Back at the helm - sailing the Yaghan to Antarctica, Patagonia and the South Pacific

by Martensson, Helene

  Media Interest

  When we made our decision in 2000 we realized that a website would be the best way for us to keep in contact with our friends and others during our voyage. I have always been interested in new technology, so in April 2000 we launched www.yaghan.com. It was a way for us to learn how to build and update a website on board. This is no trivial matter. We tried to make it as simple as possible, so it was mainly used for posting information about our sailing holidays. It felt a little silly somehow, but the only way of learning the ropes is to do it for real. After a couple of years we password-protected the site, after which Hallberg-Rassy called to tell us that people from all over the world had phoned in and complained about not being able to access it. We gave in and removed the password protection. Our sailing holidays were, after all, rather an innocent subject.

  The information that we were planning to circumnavigate the world sometime in thr future was published on our website in 2000, but it was expressed as a rather distant dream, and no one took it seriously since there was never much publicity around it. When the press release was published on September 27, 2005, there was an enormous amount of interest from the media with major articles in leading business magazines throughout Scandinavia. Most sensational of all was probably the fact that I was retiring from all my seven important board commitments, all at the same time. It was unprecedented in Sweden. No one had ever voluntarily left such a powerful position. During the past few years I had moved between third and eighth place on the business magazine Affärsvärlden's annual list of the most powerful people in Sweden. When the competing major business magazine Veckans Affärer issued their first list in January 2006 I came second, even though by then it was known that I would circumnavigate the world for three years! It is interesting how information that has remained unnoticed on a website for five years can become such a major sensation as soon as it is released to the press.

  It is only possible to understand my decision if you appreciate how strong Heléne's and my desire to sail around the world had been over the past ten years. We would simply not want to die without achieving it. There is, of course, a price to pay. If making certain that I kept my powerful position had been the meaning of life, it would not have been right to go away for three years. A circumnavigation is not about career planning, it is about planning your life.

  The Second Greatest Challenge of My Life

  Occasionally, I would hear people say, “Arne is very naïve if he thinks he can get back to business after staying away for three years.” After more than thirty years in the corporate world, fifteen as managing director/ chairman of a listed company, you are hardly naïve any more. The risk that you have developed into a thoroughbred cynic is far greater, which was probably nearer the truth in my case. I was of course well aware of the risk that the enemies no one can avoid making after so many years would try to profit from my absence. I was prepared to take it. I was financially independent and somewhat amused by the prospect of discovering how certain people around me would react when I stepped down – and the alternative, continuing to sail with Heléne for the rest of my life, was not all that off-putting.

  I was also, on the whole, happy with my career. During my ten years as managing director of Handelsbanken our share price had increased fivefold and our lead in profitability compared to other banks was greater than ever. This was important, since the corporate goal of Handelsbanken for forty years had been to achieve greater profitability than the average achieved by the bank's competitors. This is also the basis on which funds are allocated to the bank's renowned profit-sharing fund Oktogonen. There can be no better measure of success for a managing director than having met the company's goals every year for ten years.

  I was pleased to hear that the most important owner within the Handelsbanken sphere wanted me to come back and continue working, but to be honest I would have sailed even if the owners had told me that I would not be allowed back if we did. Our desire to go through with it was that strong. I was not really worried about what it would be like to come back. Perhaps my attitude to life would change and I would not want to come back. I made one statement to the effect that, “you can't completely rule out that I'll end up living like a hippie on Tonga”, which caused a lot of attention.

  After ten years of working as a managing director I was appointed chairman, and between 2001 and 2006 I worked as a non-executive director on a number of company boards. I must confess that I after five years felt that I was ready, more than ready, to tackle a new, real challenge. When you have worked for many years as a managing director – as I did between 1991 and 2001 – you become a man of action, you want to be part of a creative process. This is not something you do as a non-executive member of the board. It is simply not what a board does. The board is an important function, but good leadership is all important when it comes to moving forward. The board can prevent the odd mistake, and its ultimate purpose is to appoint a competent management team which, of course, is important. However, the role you play on the board is naturally different from the management role. I simply needed a new, proper challenge. The tedium I sometimes experienced was reinforced by the work I had to do on various committees as a result of the development of a Swedish company code. Formal, administrative tasks were taking over, I have to admit, even though I was involved in the development of “the Swedish code”. I thought I was fighting the formalists, but maybe the compromise we reached was not good enough, even though it was in no way worse than any of the international codes on which it was based.

  When you are sailing around the world with your wife, the kind of know-all mindset and cosy atmosphere that many associate with boardroom culture is not enough. It is all about competence, determination and exercising good judgement in situations that may be a matter of life or death. Whether we succeed or not is entirely dependent on our onboard skills and competence. There is no one to blame and no one to delegate to. This was something we were both attracted by. It was a real challenge – perhaps our last great challenge. I had not been faced with a greater challenge since I was appointed managing director of Handelsbanken in 1991.

