by Mike Horn
To make the work easier, I moved the boat onto logs to roll it out to sea; my progress improved from two hundred to three hundred feet per hour. The sealed hole in the hull was holding, but each time it rolled over a log, the other side of the bow creaked in a way that I didn’t like. Just a few yards from the water, the hull emitted an ear-splitting noise that said it all. I took a close look and saw that the crack that had opened was eight feet long!
I spent two more days winching my trimaran back up the beach to where it had been. I didn’t have enough resin to fix such a large crack. And with the difficult crossing that lay before me, I couldn’t afford to try a jury-rigged repair.
I could kiss Bernard’s fair-weather window good-bye. And, frankly, I’d had enough. I wasn’t sick of the expedition, but I was sick of things breaking, sick of fixing things, sick of equipment that wore out, sick of detours and the like, all just so that I could keep on going.
I called up Jean-Philippe, whom the authorities in Murmansk had finally released. He was waiting for me to arrive in Kirkenes. I asked him if he could come meet me and bring someone who could help fix the boat. My logistical supervisor found a Russian handyman in Kirkenes who demanded only one thousand dollars to do the work, everything included.
While I waited for the two of them to arrive, I dug a new “dry dock” under my boat, sanded and cleaned the crack, and cleaned out the hold of the trimaran in order to provide access to the break from the interior.
Once Jean-Philippe and the Russian arrived on the scene, we partitioned off the work area with tarps and set about repairing the boat, working from the exterior and the interior at the same time. By the generator-powered electric light, we worked all night long, blowtorch in hand, taking great care not to catch the resin on fire, and not to allow stray sparks to ignite the gases that the resin released in the enclosed space.
Without electricity and in the cold, the only way to dry the resin, unfortunately, was with a blowtorch. I crouched at the bottom of the hold with the blowtorch in hand, drying the resin, when … Whooomfff!
The interior of the boat suddenly burst into flames! I tried to peel away the layer of burning resin, but the heat had already melded it to the base layer. I beat at the fire with the palms of my hands, but that only fanned the blaze and spread the conflagration. I sprang out of the boat like a shot, shouting, “Fire, fire! Bring water, hurry! Water!”
The closest water source was the sea, and that was five hundred yards away! Jean-Philippe went galloping down to the shore with a bucket, beat every land speed record in both directions, lost half the water on the way back, and handed me a pail containing more sand than water. I emptied it over the flames, which sputtered, sizzled, and went out briefly, only to leap up again, burning more intensely than before! I grabbed a blanket and threw it over the fire, but the resin soaked into the cloth, and the blanket burst into flames! The Russian handyman threw on a little water that he had managed to gather, and the two pails full of water formed a pathetic little pond in the bottom of the hull. I scooped up water with my hands, sprinkled it over the fire, and finally managed to put it out. A black haze of thick, toxic smoke forced us all out of the cockpit.
The sight of this mess on a gloomy, gray day was so depressing that we decided to leave everything the way it was. We’d figure out what to do the next morning when we could think straight.
Meanwhile, I was already casting about for other means of travel to North Cape. My other boat was in Amsterdam, and it would take weeks to get it here. I knew someone in Kirkenes who had a sailboat, but if he came to pick me up, I would have to leave with him, and the last leg of my expedition would have to be run just like the rest of my journey—solo. There were no obvious answers, so I turned my attention back to the resources at hand.
Our faces were still soot-covered when we sat down to take an inventory of the damage. The interior was nothing much to look at, but the boat was fundamentally intact! The equipment that was being stored inside was okay as well. To top it all off, our repair work had been successful, which was a good thing, because there were no more materials to fix it with.
Jean-Philippe and our Russian friend helped me to drag the trimaran back down to the water. A few hours later the helicopter came to take them back to Kirkenes, via Arkhangelsk and Murmansk.
I reported in to Bernard Stamm and Cathy that, once again, I was ready to leave. Just then, a twenty-four-hour forecast of good weather presented itself. A narrow window, admittedly, but in that period of time, I should be able to get past Kolguyev Island and round the Kanin Peninsula.
