They were the first Irish yachtsmen to navigate the Northwest Passage. Last summer they took their boat back to the Arctic for the even more daunting Northeast Passage. Lorna Siggins describes the 'Northabout' crew's journey - and a medal-winning rescue
The Dutchmen thought it looked so cute, the great white creature swimming beneath them in a sea adrift with ice. They joked about taking it home as a pet, then launched a boat to pursue it, tossing a noose around its neck. The polar bear played the game at first but had soon had enough. Following them to the ship, it put its paw over the gunwale - "as if to rest", according to the captain. But he was horribly mistaken: "The captive was going after his tormentors." The close call of this group of 16th-century Arctic explorers, recounted in Helen Orlob's The Northeast Passage: Black Water, White Ice, was fresh enough in the minds of Paddy Barry, Jarlath Cunnane and the crew of their yacht, Northabout, to make them want to take a gun with them last summer as they headed across the Bering Sea for the Northeast Passage, the treacherous route along the north coast of Russia that links the Pacific and the Atlantic.
But now here they were, out in the Arctic Ocean, surrounded by ice floes, without a firearm. It wasn't that they hadn't tried to buy one. In 2001 these hardened adventurers were the first Irishmen to cross the Northwest Passage, which goes the other way around the Arctic Ocean, past Greenland, Canada and Alaska, and they had seen enough polar bears from afar to be aware of the danger. But they had been unlucky this time round. They had attempted to purchase a gun in Anadyr, the capital of the remote Siberian territory of Chukotka, but as they were foreigners they couldn't get a permit.
"This was more than a bit unfortunate," says Michael Brogan, one of Northabout's crew, who is a Mayo-based musician and a GP. "We were already running the risk of losing the boat in ice, and if we did, and we took to land, we knew we'd be killed by bears. It was inevitable. Our journey was going to take us through large areas of unpopulated territory."
The skippers gave the crew hand-held flares instead. "We were moored to the ice one morning; a bear came pretty close, and one of the lads pulled his cord. It wouldn't go off," says Brogan. The flare turned out to have an expiry date of October 1990. "We threw the flare at the bear, and the animal ran off with it. We roared, shouted 'Up Mayo', got the bodhrán out and played it goody-o." The noise worked, and the bear fled.
It was one of the more testing moments on one of the most challenging voyages yet undertaken by Barry, a Dublin-based civil engineer, who was leading the expedition, and Cunnane, a Mayo construction manager and boatbuilder, who was skippering Northabout. It was pretty testing, too, for their crew: Brogan; his brother, Colm, who speaks Russian; Kevin Cronin, a Dublin accountant and veteran of Barry adventures; Rory Casey, an information-technology and electronics specialist; and Gary Finnegan, a film maker. With the seven Irishmen was their Russian pilot,Vladimir Samovich, whose job it was to call Murmansk twice a day by satellite telephone and give the yacht's position.
Northabout had, by this stage, more than proved its worth. Built by Cunnane in Knock, Co Mayo, the 15-metre aluminium vessel had taken the crew through the Northwest Passage in a single season; the journey has claimed the lives of so many mariners in centuries past, including Sir John Franklin, who in the mid-19th century had set out to find the elusive route; he and his 133 men died when their ships were trapped in ice.
After their 2001 achievement, the crew of Northabout had no thought of returning to the ice. Having sailed south through the Bering Strait, they left the boat to winter in the Alaskan port of Nome. Then, for the next couple of summers, they cruised eastwards, through the Gulf of Alaska, and southwards, to the Columbia river. Next, went the plan, they would sail Northabout home to Co Mayo, through the Panama Canal.
But during the autumn of 2002 there was chat about "completing the circle" by heading back to the Arctic and, this time, navigating the Northeast Passage, to head for Ireland via Siberia and Scandinavia. The Northeast Passage is less well known than the Northwest Passage, but in many ways it is far more forbidding. The English first tried it in 1553, the Dutch a little later, followed by the Russians and a German-Austrian crew. It took a Swedish geologist and Arctic explorer, Nils Nordenskjöld, to navigate it successfully, in the late 19th century. (The route's economic benefit wasn't recognised until 1933, when the Soviet Union opened it up, patrolled its straits and deployed ice-breakers to keep it navigable. It proved a vital link in supplying isolated ports during the second World War.)
