How to Read Water by Tristan Gooley

Oh joy, look what came in the post today! Tristan's latest book, "How to read water". Very much looking forward to reading then reviewing it properly.

I must admit the first bit I read was the very last few pages in Chapter 20,  "Uncharted Water: An Epilogue".

It seemed rather familiar and left me wanting to go sailing right now, somewhere cold, remote and wild.

Arctic Forum by Arthur Beale

Yesterday evening I went to a talk called "Arctic Forum" arranged by London's best ship's chandler, Arthur Beale.

We heard about two voyages from the UK, one from the nearby St. Katharines dock, up to 80N and Spitzerbergen. It was all very interesting and if I had a first choice of places to sail this year it would indeed be the Svalbard archipelago.

There was lots of good advice from people who'd actually sailed there, such as this:

For those that didn't go, this book on "High Latitude Sailing" includes lots and lots of good advice for expedition planners.

Afterwards there was a Q&A which I didn't contribute, though I was tempted to comment, relating to a discussion about the best heater to use, that from personal experience it was indeed possible to sail inside the Arctic Circle in an unheated 32' Contessa.

Or that advice about what to do when you land on a beach to find yourself sharing it with a polar bear (obv. get back to the yacht) is not academic but actually very practical. Also, there was nothing about what to do when out kayaking and you find yourself joined by a polar bear (which happened to a friend of mine).

But the key message is one I'd echo: we are lucky that in the UK we are not that many days sailing from some of the most pristine and beautiful wild landscapes in the world.



Update: interesting article on Arthur Beale in the Telegraph here

Jimmy Cornell at the Cruising Association

Jimmy Cornell has had the impact on world cruising for which words like "legend" start being used. His World Cruising Routes is said to have sold 200,000 copies and is on Brian of Delos's Required Reading List.

He set up the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers which I did many years ago (totally fab) and a week ago gave a talk in the Cruising Association about his successful transit of the North-West passage.

However initial impressions were not of a hardened sea salt but a fussy man, complaining that the meal was being served before the talk not, as is usually the case, in the interval. "Its not right" he muttered, as knives and forks clattered on plates. Plus the lights were all wrong as was the microphone. He decided to wait until people had finished eating then began anyhow.

He started by describing his trip to Antarctica and Cape Horn plus his totally dream-worthy Exploration 45 foot aluminium yacht Aventura IV (above, which I so want).

Then it was off from London, heading out under the Tower Bridge which lifted in salute on the 31st of May 2014 for his first attempt at the NW passage. They sailed up to Orkney and headed west, as the southern tip of Greenland has almost the same latitude. Up the west coast then across to Baffin Island, polar bears and the first serious ice.

It turned out to be more than just serious, as 2014 turned out to be a bad year for ice and they had to turn back. Even so they almost got iced in, with Cornell's granddaughter, one of the crew, fearing they'd be stuck there for 10 months.

This year he tried again from west to east, which has the advantage that the ice tends to clear in that order and to cut a long story short was successful, sailing through to the Atlantic and then down to London, to head under Tower Bridge on the 18th of September.

There were some more interesting moments, such as how he admitted he did the cooking as he is fussy (his word this time) about the mess that others cause. He also admitted he'd become a sterner skipper. "Can't afford to be nice all the time" he said, not with ice around.

In the Q&A session one question was particularly interesting: what were his over-wintering plans?

Didn't have any, he said, which puzzled me. If I were heading into the NW passage where ice is unpredictable and risks of wintering, while low, are definitely not zero, I'd have a plan.

But it was a key to his character, namely his confidence in himself and his determination. He'd find something, he was sure: he was prepared to make mistakes but stubborn so able to find a solution. That, coupled with a Romanian fatalism "if its going to happen, it's going to happen".

"Don't always think of consequences, otherwise you'd do nothing" he said.

For a potter round the Solent, maybe, but a trip into the NW passage with your granddaughter?

Maybe the "hmm.." I'm mentally thinking now is why I've never sailed around the world once let alone three times, nor set up several hugely successful yachting rallies, let alone completed a NW passage.

Ming Ming II Talk at the Cruising Association

On Wednesday I managed to briefly escape work and headed east to the Cruising Association's HQ in London's Limehouse Basin for a talk by Roger Taylor about single handed high latitude sailing.

I've been wondering how to write up what he said given I'm still struggling work wise, but then the answer became clear.

