of Uummannaq before commuting back across to the airstrip at Qaarsut to pick up the Italians. If embarking impecunious climbers, it is just possible to anchor off the beach to the north of the airfield to save the expense of the helicopter hop to Uummannaq, though launching the dinghy from the beach in any surf with all the climbing gear can be a problem.

With Paolo and Alberto and all their gear safely aboard, we motored that afternoon and night across the wide mouth of Uummannaq fjord in calm conditions, until next morning the wind rapidly increased and I came on deck to find Graham struggling with the helm. We reefed the main, turned off the engine, and tacked out to avoid an awkward outlying reef off the peninsular of Svartenhuk. When our Austrian member came up for her watch she was frankly terrified, but this was understandable - there is not a lot of sea in Austria, and she had never been on a boat before. After she had been on watch for a while and realised the boat was not going to tip over and could on the whole handle the conditions, she regained her confidence. However I was never quite sure that her hard-climbing, British, male partner ever gained real confidence at sea, which initially rather surprised me. But then, as he said, mountains and not sea were his thing, which is fair enough.

We struggled on, reaching under triple-reefed main, eventually getting some protection from the seas when we passed the headland. But when another headland threw the wind all around, and after it had gusted first to 51 and then to 56 knots, I decided enough was enough, handed all sail, and we lay-a-hull and drifted. Having been doing all the helming I was exhausted and fell into my bunk and was instantly asleep. The poor Italians - not a lot of sea in Italian mountain villages either - had been confined to theirs throughout.

Now climbers by nature have a yearning for land, and there was land in sight, and all my seaman-like protestations that "in a storm it's better to stay out at sea" did not seem to be that well received. Waking half an hour later, I bowed to the inevitable and put the engine on and motored at a slant to the wind and waves for the coastline. It was a long haul, and I did say as we approached, I hope not out of sour grapes, "I have to say I don't think this (anchoring in a gale) will work". But eventually we made it into a U-shaped harbour formed by an incredible natural gravel breakwater, which we had discovered on a previous passage. It was, however, open to the east and the gale was from the southeast, but by tucking into a small inlet close to the refuge hut on shore - presumably to do with the winter dogsledding route - we had protection from the wind and waves raging a little further out. I have seldom been so glad to be wrong! We laid out 40m of chain in 4m of water, with an angel down the chain, and another anchor with chain and warp as a back-up. I arranged an anchor watch, fell into my bunk, and was again instantly asleep. On waking four hours later, what had happened to the anchor watch? But by then it was flat calm anyway.

When we reached Upernavik the team made the first ascent of the North Wall of Sandersons Hope at 72° 43'N, though it was not quite as simple as that! This was a tremendous, ground-breaking achievement on behalf of the 'lads', my international team of star climbers. It was a direct ascent of the prime line up this huge, sweeping, compact, granite wall, involving 1045m of highly technical, specialised climbing, and of course it had never been done before. And whilst this may be the biggest wall there, it is also in an area studded with big walls and sweeping climbs in dramatic fjords, all so far unknown and undeveloped. Hopefully one consequence of the ascent will be to open up this area for climbers in the future - and yachtsmen too, as we attempted some pilotage of further likely anchorages in this scenic cruising area whilst we were there. It took the team six days of climbing over a fourteen day period, employing siege tactics and coming down to the comfort of the boat each evening. And it was just as well that they did do it this way, because the course of the climbing was continually interrupted by bad weather in 2000's strangely poor Greenlandic summer, and on occasion they had to wait for two or three frustrating days before the weather cleared and the rock dried. Indeed, they finally had to force the last section in icy conditions, climbing on into the, by now, dark night - and then of course the next day dawned clear and sunny.

I can write in such glowing terms because I found it necessary to stay and look after the boat (somebody had to!). But as a sailing, climbing, explorer in my retirement it was for me eminently satisfying that it was an ascent from a boat in the Tilman tradition, up this famous navigational headland named by John Davis in 1587 as his offing from Greenland to Baffin in search of the North West Passage. But really it was taking Tilman to extremes, since it was only possible to get the team onto the wall in the first place directly from a boat, as the cliff dropped straight into the sea.