Shortly after Christmas 2003 a meeting was arranged at Killary Lodge, the adventure centre near Leenane, in Co Galway, run by Jamie and Mary Young, an outdoor couple who spent their honeymoon skippering a yacht across the Atlantic. Charts were pulled out, lists drawn up and information exchanged on contacts already made in Moscow.
The voyage would have two phases. The first involved sailing Northabout from Prince Rupert, in British Columbia, across the Gulf of Alaska to Anadyr. Then the second, far more demanding phase could begin. Barry and Cunnane enlisted four crew - Brendan Minish, Tom Moran, Joan Burke and Eoin McAllister - for the delivery run. It took two weeks to ready the boat, scraping five centimetres of mussels and tonnes of eagle dung off its hull and deck.
Northabout was on its final 700 miles up the Bering Sea when an e-mail came through that the boat would not be welcome in Anadyr until it had clearance from the Russian Federal Border Guard Service. Barry and Cunnane thought about turning back for Alaska, but eventually they decided to keep going. They were approaching the coast of Chukotka (whose governor is Roman Abramovich, owner of Chelsea Football Club), when they were told the permit was through.
The crew for the second leg of the voyage, who had flown to Russia, were experiencing their own bureaucratic problems in Anadyr. (Still, Brogan says, it was "nothing like one can encounter now with US immigration".) There were other obstacles, too: water was to cost as much as diesel when they finally loaded up and were ready to cast off, early in August last year.
Ice reports for the first leg, some 1,100 kilometres from Anadyr to Pevek, a port in the Arctic Ocean, were good. By August 7th they were approaching the bay where ice had forced Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer, to spend a winter on his boat Maud in 1920-1. In the nearby village of Enurmina they met the mayor. He told them that he knew of Amundsen's extended visit but wasn't sure if he had taken a padruga, or girlfriend, to pass the time. The people of Enurmina depend on the three whales, 30 walruses and unlimited seals they're allowed to catch each year. A twice-monthly helicopter service is the only regular link to the world beyond.
The village was typical of the isolated communities they were to sail into, forced off the water by ever more frequent iceblink - an ominous whiteness on the horizon, caused by light reflected from a distant ice sheet - deteriorating visibility and a lack of clear water. An Irish proverb seemed apt for Northabout's log during these periods: "Is fear filleadh as lár an átha na bá sa tuile," or, "It is better to return from the middle of the fjord than to drown in the flood."
Time passed in three-hour watches followed by six hours off. Those in bunks got 15 minutes to crawl out of their sleeping bags, pull on thermal long johns and other clothes, have a cup of tea or whiskey (poured by one of the crew finishing their watch), heave on an outer layer of oilskins, gloves and hat and, finally, emerge into the cockpit.
There would be a brief word about position and course, wind or ice and whether the boat was sailingor on engine - and it was mostly engine. The main ration of sleep, five hours maximum, was earned during a sunlit Arctic "night" off watch. Otherwise it was snatched during catnaps by day. The most social hours were from noon until 8 p.m. or 9 p.m., just after dinner. The food was generally good, with rice, pasta, salmon, charr and variations on various tins, cooked mainly by Casey and Michael Brogan. Cronin baked bread.
There were tense moments. One row about the chain of command was recorded in the yacht's log as "Drama! Drama! Drama! Clash of mighty personalities! Who rules?"; it was resolved by the "calm, affable figure of Jarlath", who judged that the helmsman should call it. There was a search for €210 worth of mild cheddar cheese and €14 worth of salt, purchased in Prince Rupert, which had vanished. One morning Barry decided, for no obvious reason, to inventory all the food in his compartment. Cronin, Casey and Brogan got out the cameras and were ready when he emerged, sheepishly, with three fine blocks of mild cheddar and a box of salt.