In the first half of his talk he covered the voyages of the original Mingming - which he wrote up in two good books which I've already blogged about (for example, here)

In the second half of his talk (after an excellent dinner was served) he played the video of his voyages in Mingming 2 up to Bear Island and back via Jan Mayen - which you can watch for yourself (click above for sample).

To be honest I only re-watched for a few minutes but then got distracted by the latest update from S/v Delos:


Top tip for all sailing vloggers - this is the level of quality to aim for, with excellent shooting and editing.

I might even say Sweet!

Blogging family heads into the NW passage

My eye keeps getting drawn north.

First I read Arctic Labyrinth all about the discovery of the NW passage, then I open up Yachting Monthly to read (again) about Sumara of Weymouth's trip to Jan Mayen, then I start my next book which is Bob Shepton's Addicted to Adventure which will end up with him - you guessed it - making the NW passage.

The eagle eyed will also spot that the blog roll delete after one year no-posts rule is on hold as the next to delete is "Northwest passage on a shoestring" which was a rather cool trip.

So I was very intrigued when read over on Windtraveler that blogging friends of theirs were planning on taking their family through the NW passage and looking for crew.

Oh my gosh.

Alas having been off sick there's a lot of work to catch up on and its really not a good time to head into the wildest parts of the world for months on end.

Bother.

Anyhow I pinged off an email to wish Salty Kisses good luck plus listing my experience (in putting together Lego kits that is) and got a nice reply.

If you're interested and have the time drop them a line though I think they might have some candidates already.

Book Review: Arctic Labyrinth by Glyn Williams

It's the time of year when Tillerman has to dig himself out of his house and here in London we even had a 10 minute flurry of snow (that was gone 10 minutes later).

But what is better when its cold and dark than a book about travelling to where it freezes really hard and long, where ships get locked in ice for years on end and whole expeditions just vanish.

I really, really enjoyed Arctic Labyrinth: The Quest for the Northwest Passage. I've sailed to the Arctic Circle and to Greenland but this is in another league: the European exploration of the high Arctic.

And there were so many expeditions, each discovering just a tiny bit of the sprawls of islands, rocks and channels between what is now Canada and the Pole. They were hunting for a route to far Cathay, but often found just myth or loss.

Step by step each voyage turned the unexplored into charts. Davis Straight and Baffin Bay, then Hudson Strait and Hudson Bay. A long time exploring around its edges, into the heartland, following rivers to lakes and then down again to strange unrecognised shores, the first hints of the eventual Northwest Passage.

Sometimes you got a strong hint as to what each mission would find by the choice of captain, for they were not shy about the cartographers equivalent of the selfie. Which island, for example, do you think Captain Vancouver would find himself sailing to?

Many would end up locked in the ice for winter after winter, but most returned. Of course Franklin and crew famously did not, leaving just a series of grisly clues as to what happened. But they so nearly did find the NW passage, as one reason they were not found was they had gone further than anyone thought possible.

It was to be left Amundsen to finally get through in a small boat and copying Inuit methods, taking twelve sledge dogs with him.

It also reminded me of Arthur Ransome's Winter Holiday, where the Swallows, Amazon's and D's would leave messages in a cache: this practice was apparently common amongst the real polar explorers.

The north beckons many, heading for those empty spaces untouched by modern life. Yet it is due to human driven climate change that those waters are opening up, even to adventurous cruising sailors.

If like me you can't quite see how you can sail away from work long enough for a NW passage try this book.

Curl up somewhere warm and dream of lands cold but wonderful.

The danger of electronic charts

Electronic charts are great - I like them so much I must have bought Iceland about 3 times - for iPhone, iPad and iNavX.

But they have a gotcha that can get even the best navigators, as the Volvo Ocean Race's Team Vesta found out to their cost - see this post on SA via Noodle.

Take the patch of water above, which is just north of Iceland, viewed today using the Navionics Web App. Looks pretty clear doesn't it?  Contours at 200 m and 500 m, just great, clear sailing. One island called Grimsey near the coast but when sailing there in 2012 we were far away.

Only it isn't clear at all. Take that harmless sounding reference to Kobeinsey (which I've added a red circle around). It looks like a description of that patch of water but look what you see if you zoom in:

This is from the Navionics charts on the iPhone for the same region, zoomed into so you can see that Kolbeinsey is actually a small island, or maybe a large rock.