My boat was in the water. After twenty days in Tobseda, where I had hoped only to pass through, the time had finally come to get back on the road.
All that remained was to say good-bye to Vasya. The old man walked toward me across the beach, and I embraced him heartily. He asked if I would stay, and I told him that it was impossible—I had a family and a home to get back to. Faced with the despair that I saw in his eyes, I offered to take him with me as far as Murmansk.
“No thanks,” he answered. “What would I do in Murmansk but die? Here, at least, I might be able to live my life a little while longer.”
I set off before sorrow could overwhelm me. In my insulated suit I swam to the boat, anchored just fifty yards off shore. I set sail and waved a last good-bye to Vasya, who stood motionless on the beach in his yellow oilskin.
As I was raising anchor, Vasya plunged into the water. Soon he was chest-deep in the waves. When I set my jibsail and my trimaran began to move, Vasya, now in the water up to his chin, held out his arms as if to keep the boat from leaving. His lips seemed to be whispering, “Don’t leave me!”
My heart broke, but I knew that he was right. At this point in his life, he couldn’t live anywhere else. To thank him for his help and because we had become close friends, I had given him all the Russian money I had left. It would be enough to charter a helicopter if he ever decided to leave.
* * *
As forecast, I enjoyed twelve hours of tailwinds and sailed westward, following a course between the mainland and Kolguyev Island. At nightfall the wind shifted, and Bernard, who was navigating for me via satellite phone, had me sail around the island toward the northwest.
The next day the weather was bright and clear. I shot like an arrow toward the point where I would shift course by ninety degrees, toward the Kanin Peninsula. When I reached the appointed spot, I made the turn with no problems. “You should sail at least four or five miles off the peninsula,” Bernard warned. “The waves and currents are so violent there that there’s a serious risk of being driven into the rocks.” Duly noted.
Everything looked good from my perspective, but Cathy reported that a huge storm was lighting up the Doppler radar like a Christmas tree, and I was heading straight for it. Bernard confirmed the news, “There’s a big storm dead ahead. Hold tight!”
I reefed my sails as much as possible, put away everything that could be stowed, and tied down everything above the deck. My main concern was that the storm might push me too close to Kanin Point, and then I would be at the mercy of the enormous waves breaking on the shoreline.
When the first huge breakers began to smash into the boat, water poured into the cockpit and short-circuited the electrical system. I had no more electronics, meaning no more automatic pilot. Clutching the helm, dressed in my waterproof suit, I fought against the storm as it made the boat dance like a cork in the midst of the huge, menacing white-capped waves. The squall grew in intensity; it was now bearing its full force down on me and would soon paralyze my boat unless I shifted the angle of my course by coming about into the wind. But I was too close to the peninsula to make the turn. I had no idea what to do next.
Eight hours after the beginning of the fierce storms, I called Bernard, who reported that the latest reports said the storm was expected to last eighteen hours, instead of the original twelve! On the other hand, the winds weren’t expected to blow any harder than fifty knots. Since I c
learly had no choice in the matter, I simply held on, ready to fight as long as necessary. My trimaran shot over the whitecaps and landed with a sharp thud in the black troughs between them. Between one lurch and the next, I spotted the rocky shores of the menacing cape of Kanin Peninsula. To escape its clutches, I took every opportunity to increase my angle from shore and put a little bit more sea between me and the cape. I met with little success in this regard.
The biggest waves I had ever seen in my life were breaking on the peninsula. If one of those behemoths caught the boat, it would be “sayonara” for me. I set a little more sail to scoot out to see a bit more, even though the wind was blowing so hard that it had ripped one of my decals off the sails. The decal was affixed at just one glue point, and it was flapping like a pennant in the gale-force winds.