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  Sailing, the Sea, Marathons and Love

  (Heléne)

  I never made it to Borgholm on the island of Öland with the Ronneby sea scout's sailing boat Sunny. I sailed to Tjärö, Salttärna and around the islands of Ronneby archipelago, but I never sailed on the open sea, not even to Gåsfeten lighthouse, which was less than three nautical miles off shore. Only the boys were allowed to sail the Sunny all the way to Öland. We girls got to sail around the archipelago. It was depressing to find a postcard of a beautiful sunset behind the Borgholm castle ruins with a greeting from the boys in the letterbox.

  I was not a member of the sea scouts long enough to learn to sail properly. I was not keen enough to continue. Instead, I started to play golf. I ended my sailing career long before it had begun. Looking back, I would really have liked to sail the Sunny to Öland and Borgholm. I kept the lovely postcard.

  Many years later, my ex-husband Odd and I bought a small motor boat that we used when we wanted to go bathing on some nice little island or skerry near Saltsjöbaden outside Stockholm. Now and then we would bring a picnic and eat it on an island, and in the evening we would chug back home again. Our boat was not built for sleeping in, which suited me fine. I certainly did not like the idea of having to spend the night on board. After half an hour or so I was perfectly happy to jump ashore with the leash of our black Labrador Lady in one hand and my tote bag full of books, towels and sun screen in the other and leave the mooring to Odd. The less maintenance I had to do the better. It was always a relief to get back ashore. At that stage of my life I had no desire to spend more time at sea. These short bathing trips were quite enough.

  I got my first large boat and the biggest sailing adventure of my life started when I met Arne. We sailed together for the first time in 1994. Arne had owned his Stratus for almost seventeen years, he had raced it fo
r many years and he had sailed it together with his boys and his ex-wife Eva. I only agreed to come along that first time if I did not have to do anything on board. To me, it was of vital importance that Arne could handle the boat on his own, which he promised that he both could and wanted to do. To my great surprise and joy I subsequently discovered that I liked sailing; I knew that sailing was a very important part of Arne's life. I happily realized that I still remembered a few things from my sea scouting days. I relished the freedom of sailing around the Stockholm archipelago on weekends. We were far away from it all.

  I do not think I enjoyed it only because I was so much in love with Arne, even if it did have a lot to do with it. It was also my first proper encounter with the combination of sea and boat. I have always felt a strong attraction to the sea, possibly because I was born and spent the first years of my life in the seaside town of Karlshamn. Living inland, far from the sea, is not at all an attractive option.

  The first time Arne and I sailed from the island of Bullandö all the way across to Visby on the island of Gotland, it was like going on a great big adventure together. We sailed over night, across the sea, all the way down to Gotland. It was incredibly exciting, but at the same time frightening.

  The sea at night, approaching the island in the east, it is dark, the stars are out and I am alone with the rudder and sails. Arne is sleeping in the aft cabin. It is magical. I am nervous and a little scared, but I want to do my watches without having to wake him up.

  Arne hears everything, sees everything and he wakes up if you make the smallest mistake. A flapping foresail, and he rushes up on deck. I wanted to avoid it at all costs. From the very beginning I wanted to make sure I could cope with my watches on my own.

  We often sailed the Stratus during the summer. We went to the islands of Gotland and Öland – but never Borgholm – although we did go to the Kökar islands, Hangö and all the way down to the island of Bornholm in Denmark.

  In 1998, Yaghan entered our lives in the form of our Hallberg-Rassy 46, called Lill-Yaghan (Little Yaghan), and she took us further afield. We sailed from Stockholm to Marstrand and then on via Mandal and Farsund to Stavanger where we took a break, living on fish and seafood, before continuing to Lerwick in the Shetlands. It was our fist cruise outside the Nordic countries. We left Stavanger in foggy weather, and venturing out on the North Sea in foul weather was a little frightening. We talked about maybe continuing north, along the coast of Norway, and waiting a few days before crossing the sea. In the end we chose to go ahead and leave the safe anchorage by Stavanger town square. It was far from certain that postponing our departure would make us feel any better. We might as well cast off, set sail and cross over to the Shetlands. It cleared up in the afternoon, and we were pleased to be on our way.

  It was overwhelming to see land after more than forty-eight hours at sea: the green, sheer rock face of the Bard's Head, and further on the grey facades along the Lerwick road. Not to mention how proud we were of having sailed all the way from Stockholm. We thought it amazing that our tiny two-man crew had sailed all that way.

  Once you get to the Shetlands, the Faeroes are not far off, only 270 nautical miles. The desire and will to continue sailing was born during our first days in Lerwick. The following year's voyage was soon planned!

  The following summer we were staying at Torshamn in the Faeroe Islands, touring the island, and we discovered that Reykjavik in Iceland was only another three hundred nautical miles further west. We had crossed the Atlantic in a storm, so it took a few days before we fully appreciated it. It was the worst storm we had experienced so far, so we were exhausted and needed to get over it before we began to plan our next voyage, but after a few days we agreed that we wanted to continue west, to Iceland, at some future date – and beyond Iceland is Greenland!

