feelings to myself about the Frugrains, though
I could easily imagine they were made of dried
leather. Some of the stores had a best before
date of 2002, and David looked horrified
when I suggested that perhaps these should be
replaced.
We moved off at first light the following
morning, a cold, gray day with incipient driz-
zle. I busied myself trying to coil up the vast
ropes David uses. These are a far cry from the
lovely smooth lines in a sailing boat; I was still
a greenhorn and had a lot to learn about little
ship handling. We suddenly noticed the lonely
figure of our friend Tony, muffled up with
scarf, woolly hat and jacket in the watery dawn
light, walking briskly in the direction of the sea
lock for a last photo opportunity.
IT WAS NOW SUNDAY, AUGUST 26, 2012,
and we had had a fairly sleepless night peer-
ing into the diaphanous gloom of intermittent
blanket fog. We also had our first sighting of
pack ice—shelf-like shapes of soft ice, some
looking like wrecked ships, others slabs tipped
on their sides. Enormous concentration was
needed to weave Polar Bound between these
floating hazards. Her rudder weighs half a
ton, but even so she is finely balanced and
only needs a touch on the wheel to correct
her course—or so I was told. Most of the time
since leaving Whitehaven, Cumbria on July
29, she had been on autopilot, so I had little
practice at steering her. As a result, when I did,
I tended to over-steer, which meant turning
the wheel excessively, first in one direction,
then the other to counteract the first, resulting
in a wild swing, which in turn put a big load
on the rudder.
We reached Barrow Strait, and David decid-
ed not to waste time going into Resolute. Not
only would it have meant delay, we should also
have had to inflate the rubber dinghy, which
would have been quite a palaver just when we
were wanting to press on. The pack ice came
in rafts and there were myriad leads, areas of
clear water that opened up as the ice pulled
apart then constantly changed formation,
like the endless patterns of a kaleidoscope.
You could easily get led astray by following a
lead only to find yourself in a cul-de-sac and
be forced to retrace your steps. I saw my first
Arctic seal—a ringed seal, David told me; in
fact, there were two of them and they both
lumbered off their ice shelves and dropped
easily into the sea. Some delightful little black
and white birds, like bobbing coots, fluttered
around in groups—I wondered if they were
sea petrels. There were also Arctic terns, and
a large, pure white, swooping bird that soared
effortlessly in front of the boat before making
a banking glide.WHAT A NIGHT THAT SUNDAY turned
out to be! To start, there was not even the
ghost of a breeze, but gradually the open ar-
eas of sea took on a ruffled appearance, and
before long wavelets gave way to bigger seas.
As we scrutinized the pack ice with binoculars
for open leads to pass through, David recon-
sidered his strategy. Instead of going due west
and maybe getting stuck in Viscount Melville
Sound surrounded by blocks of pack ice, he
decided to take a southwest-by-west course,
obliquely traversing the sound so as to be one
jump ahead of the ice, and head for the corner
of Banks Island in the Parry Channel. Here
a little refuge offers a space in which to hide
should that be necessary.
There we could await the right wind, which
would chase the ice out of the final hurdle, the
McClure Strait, or so we hoped, into the Arctic
Sea, which becomes the Beaufort Sea.
Meanwhile, we heard from Peter Semitouk,
Belzebub II had headed into the central area
of Melville Sound and might well be hemmed
in with ice. However, it was possible that this
news, as relayed to Peter, might have been de-
liberately leaked in an effort to throw us off the
scent. They were, according to Peter, “hell bent
on beating that ‘Cooper’ man” to be the first
private vessel to make this transit. In David,
with his wonderful sense of timing and equal
determination to achieve yet another record,
they had formidable opposition. It was getting
late in the season now and if we did not get
favorable conditions for this challenge he de-
cided that, having waited a few days, we would
proceed down the Prince of Wales Strait, and
exit the narrow section of the passage via the
traditional southerly route.
I seasoned and scored some Bressingham
duck breasts and made an apple sauce, but the
conditions were deemed unsuitable for such a
meal. David perhaps should have warned me,
but he was far too preoccupied with the avoid-
ance of ice packs. We ended up eating spa-ghetti. The ice pack was moving with a strong
southeasterly, which was not the direction we
wanted it from. I went below to my bunk and
had a couple of hours’ uneasy sleep, but felt as
if I could have done with at least another six—
my ankles and legs were quite swollen and felt
heavy. All this bracing of unfamiliar muscles
to keep on balance, and the constant sorties up
and down the companionway, all took their
toll. David said he felt wakeful too—I am sure
he was. He now had the bit firmly between
his teeth and was giving it everything he had.
With just two of us aboard, we had no extra
reserves to call up so we could not get proper
rest.
When I re-emerged from my bunk, the
scene was like Dante’s Inferno. A full gale was
blowing on the ship’s beam and the entire fro-
zen sea appeared to be on the march. Great
rafts of pack ice proceeded with remorseless
power on their individual trajectories. Some
looked like huge, delicate lotus flowers in full
sail, others like stacked-up railway sleepers;
then there were the fantasies of the funfair:
giant gondolas and rocking ducks, carnival
floats, even a double pedalo with circular
viewing hole through the center like an old-
fashioned plate camera. Grimms’ Fairy Tales
and The Wizard of Oz all intertwined. Every
conceivable resemblance to something or oth-
er imaginable was there.
I had never seen such an amazing sight. I
wouldn’t have believed it possible that so many
square miles of thick pack ice could be broken
up and moved so quickly by the combined
action of wind and waves. The effect of this
heaving mass was like walking briskly along
the moving walkway at the airport where,
disconcertingly, you can see walkers to either
side of you who keep pace and occasionally go
even faster. Dawn came, revealing a heaving
gray sea with a few of the more cumbersome
outriders still marching resolutely on their
chosen track in pursuit of their long dissolved
or relocated companions, with smaller debris
scattered across the ocean, like the aftermath
of a storm in the mountains.
In the next notification we had from Peter,
we heard that the Swedish contender in this
two-man race had liberated himself from the
pack ice (if, indeed, he had ever been stuck),
and arrived a few hours earlier at the entrance
of the Prince of Wales Strait. Following advice,I had never seen such an amazing sight.
I wouldn’t have believed it possible that so many square
miles of thick pack ice could be broken up and moved so
quickly by the combined action of wind and waves.87continued from page 69