SAC: More fog and another good watch

After returning into charted waters and an on-watch/off-watch cycle, we left the Jokulfirdir fjord and headed south on the final leg towards Reykjavik.

Progress was slow and we were engulfed in another cloud of fog. It seemed to hug the coastline and by heading offshore it was possible to see a hazy sun (above).

Later weather conditions improved and I had another of those great watches when everything seemed to go right. Sparkling sunshine, lovely F3/F4 and I sat on the foredeck watching the coastline of Iceland pass by.

The trouble was the wind kept increasing in strength: it was going to be a bumpy night.

SAC: Into uncharted waters

When I got the paper charts for Iceland I had a lot of fun imagining what it would like to sail in those waters.

But there was one feature that caught my eye, a white blankness. It wasn't a glacier but that rare beast, areas that had never been surveyed - literally uncharted waters.

In our world where Google Earth can spin you close up to a mountain in the middle of Antarctica, where an Iridium satellite phone will work from pole to pole and Wikipedia can answer questions you never thought to ask, the unknown has a strange power.

Here be dragons, mermaids, sea monsters or possibly Donald Rumsfeld (shiver).

Some of the uncharted waters were in the Jokulfirdir fjord, just passed the Drangajökull glacier, and we proceeded cautiously towards them, Tristan at the helm (above).

I went to the bow to watch for rocks in the rich green waters below us: while fjords are typically deep there are moraines, which is where the glacier dumped its rocks. These shallows can represent a bar preventing ships from travelling further up, and indeed we spotted the depth of water under the keel drop to 4.5m for a while before returning to a more typical 20m.

Maybe we should have spent the afternoon there, criss-crossing, taking bearings and depths - which is no doubt what a Captain Cook would have done - but instead we documented our explorations the modern way.

Using the iNavX software running on the iPhone and iPad I recorded our track for posterity:

Then Tristan handed the tiller to me and I helmed us out, back into the well mapped modern world, and a debate as to whose watch it was next.

SAC: The Drangajokull Glacier

The first time I saw the Drangajokull glacier I thought it was a cloud, it was that white.

Couple of double-takes later it flicked into recognition. It is the 5th largest in Iceland, covering 160 - 200 square km.

Alas its not one of those that dramatically drop chunks of ice into the sea, but was still pretty impressive anyhow.

SAC: The Jokulfirdir fjord and the good watch

There are good watches and there are bad ones.

In the good ones things just work out. Wind starts blowing from just the right direction, a nice F3 or F4, with a warming sun out. Re-fuelling goes smoothly and there is a nice chunk of chocolate or dried mango ready as a reward.

Bad ones are less fun. Typically its early morning, the wind cold and bitter, either too strong or weak and from the wrong direction so that both port & starboard tacks or gybes are bad. Minutes are counted down and the thermos of tea is empty with an hour still to go.

Sleep, or lack of it, plays a big part in separating the good watch from the bad. The watch we entered the Arctic Circle wasn't the best for that reason, to be honest.

But the entry into the Jokulfirdir fjord was definitely a good one.

The sun was out and we now felt like true Arctic sailors, heading south to Iceland. The fjord was remote and walled by high mountains capped by ice. I was alone on deck, steering, geared up so snug and warm after a good off-watch sleep.

There was even some rugged stubble on my chin.

It felt good.

SAC: Entering Icelandic waters

The Imray Pilot book had instructions on how to approach Iceland from the east, south east, south, west etc but strangely enough not from the north.

However that was the direction we were approaching this country, heading out of the Arctic Circle.

Sailing was good as we approached the north west corner, the wilds of Hornstrandir at the northern end of Iceland's Westfjords (above).

Its 580 square km of fjords, tundra, glacier and wild, wild landscapes etc was too interesting to sail past, so we turned left and headed up Jokulfirdir fjord.....

SAC: Variation, deviation and weirdness

It is important, when sailing to the Arctic Circle, to know where north is.

Traditionally the way to locate north (unless you have natural navigation skills) is the magnetic compass, though as those RYA courses tell you, you must check for variation and deviation.

Variation is a way of taking account of the fact that the magnetic north pole is not located at the Earth's physical pole. Up where we were it was around 20 degrees difference (as can be seen by the pic above from Wikipedia), though in addition the charts often had warnings of local magnetic anomalies.