Ok, it might be just 7.5 metres or so across but that would have been enough for us to prang Goldeneye something nasty when we sailed there in 2012. Confession time: it wasn't me that spotted this but Tristan: good thing one of us was awake.

But it shouldn't be like this: charting software should always show land, even when zoomed out.

Until then, let's be careful out there.



Updated: very interesting article about the wrecking of Team Vesta by Yachting World's Elaine Bunting here.

Talk on Sumara of Weymouth's Expedition to Jan Mayen

On Thursday evening I went along to the central London ship chandler of Arthur Beale Ltd for a talk by Alasdair of the Sumara of Weymouth about their trip up to Jan Mayen and ascent of the mighty Beerenberg.

I really enjoyed it: even though I'd followed the story on their blog and watched the YouTube videos hearing it all in one go certainly gave a better feel of the expedition.

It took a lot of planning, over 3 years. What struck me was the comment that maybe as many as 100 people were involved in ways big and small. To keep the wider group in touch there were newsletters and meetups.

There was useful tips about training (ice work in the Alps, some half marathons to keep the strength up and weight down, camping expeditions) and gear (the 15 kg Rocna anchor is apparently the one of choice).

Most of the talk was of the voyage north over three summers: the first and last year's tasks involved delivery of Sumara between the London estuary and the Scottish highlands.

I must admit I got rather misty eyed hearing about the sailing part:

• When Alastair talked about his transit of the Faroes I was remembering navigating between those islands in 2012
• When he talked about meeting Siggi on Aurora and encountering ice in the Denmark Strait I could picture my bunk in that yacht and sailing her between ice bergs as we escaped engine failure in the Kangerdlugssuaq Fjord
• When he talked of climbing the extinct volcano of Snaefellsjokull I remember a bumpy night's sail passing it with Tristan in Goldeneye
• And then there was Isafjordur and Reykjavík...

It was such a shame I got sick this year so couldn't go north again!

On display was the Tilman award they received for their climb of Beerenberg:

A very enjoyable evening and talk, with two more to come, so check out the calendar of events at Arthur Beale. The next one early November is about Albert Strange and then the one in December about Bill Tilman - by someone who I met at the talk who actually sailed with him!

Worth putting that in the diary.

Assent and Willy Ker

Really interesting multi-media YouTube clip of an interview with high latitude sailor Willy Ker, famous for his single handed expeditions on his yacht Assent, by Jessie Rogers, wife of Kit Rogers, builders of the Contessa range of yachts.

When doing the Arctic Circle sail our Contessa 32 was checked over by Kit Rogers and we used Willy Ker's pilot book to the Faroes, Iceland and Greenland on the way.

Tom Cunliffe sails to Greenland

It's been a manic work week here, hence the lack of posts, but all through today's lunch-time telecon I was itching to race to the newsagent to pick up the latest Yachting Monthly.

After the article in the last but one edition about our sail to the Arctic Circle last year, this one describes how Tom Cunliffe (above centre) sailed from Iceland to Greenland - just like this year's sail.

Where as we sailed along the coast, Tom explored the huge Scoresby Sound, which sounds great, particularly the way it is out of range of telecons and emails.

Like us there was lots of fog, rock and bergy bits but unlike us no polar bears or whale meat dinners.

Sigh.

Now its back to work....

Arctic Circle Sail in latest Yachting Monthly

G'day all! Buff Staysail here! Buff by name and Buff by nature!

Well we're heading toward the weekend so no doubt you're looking forward to putting your feet up and having a good read.

And Buff's got a suggestion for you - the latest Yachting Monthly!

There's this article about sailing a Contessa 32 to the Arctic Circle by Tristan Gooley and someone else whose name escapes me.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

This is Buff Staysail, feet up reading not just looking at the pictures, over and out!

Sailing from the Arctic Circle - video

In the post on Mingming's voyages up to the Arctic Circle I embedded one of the videos Roger took. It brought back many memories as we had seen very similar views - and videoed them too.

So I unearthed the clips, uploaded one of them to YouTube and you can watch it above. But I should warn you it is really boring.

It is a bit like Waiting for Godot, but without all the drama and excitement of that play.

Unfortunately, as posted earlier, whenever we saw something interesting like dolphins or whales we were mostly too busy going "ooh!" and they were too busy disappearing again back under the waves.