I nearly scraped the Kanin Peninsula, but I made it through in one piece—just barely. After the weather calmed down just a bit, I was able to set some sail, take advantage of the wind, and set course in the right direction at full speed. I sailed straight across the White Sea to the Kola Peninsula, where I found a small bay relatively sheltered from still-rough weather conditions.
When the time came to take in my jib, I realized that the storm had warped the take-up reel. It was impossible to furl my sail and therefore—in theory, at least—to stop the boat. I “shocked” the sail by paying out the line entirely, so that it would go slack and I could haul it in by hand.
As I sailed into the bay, I noticed that another boat, much larger than mine, had already taken shelter there. I moored my trimaran next to its hull. It was occupied by a group of Russian biologists who were studying crabs on behalf of the fishing industry. They invited me to come aboard, have dinner, and spend the night. I fell asleep without much difficulty. I hadn’t shut my eyes in sixty hours!
In the morning the biologists left. I sailed over toward a small abandoned observation post that was clearly a relic of the Cold War. I rummaged through it and found materials that I could use to repair my ship’s furling system, which had broken under the strain of the gale.
At six the next morning I set sail again along the Kola Peninsula. Cathy and Bernard had promised bright, clear weather all the way to Murmansk. It was smooth sailing all the way, and at four the following morning, I steered into the mouth of the long inlet that leads to the harbor of Murmansk.
Murmansk serves a number of purposes as a Russian outpost. It is a military base for nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, and icebreakers; an enormous shipyard and port for maritime commerce; and a veritable metropolis by Arctic standards with a population of four hundred thousand. Jean-Philippe reminded me over the satellite phone that it was not a place where I could casually sail in and tie a line to the first dock I saw. It was illegal to enter the harbor without a motor. Jean-Phillippe told me to announce my arrival over channel twelve on the radio and wait for a tugboat to guide me in.
I asked him to repeat that. We normally used channel sixteen for communications at sea. No, Jean-Philippe said, they had been very emphatic on the channel: frequency twelve.
But no matter how many times I called on that frequency (and I called more and more often the closer I got to Murmansk), I continued to get no answer. The closer I got, the narrower the channel became, and the shipping traffic grew more intense. As cruise ships and oil tankers began to appear, I sailed as close as possible to shore, turning on my automatic pilot when it worked while I called repeatedly: “Pilot boat Murmansk, this is sailboat Arktos. What is your location? Pilot boat Murmansk…” Still nothing. I was no more than twelve miles from Murmansk.
I tried again on channel sixteen.
Then suddenly a terrifying noise made me start. I was thrown forward as if the boat had just hit a wall. A jet of water sprang from the cabin floor.
My keelboard, which I had lowered to keep the wind from sweeping me sideways, had just ground into a reef! And at that very moment, the tugboat showed up.
“You shouldn’t go through there,” the captain of the tug informed me, “the draft is too shallow.”
“Oh, thanks, I had noticed that! If someone had bothered to tell me a little earlier, that might have been useful!”
The pilot told me that I wasn’t allowed entry to the port of Murmansk until my passport had been stamped by the border guards, and the border guard station was behind me. The tugboat hauled me back up the channel while I bailed by hand the water that collected in the boat up to the flotation line, in spite of my electric pump chugging away.
I eventually found myself tied up at a dock across from an official building, under the baleful glare of guards who were aiming their Kalashnikovs at me. On the satellite phone Jean-Philippe confirmed that I was not allowed to move until the Russian Coast Guard got there.
Unfortunately, they arrived sixteen hours later! For my part, that was sixteen hours of bailing out my boat without being able to set foot on the dock. All that, just so that the Coast Guard could confirm that Naryan-Mar had notified them of my arrival, stamp my passport, and announce that I was not authorized to dock in Murmansk. I waited another six hours for a tugboat to take me in to port, so I could repair my boat yet again.
Not far away, a boat was moored that I had seen somewhere before. It turned out to be Henk de Velde’s—the explorer whom I had first met in Tiksi, where he was waiting for the ice to break up and free his boat. Apparently the ice wound up crushing his hull, and an icebreaker had conveyed him and his boat to Murmansk where he could have repairs done. He still planned to reach North Cape, but it looked like I would get there before he did. While we waited, he generously offered to put me up on his boat as long as I was in Murmansk.