This involved all sorts of adventures, and was really 'no way to treat a lady' - or even my boat! To establish a system at all we had first to nose the bow right up to the cliff, even though in places nearby the echo-sounder read only 1m with the wall shelving underneath. From there Alberto, our tallest member, could step from the pulpit to gain a ledge system on the wall above. We tried a system of pallets suspended on lines from climbing bolts driven into the wall, which was especially good for landing the immense amount of equipment needed for such a specialised climb, and initially also for the lads to jump onto from the boat as I gingerly motored past in the swell. But soon the spring tides and big swell destroyed the system, so we reverted to backing the dinghy against the wall, enabling the lads to grasp the trailing lines and jump onto the wall at the top of a swell before jumaring up their fixed lines to the previous day's high point. All rather unusual boating, and climbing, but it worked!

The passage south afterwards was also not without incident. An evening and a day of motoring in gentle conditions led us back to 'our' harbour with its natural gravel breakwater - we were anchoring for the night now, for fear of ice in the six hours of darkness. As we approached the anchorage we were suddenly surrounded by a host of local Inuit dories with powerful outboard engines, which had come up unawares astern (the watchkeeper was sitting on the gas bottle astern writing postcards in the sun!). We were then treated to a duck shooting gala, first in the fjord outside and then in the harbour. They were stocking up for the winter and, with modern boats and rifles, the ducks hadn't a chance. They were certainly not going to starve that winter!

Later, still on the west coast of Greenland, we were subjected to the sort of pressure that seems more appropriate to the south coast of Britain: there were planes to catch and schedules to keep, and with the barometer plummeting and darkness to be considered, and the weatherfax refusing to receive, should we put out and cross the 40 mile wide mouth of Uummannaq fjord with all its ice or not? We had already diverted and anchored in the large bay inside Kap Cranston, to avoid a nasty blow outside with our inexperienced crew, but when the wind died in the afternoon I took the decision to make a mad dash across before the barometer went right through the cabin sole.

First we motored through the band of icebergs coming down from the glaciers in distant Karrat Fjord, then we motor-sailed with a reefed main before we finally sailed, all in increasing wind but with clear, cloudless skies in spite of the plummeting barometer. We rigged a spotlight and doubled the watches, but when darkness came we were saved by a full moon shining on the water, and lack of brash ice amongst the growlers and bergs. There was a nasty moment later on, while sailing at speed in the final approaches to Nugssuta - the western point of the peninsular which forms the southern arm of Uummannaq fjord - when we came upon a field of brash and growlers from a collapsed berg. But we managed to miss the growlers and the bigger bits at least and were soon through, before rounding the point in what was by now a near gale, giving it a fair offing as there are outlying rocks marked on the chart. We rounded up some distance back to tuck in behind the headland, to sleep and calm our nerves. Tilman would undoubtedly have found some proverb to quote at this juncture. Perhaps it would have been 'Fortune favours the bold' - or should that read 'foolish'?

More wind and more ice down the Vaigat, the long and dramatic channel between snow-covered peaks which leads between Disko Island and the mainland peninsular, broad-reaching but keeping the engine on just in case. Next morning we awoke to a soaring barometer and falling snow - there's just no understanding arctic weather! And so on to Ilulissat, where the Italian climbers speedily disembarked with obvious sighs of relief, and finally to Aasiaat, where I left Dodo's Delight for her winter rest - and to continue the saga in 2001.

POSTSCRIPT

Dodo's Delight made landfall back in Scotland just before Flying Fish went to the printers in October 2001. Bob e-mailed me:

Just got in from Paamiut, Greenland, to find 58 e-mails. Flying Fish is one of the first to get a reply, of course!

This year we managed to repeat Tilman's north/south traverse of Bylot Island (North Baffin), on skis, and made eight first ascents of peaks en route. It took ten days, with difficult glacial streams to cross. The girls (sorry Tilman!) added a new north/south traverse - the Murray-Wright traverse - but climbed no peaks as they had not taken enough food and were starving! Still, it was a nice change for Polly Murray from climbing Everest!

We also managed seven first ascents on skis of summits towards the Greenland ice cap, after a horrendous two day walk in to the final approach glacier carrying all the gear over ice bridges, glaciers, and lateral and terminal moraines.

Now we've brought Dodo's Delight back for a bit of TLC, but in good nick in spite of a stormy passage. We had to go south and a little west to get round Post Tropical Storm Gabrielle, which had the cheek to trek up to Greenland instead of going out into the Atlantic. Two Force 9 gales on the way over - running before under bare poles and lying a hull - and lot of strong winds and very dark nights, but all in all a good crossing - 20 days for 2400 miles. We have some new recruits for the OCC!