Deviation is not what your grandma would call what you do on a Saturday night but rather how the ship's compass is being perturbed by ferrous materials and electronics on-board, and was probably similar to the variation.

Given the difference between actual north and compass north we relied a lot on the Raymarine chart plotter's COG (course over ground), which was great until it went into does-not-compute territory.

The problem was that over all the logs in one watch I noticed the COG was around 260 degrees i.e. something like WSW but at the same time the latitude was increasing.

This led to a lot of head scratching, as I'd imagine that COG was calculated using two (lat, long) points and a little spherical geometry, which is pretty straight forward.

So what was going on? Had we entered the mysterious "Iceland Triangle" or something?

To be honest I don't know. Another boat we met reported something similar with their Garmin GPS but the iThings seemed fine. Also sometimes we spotted the chart plotter jump between two GPS locations as if the other electronics was causing interference and that could cause problems.

All very weird.

SAC: Arctic wildlife

We kept a good look out for the wildlife of the Arctic Circle.

There were lots of fulmars and puffins (above in the dead calm) and also a number of different terns (including Arctic terns), a northern gannet, a range of gulls including black backed gulls, guillemots, more fulmars, kittiwakes, long tailed skuas, even more fulmars....

We did indeed see lots of fulmars, though near the coast of Iceland we saw more puffins, shuttling to and from land flying together in train-like formations.

Also we spotted seals, dolphins and whales. The north coast of Iceland is quite a whale watching heaven and often we'd see spouts of water and cry out "there she blows!"

There was this amazing dolphin that was leaping high above the water, maybe its body length above the waves while another whale went directly under the boat.

So where are the photos? you are probably wondering. Alas it turns out that whale and dolphin reflexes are faster than ours, particularly when the on-watch person is meant to be sailing the boat and the cameras were usually kept below out of wave splash.

Anyhow here is the best that I did though there should be some better ones Tristan took on his camera:

We had to hand the book "Wildlife of the Northern Atlantic" which proved brilliant, even coping with curve balls like jelly fish.

Alas no photo of that either, so here's another puffin pic:

We also saw this:

It was a patch of water where many things below the surface swirled, their fins twisting round and round, but we couldn't work out what they are. There were some fulmars nearby (obviously) and they ignored what ever it was.

Any suggestions welcome!

SAC: The Arctic Circle and the Midnight Sun

Finally the numbers on the GPS ticked over until we could say for sure: "we are in the Arctic Circle".

We had done it.

We turned west to sail along the north coast of Iceland, getting up to 67N.

It was around then that I took the picture above: it's either sunset or sunrise but I'm finding it hard to work out which without checking the photo's time stamp and log book very carefully.

For this picture was taken around local midnight, up at the Arctic Circle, when sunrise and sunset lose their meaning.



(For those wanting a navigation exercise can you calculate our longitude from the fact that the camera was set to BST?)

SAC: Tested by the weather

Over the next day or so the F5 from the NE that started just before the Faroes gradually faded away, but not before giving us a bumpy ride.

The swell had a long fetch from over in Norway and it goes without saying that when you're above 60N and the wind has a northerly component to it, then its going to be cold.

There was more than the odd "for heaven's sake" when a wave threw something across the cabin, often me. It was if the weather was testing us, to see if we were worthy of the Arctic.

Then we were swallowed by fog:

Visibility got pretty bad, which wasn't much fun when the AIS and radar were behaving rather oddly - all part of the test maybe.

Finally wind and wave left us motionless alone in the nothing beadily watched by a couple of Fulmars:

There was a surreal, expectant feeling, as if waiting for something to happen, which in a way we were.

Then directly above us we could see sky and we were the centre of a cylinder of visibility, surrounded by clouds hugging the water.

Finally like the curtain raising on the next act the fog blew away: we felt we had broken through, and now the Arctic Circle was within our grasp.

SAC: The cliffs of the Faroes

The northern entrance to the Kalso fjord is guarded by two great peaks. To the east there is Kunorjarnakkur (above), which drops from 820m somewhere lost in the clouds pretty much straight into the sea.

To the west there is Nestindar (below), similarly wrapped in mist:

It was a pretty amazing sight, one that felt as if it deserved some sort of pounding soundtrack, and my choice was this one.