So this video was just meant to capture the mood on three watches, all good ones, alone in the cockpit (or, towards the end, on the foredeck) admiring the scenes:
1) Sailing WSW towards Icelands NW coastline
2) Motoring up Iceland's NW fjords towards uncharted waters
3) Sailing S towards Reykjavik past the peak of Snaefellsjokull

Nature's Radar in the Journal of Navigation

Now the evenings have well and truly drawn in, what better than a good article to read on the topics of sailing, navigation and the natural world.

The Natural Navigator Tristan Gooley's paper based upon observations during our sail to the Arctic Circle has been published in the Journal of Navigation and in it you can learn all about how to navigate simply by counting the birds.

Download the PDF from the Natural Navigator's web site here.

The colour of water - part 2

Back in July, just before the Olympics I posted this picture:

It shows two examples of the colour of the water we saw when sailing to the Arctic Circle.

The change was dramatic, almost like the boundary between two rivers, and we crossed between the two colours several times while we were between Iceland and Greenland.

Since then I did a bit of Googling and found the picture at the top, taken by NASA's Terra satellite. It beautifully shows the phytoplankton bloom that caused this colouration.

It is also this bloom that makes these waters so rich in wildlife, such as the dolphins and whales we were lucky enough to see.

SAC: The colour of water

Before the Olympics takes over another quick post about the sail to the Arctic Circle.

I've been asked about whether the water changed colour at all, and the answer was dramatically yes it did, as can be seen in the figures above.

The left hand side shows typical dark stone gray of the North Atlantic, which is what we saw most of the time.

However when we sailed round the NW tip of Iceland the water changed colour into a creamy light blue, as can be seen on the right hand side above.

This we assumed was the East Greenland Current, which comes from the north and is fed by melting glaciers. Therefore its salinity is much lower than normal.

The encourages micro organisms to flourish and that's the colour we see (or at least that's how I understand it - if wrong please add your comments).

Sometimes you could clearly see the line in the water, like two rivers joining.

The air felt colder too, making it a more physical experience than actually crossing the Arctic Circle itself.

SAC: Sea ice animation

One of the good things about the route chosen was most of the way we didn't have to worry much about ice, which keeps within the East Greenland current and doesn't venture much west.

The only tricky spot was coming round the north west corner of Iceland, and even then most years its relatively free. But looking back on the web site there were some reports of the odd berg so I kept a regular watch on the Icelandic Met Office's web site.

Then as we approached that coast I used the Iridium phone to call some of the experts over in Greenland to get the very latest.

There was half an idea that if conditions were good we could have headed in towards Greenland but the books were right - its not until late July that you get a chance.

Anyhow I had a bit of fun stringing some of those sea ice charts together to make the animation above. There is of course a big gap in the middle when we were off sailing so I was unable to capture any of the updates.

It loops and the start is when its mostly red i.e. very close drift 9/10 to 10/10 ice.

SAC: The island of Videy

We had a day spare before our flights back to the UK and felt like stretching our legs so took the short ferry from Reykjavik to the island of Videy.

Its a good place for a walk, about 2.8 km long and only 0.6 km wide, mostly covered with long wild grass but no one lives here - now.

At one end of the island there is an abandoned village, though one thing we noticed that pretty much every house had been actively destroyed. Again and again on the information boards for each the key word of the last sentence was "demolished" but no reason was ever given.

Just in front of the landing there's a lovely little church and the mansion created by the founder of Reykjavik, Skuli Magnusson (now a nice little cafe).

Somewhere there's the Yoko Ono Imagine Peace Tower but we weren't that interested enough to find it instead admired Richard Serra's installation basalt pillars standing like a Stonehenge split into isolated pairs.

All in all a very good way to clear some cobwebs and get those walking boots muddy.

SAC: Reykjavik

We really liked Reykjavik, though we didn't see much of it.

I'd been before and Tristan wanted to return with his family later, so we didn't do the normal sights.

However we did visit the dramatic lava inspired but made of concrete church Hallgrimskirkja (above), just as at the start Tristan visited the St Magnus Cathedral at Kirkwall.

That statue standing outside is the famous Viking Leif Ericson, discoverer of America.

Its inside is elegantly minimalist:

There was also an organ with 5,285 pipes: wowsa, that's a lot.

Its definitely worth visiting, in particular as there are great views from the top of the spire (though be warned the bells can ring out while you're up there).

SAC: Paper charts vs Raymarine chartplotter vs iNavX on iPad / iPhone

Its a good idea not to rely on a single source of navigational information.