* * *
I had arrived at two in the morning, exhausted and soaked after three days without sleep, having spent most of that time bailing. I was stuck in my current predicament and could not leave unless assisted by a tugboat. The harbor cranes weren’t operating this early, so I would have to keep on bailing until morning. Fatigue took its toll, and I didn’t feel strong enough to go four days without sleeping.
A dock worker offered to install a pump in my boat that was usually used for fuel, assuring me that it would drain my trimaran in two minutes. And he would drain the boat whenever necessary so that I could get some sleep until the drydock cranes began to operate at nine in the morning. He offered his services for the moderate fee of one hundred Euros per hour. Here we go again …
I had no alternative. And after all, it wouldn’t be for more than a few hours. However, later that day, at four in the afternoon, the gantry cranes still weren’t working. The pump wound up costing me two thousand Euros. With the Euro equal to about one U.S. dollar, this was not pocket change.
The crane operator who finally showed up asked to see plans of my boat; he said that he needed to study the shape of the hull so that he could lift it and set it down without damaging it. I called Cathy and asked her to fax the plans.
First, the crane operator said, the boat would need to be hauled onto a floating crane—six hundred Euros an hour—which would take it to the hoist, which would in turn put it in the dry dock—for four hundred Euros more.
Of course, all of this work was connected. It was impossible to say yes to one piece and no to the others. The harbor mafia of Murmansk had me in its talons. It knew that I couldn’t afford to lose the boat or the gear inside it.
To prevent my temper from causing an unpleasant incident, I decided to bow out of the negotiations entirely and to delegate matters to Jean-Philippe. After all, he was in charge of logistics for the expedition. Jean-Philippe hired an interpreter who showed up and performed miracles of diplomacy.
All the while, I granted interview requests from journalists in town who had learned of my presence and my unusual expedition.
* * *
The interpreter was skillful in his negotiations, but we still wound up having to pay. But faced with the growing and endless demands of the Murmansk crowd, I decided to put off fully repairi
ng the boat until I reached Kirkenes, Norway, which was about 185 miles from Murmansk and reachable by a paved highway. I needed only to pack the boat up on a boat trailer and catch up with it after two days of bicycling. Once the repairs to the trimaran were made in Kirkenes, all that would remain was a short sail to North Cape.
I had a boat trailer waiting for me in Kirkenes. However, a Norwegian freight company, Nord Cargo, wanted two thousand Euros to drive the trailer to Murmansk, put the trimaran aboard, and haul everything back to Kirkenes. I told them to take a hike and contacted a shipper in Murmansk, who took a look at the trimaran and said it would cost seven hundred Euros. Much better.
On my way out, I still had to deal with the exit formalities and harbor taxes. The officer in charge told me with a straight face that I owed three thousand Euros! I called Sergei in Moscow, and he told me that the normal fee would be two hundred Euros. I stopped the official, who had already begun to fill out the documents. I told him that there would be no need to check another box. Starting now, I would take care of everything—filling out forms, hiring transporters, and so forth.
But I had overlooked one vital detail: like everyone else here, the man had ties to the local mafia. Two hours later my transporter informed me that, for personal reasons, he had decided not to take my boat. It was clear that it was a courtesy even to tell me that. If he wanted to stay healthy, he needed to forget he had ever met me.
If that was how things stood, I announced that I would be doing my own repairs on the spot, and that I would then set sail under my own power. With the help of a local mechanic, I repaired the handle of my centerboard. Then I made preparations to weigh anchor.
Once they understood that I was about to slip through their fingers, the harbor union mafia began to relent. Once I was in a position of strength, I made them an offer. They would let me use my Russian shipper, and I would pay them two hundred Euros, in addition to what I had already paid for the pump and so forth. They were happy to make some money off me and accepted the deal.