After a certain amount of wowing it was time to raise the sails and turn as far north as the wind would allow:

Ahead of us was the Arctic Circle.

SAC: Navigating the Faroes

Short version of plan: head for Syoradalur (above) and turn right.

Longer version: see iNavX screenshot below which shows the waypoints put in together with the actual track (its a bit faint so I added an arrow to highlight it):

There are a lot of option to go through the Faroes but the path along the Kalsoe Fjord seemed central, straight-forward, bridge free and with terrain promising impressive vistas.

Wind was either non-existent or very gusty so we motored our way though. We expected our SOG (speed over ground) to accelerate as tide swung in our favour but in the end the currents seemed negligible as if we were in slack water most of the way through, which was a bit surprising.

The scenery was dramatic:

Yes, those white blobs at the bottom of those cliffs are indeed houses (the village of Kunoe) and those at the top snow or ice.

But the best was yet to come....

SAC: The Faroes decision

Having the Faroes pretty much directly on the route to the Arctic Circle raised the question of whether we'd go round or through them. It would of course be a lot more dramatic to go through the archipelago but it was agreed that the decision would depend upon conditions.

First to consider were the tides, as going up a fjord with the tide against us would be impossible, which implied there would be time windows which we'd have to calculate.

We checked the Admiralty pilot, the Imray pilot, the cryptic Faroes Almanac (in Faroese, which baffled even Google Translate) and a useful PDF from Danish Maritime Safety Administration. Despite being linked to times of high water at three different ports each gave roughly the same advice: start 3-4 am or 4-5 pm on the day in question.

Then there was the wind direction and strength in case of wind against tide plus various races. The Admiralty pilot (which tended to the doom and gloom side) mentioned that one of the western of the Faroe islands in extreme race conditions saw 13m waves (!!), which clearly were to be avoided.

In practice what it meant was that winds from anywhere W to N would be against us in the fjord and as we'd have the tide behind us that could be a bad combination.

Another issue was visibility with fog a frequent occurrence which might not be much fun given that with the wind initially from the SE we'd have a lee shore.

However as we approached the islands the wind strengthened and backed, going to a NE F5, and then increased to F6. The question was whether this was a prelude to something stronger or a gust. There was a certain amount of discussion onboard at this point but when the wind slackened it was enough.

We were going through....

SAC: The Dawn Treader and the Faroes

We had an annoying night being requested over VHF to change course and then drop sails by the seismic survey vessel MV Ranform Viking which needed lots of room as it was towing 7.5km long cables.

The next day was pleasant sailing with F3s from the SE and it was towards evening in a gap between scurrying clouds that I saw a dark smudge on the horizon: we had reached the Faroes.

It felt a bit like the Narnia book The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in that we were encountering mysterious islands as we sailed in one direction - though of course for us it was as we headed ever north rather than east.

They grew slowly closer as the sun set:

The question was: would we be able to sail through them?

SAC: Sailing from Orkney to the Faroes

For the first day or so the weather gods smiled on us. Winds were gentle and the sun shone in a pleasantly warm way while the nights were dark, if briefly.

It helped the transition from orderly life with bathrooms that stay still and regular uninterrupted night's sleep to lurching heads and the broken sleep of the watch system (3 hours on/off then 4 hours on/off, repeat).

But it couldn't last: the natural navigator looked at the feathery clouds in the sky above Goldeneye and warned a change was on its way:

He was right: stronger winds and bumpy seas arrived just as we reached the Faroes.

SAC: Leaving Kirwall

After many trips to Tescos and local hardware stores the boat was crammed with victuals and the cockpit surrounded by a wall of Jerry cans full of diesel.

Tuesday lunchtime the tide was right for departure and with todo lists complete we slipped the lines in a light rain and headed out of Kirkwall into the Wide Firth.

On the pilotage out we passed close by the Skerry of Vasa and saw some seals having their afternoon snooze (above).

Eventually we were clear enough of land to hoist the sails and head NNW, watching Noup Head to gently sink into the south.

Next land we'd see would be the Faroes.

SAC: Skara Brae

There was just time before the tide was right for our departure north to see just one thing, and for me it had to be the prehistoric village of Skara Brae.