To sail to the Arctic Circle we had charts in paper form, plus chartplotter plus iNavX on iPad. On the last day before leaving in a moment of you-can't-be-too-careful I also bought the charts for iNavX on my iPhone as well.

So how did they compare?

Paper Charts

It's a good idea to have these just in case of a catastrophic failure of the electrical system and we did get them out from storage as we progressed along our route. However we didn't actually use them much, apart from when planning approaches to land, and then mostly by Tristan as I'd just pull out my always to hand iPhone.

A backup then, not the primary tool for navigation.

Raymarine Chartplotter

This was in practice the main navigation tool, located as it was on the chart table handy for the log book. It was also integrated into the other electronics, such as the VHF's DSC, the radar and the AIS (which stands for Automatic Identification System). The AIS meant that if the radar spotted something you usually could put the cursor over the target and get the ship name, heading etc and if necessary could call them over the VHF by name.

The data it used was Navionics, so actually the same charts as used by the iPhone and iPad.

Generally it worked well though there were some weird things. As previously blogged at times the change in latitude and COG were not consistent and that was worrying, particularly, such as when trying to make Reykjavik without tacking, it mattered.

The AIS sometimes seemed to think the empty seas not worth waking up for and fail to work, plus the radar could interfere with the GPS lock, but it did its job (unless you really, really needed a COG that you could trust).

iNavX on iPad

I was pretty pleased with this. It had the same Navionics chart as the chartplotter and could do similar calculations of COG, manage waypoints, routes etc. While it didn't connect to the radar and AIS it has the ability to do so (wirelessly I guess) plus it had the ability to download weather data in GRIB form.

It could also be used safely on deck due to the waterproof case which for pilotage, for example through the Faroe Islands (above), was pretty useful. It created the track which could then be exchanged via Transverse with the iPhone (and vice versa) or emailed in KML format.

This was all great but using the iPad with GPS on all through the Faroes drained the battery and then when plugged into the 12 volt socket it went all "I'm too magical for this dirty power supply" and refused to re-charge, which meant it was useless until Iceland.

Yes I did test it out on Goldeneye, but alas while attached to shore power.

Moral of story: test electronics when disconnected from shore power.

iNavX on iPhone

The iPhone was a bit more tolerant of the low amps and varying voltages of the yacht's power supply and charged just fine. The software was similar but not exactly identical to that on the iPad - sometimes in a better way (for example its easier to say "Goto waypoint" on the iPhone than iPad). Again the charts were from Navionics.

Of course the screen's a lot smaller but when the magical iPad gave up we had to rely on it for downloading and viewing GRIBS. So that last minute urge to have the iPhone as a backup to the iPad turned out to be a good one.

However the next / back on-screen buttons for the GRIBs were way too small.

There was one strange omission on iNavX on both iPad and iPhone which was the lack of tidal data (or at least I couldn't find it). But if you downloaded the Navionics application (chart) you could click on the map and see tidal flow and direction.

Conclusion

Paper charts seem expensive when you consider how they're not often used, but then they're like EPIRBs, you need then to be there just in case.

But Navionics did rather well out of us as we bought the same data four times (chartplotter, iNavX iPad, iNavX iPhone, Navionics app iPhone) which all added up.

There was no ideal do it all solution, and maybe its not right to rely on just the one. The iPad was pretty good, but would be better iNavX also had tidal flows and the magical device could be recharged.

The reality was that the Raymarine chartplotter was what we used the most, integrated as it was with the rest of the yacht's systems.

However think of this: as we approached Reykjavik the only device onboard that could reliably give us our COG and determine whether we should tack or not was a phone.

SAC: Keeping warm

It was rather cold at times so an important part of preparation was making sure we'd be able to keep warm, particularly as this particular Contessa 32 had no heating.

Three things helped:

1. Layer up. I think I had 8 layers (t-shirt, long sleeved shirt, base layer, jumper, mid layer, fleece, salopettes, oilskins) or maybe 9 (another long sleeved shirt) plus of course the lifejacket etc. It was heavy but worked

2. Bivi bag. The bivi bag lent by my friends A. & D. (who I sailed with from Lisbon to Gibraltar) was fantastic. Get inside the sleeping bag (fully dressed) and then inside the bivi bag and it would be warm and snug

3. Thermal mug. This was my treat: at the start of the watch I'd fill my LifeVenture mug with hot tea and it would keep warm until the end of the watch whether three or four hours.