  We are often grateful for that first storm in our new boat. Partly because everything went well, and partly because we quickly learned just how safe and seaworthy our boat was. No damage was done and nothing got soaked. Lill-Yaghan was completely dry. We were also pleased because we handled ourselves, the stress, the fatigue, and the boat well. We were both fortified by this wet and distressing experience. That storm served us well and, in a way, we got some joy out of it.

  The following year, in 2000, we sailed to Inverness via the Kiel and Caledonian canals. We continued to Oban and then we sailed north along the west coast of Scotland to Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides, through the Pentland Firth to Marstrand on the west coast of Sweden and then via the Sound and Anholt to Karlshamn. We continued to Visby on Gotland and through the night to reach our home harbour on Bullandö. For a long time, Stornoway to Marstrand was our longest non-stop leg – it was as far as 586 nautical miles.

  During our final season with Lill-Yaghan we sailed down to the Mediterranean. We got as far east as Athens, Santorini and Naxos. In spring 2002, on our way back to Sweden, we were moored at the Mergellina Marina in Naples when the Irish-French couple Carol and Jean-Jacques came on board to inspect our boat, which had just been cleaned and tidied. Lill-Yaghan was for sale online and “Big Yaghan” was being built at Ellös shipyard. We booked a trial run for our guests at Golfe-Juan in France, which suited us since we would be spending several weeks on the Riviera later that spring. But we got the feeling that the boat had already been sold in Naples. Carol's and Jean-Claude's enthusiasm and appreciation of the apple of our eye was obvious – they would never find a finer boat than our Lill-Yaghan!

  In August, we left her in Carol's and, especially, Jean-Jacque's care at Villamoura, Portugal. By doing so we avoided a strenuous and tedious journey back to Stockholm along the long coast of Portugal, across the Bay of Biscay, through the English Channel and the Kiel Canal. Instead, we said farewell to Lill-Yaghan at Villamoura Marina, which is now her home port. She continues to sail under the name of Bonvivant.

  I had tears in my eyes when we left. I turned around several times to take a last look at our wonderful, safe boat of which we had so many fond memories. She had been very important to us both; I was sad to leave her, but Arne looked straight ahead and walked briskly to the taxi that was to take us to the flight that would bring us home to Yaghan, that was waiting for us at Elllös shipyard.

  From now on we would be sailing in the future round-the-world boat Yaghan; we went as far as Iceland, via the Shetlands and the Faeroe Islands, and on the way home we visited the Orkneys. It was the voyage we had dreamt of a few years earlier; now we were able to do it. Greenland would have to wait, though. The following year, in 2004, we sailed along the coast of Norway to Fjaerland and Sognefjord. The summer before our departure we headed south. We sailed all the way down to Saint Malo in Bretagne, where we feasted on fish, seafood and crêpes before turning back home again.

  After all this time sailing together we were ready to tackle even longer distances, and we had a boat that was well equipped for cruise sailing. We thought we had seen everything there was to see in our “immediate” geographical vicinity, and we had discovered how much we loved to sail together. We could not get enough of it.

  I had never even dreamt of sailing round the world. My dream of venturing further afield with Arne had slowly evolved through our sailing together. To live with Arne aboard the Yaghan, not just over the summer, but for a longer period, was something I was very much looking forward to.

  We had read many books about sailing and we had been looking forward to palm trees, turquoise seas and sunny beaches, but the book that came to have the greatest influence, especially on me, when it came to the route we chose was Northern Light: One Couple's Epic Voyage from the Arctic to the Antarctic, which is about a voyage from Sweden to the Arctic areas of Scandinavia, down to Greenland, via the Americas all the way down to Antarctica. Another was Time on Ice: Overwinter Voyage to Antarctica, both written by Deborah Shapiro and Rolf Bjelke. I gave Arne Time on Ice for Christmas in 1996. It is about their voyage in a red steel ketch, Northern Light, to the Antarctic and the winter they spent there in 1991�
��1992. I borrowed it on Christmas Day and finished it the next day. It is the kind of book you carry around, that you try and get a chance to read even when you have neither the time nor the opportunity. When we went to bed on Christmas Day I directed my reading light so I could read all night without waking Arne. It was a wonderful book, I was fascinated, and a dream was born in me: the dream of the two of us sailing to Antarctica. Just imagine if it were possible to experience this icy continent in a perfectly ordinary sailing boat! I could not give up the idea. The book was full of wonderful pictures of ice, snow, penguins and seals, and of a red sailing boat in the treacherous, but incredibly beautiful, waters. The pictures were so tempting and overwhelming that when we began to talk about our circumnavigation more seriously, this was where we most of all wanted to go.

  Since then I have reread the book every summer holiday. Before we set out on our summer voyages I always begin by reading Time on Ice, then I start on my new books. Time on Ice is in a bit of a state, but it has not fallen apart yet.