Between its visitor centre and the first house there was about a 5 minute walk. It was marked out in years so that it was if you were travelling back in time. Monuments like the Pantheon were passed and there was still a long way to go. Towards the end there are signs for Stonehenge and the pyramids of Giza, but Skara Brae is older than even them.

Dating back 5,000 years it is a complete village from Neolithic times, the best preserved in Europe.

They are built and decorated in stone. Slabs were made into beds, dressers, fireplaces, bait boxes, stores as if they'd been selecting from Ikea's stone range.

It was an lonely and remote spot in which the modern world seemed far away.

I tried to imagine what life would have been like to live there, people just like you and me but clothed in animal skins, wondering about puzzles such as what moved the sun across the sky.

For a moment I was alone on the site, listening to the wind disturb the grasses, looking out at the stone dark waters. It was a haunting moment, touched by the deep time of humanity's long undocumented past.

Then all to soon it was time to turn away and walk back up the path to the 21st century.

SAC: Kirkwall

I really liked Kirkwall on Orkney.

It had plenty of character, its non-chain little shops strung along the main street (below) from the marina to the St. Magnus cathedral (above).

St. Magnus is a magnificent building, dating in parts back 1137. Apparently there is a cathedral almost identical to this in Sicily due to the wide range of the Normans.

I didn't go inside as used by little spare time before the tide was right for departure to visit Skara Brae (next post) which was a shame.

We found a few good restaurants but our favourite was the Skippers Bar. I'm still drooling over their fantastic lemon lemon cake (yum):

SAC: Goldeneye

This is the yacht we sailed to the Arctic Circle.

It's a Contessa 32 called Goldeneye and it's ideal for short handed expedition style sailing.

It's very tough so I never had any doubts as to ability to handle the conditions we experienced, with a pedegry of sailing to the oceans wilder corners (including a circumnavigation of Iceland).

Equally importantly it is manageable single handed, so that all sails can be set, reefed, tacked, gybed or brought down by one person in the cockpit.

Steering was done via a tiller not wheel (one less thing to go wrong) plus a wind vane steering mechanism to take that task off our hands (except in very light winds).

Here is Goldeneye in Kirkwall, Orkney, as we were about to set off.

SAC: Sailing to the Arctic Circle

It's another world at high latitudes; cold, yes, but breathtaking beautiful too.

This summer it felt like time to sail outside the comfort zone and achieve a long held wish to sail in northern waters.

Over the last couple weeks I sailed a Contessa 32 double handed with the natural navigator Tristan Gooley:
- starting from Kirkwall in Orkney
- headed NNW to the Faroes
- transversed the Faroes along the Kalsoe Fjord
- headed north up to the Arctic Circle
- then sailed roughly west along the top of Iceland
- saw lots of wildlife including seals, dolphins and whales
- rounded Iceland's untouched Hornstrandir headland
- sailed up the Jokulfirdir fjord into uncharted waters (literally)
- admired the Drangajokull glacier
- headed south passed the volcanic cone of Snaefellsnes
- to finish in Reykjavik

That's a thousand NM to blog, with a memory card full of photos, a boatful of kit to review and dozens of stories.

It begins with the screen grab above, the iNavX route from the iPad, when we sailed up to 67N.

When we sailed to the Arctic Circle.

Downloading GRIBs to an iPad over Iridium

It took me a few goes to get this to work so it might be useful to give some tips on what to do, which are:

1. First get the iPad configured to talk to the AxcessPoint. Switch it on and then in the iPad settings under wifi select it. To use it with web there are also some http proxy settings - look under the iPad App help as to the server and port to use.

2. Connect the AxcessPoint to the Iridium phone and switch it on and wait for it to say registered

3. On the iPad open up iNaxX and centre the chart on the location you want GRID data for

4. Select the "Forecast" tab and then go into settings.

5. It is very important to grab as small a file as possible. Go for (say) 3 days with resolution 12 hours / 2 degrees over an area 20 x 20 deg

6. Select get data by AxcesPt then save

7. Select "Request GRIB": it will appear to dump you into the AxcessPoint App without doing anything but actually it has created an email for you.

8. When you're ready select send/receive email and it will send off the request

9. Wait a couple of minutes

10. Then do another send/receive email and you should get an email with the data as an attachment. If you select it then you should be able to open it in iNavX

Eh voila!