As they neared the halfway point of their journey, approaching Tiksi, in mid-August, weather reports showed very heavy ice around the town, which is near the mouth of the 4,400-kilometre River Lena. They caught up with a Dutch yacht, Campina, whose solo skipper, Henk de Velde, had begun the passage the year before. By late August they were facing lockdown; then a tanker offered a tow. For almost 12 hours Northabout was hammered every which way as the tanker pulled it through floes to clear water. The crew parcelled up a bottle of whiskey and 3,500 roubles, or about €100, in a waterproof bag and passed it back to the tanker before it departed. The ship's horn gave three long farewell hoots. They didn't even get the captain's name.
Shortly afterwards they discovered that Northabout had a serious leak. During the battering, part of the yacht's depth transducer had cracked. Moored to ever-enclosing ice, they dried out the bow and tried to replace the transducer. As some of the crew gathered driftwood, lit a fire and kept a sharp lookout for the "white furry fellas", Barry put on a wetsuit as Cunnane made two gaskets from a Wellington.
Four days later, with weather reports sounding grim, Northabout received a radio call from de Velde. His journey was over, as his rudders had been damaged by ice. His sponsor had arranged for Campina to be lifted onto a Russian freighter, but he needed a tow to deeper water, so he could meet the ship. Cunnane recalls that grease ice - the second stage of ice's formation on the sea - was visible as they motored south.
It took several attempts to approach the Dutch yacht. By the following morning, when de Velde joined them for an impromptu music session - Barry plays the guitar, Brogan the fiddle and Cunnane the harmonica, and music is an essential part of their expeditions - thick ice had formed around both vessels. Even the toilets were frozen.
Having rescued the Dutchman, a task that included nail-biting moments involving moving floes, Northabout had little time left. The expedition should have had several more ice-free weeks on hand to complete the passage. But 2004 was a bad year for ice, and the crew's only option was to find a safe winter berth, so they could resume their adventure this summer. It was some consolation to hear that the Northwest Passage hadn't opened up at all and that the Franklin Strait, which separates Prince of Wales Island from mainland Canada, was clogged with ice.
Cunnane, Barry and Samovich identified Khatanga as a suitable harbour. About 150 kilometres up the River Khatanga, more than 500 kilometres south of where they were, the town is a base camp for North Pole expeditions (and home to a 26,000-year-old fossilised mammoth).
When they arrived the crew made themselves welcome, playing music in local cafés and walking the tundra, while they waited for Northabout to be lifted from the ocean. Then they stepped the mast, packed the gear and tucked the yacht up in a river barge for the winter.
The group intend to return to Khatanga this year, to resume their voyage. "It has been a tremendous experience, a real test of wits, at a time when there are so few adventures any more," says Michael Brogan. Everest can be climbed and oceans crossed by anyone with the money to pay for technology and hired hands. "There are so few opportunities to do something very different and meet people in entirely different circumstances," he says.
Before that, though, they have an award to collect. Next month Barry and Cunnane will travel to London to receive a medal from the Royal Cruising Club for their rescue of Campina. "We feel we are receiving it on behalf of all the crew, particularly Rory Casey, who risked being left stranded on ice floes several times as he tried to untangle lines and rigging," says Barry.
Come June, Cunnane will be en route to Khatanga, to take the boat out of the barge. The rest of the crew will fly out in August to continue the voyage. When Northabout returns to Westport, in Co Mayo, it will have sailed 13,500 kilometres from British Columbia, across the top of the world, and will be the first small boat of its type to have circumnavigated the Arctic from east to west. "And if it takes us another season, and another, we will complete it," says Barry. "And then it is definitely goodbye to the ice." He has said that many times before.
The expedition team will give a slide show and lecture on navigating the Northeast Passage at the Welcome Inn, Castlebar, Co Mayo, on March 11th at 8 p.m.