Northwest Passage Expedition – daily update 31 August 2024

Leven, Mike and Karts opened one of the Northwest Passage Expedition gin bottles last night. We had brought a few of those with us, from the UK, mainly to give them as gifts to helpful souls. And no one could deny, that the four of us had been quite helpful yesterday morning during the near-miss. I kind of flirted with the idea of joining my team-mates.

(c) Top left, top right, photo credit Karts Huseonica

BACK TO THE CABIN

However, they had chosen to spend the night under the stars, respectively (in Karts’s case) in a small tent on the beach, and despite the rattling and shaking of Hermione in the breakers on the beach, I preferred a cabin on a robust carbon fibre boat over a bit of tarp on a beach. In terms of protection against the elements and bears. I wished my friends a jolly night and climbed back into the bow cabin.

ROUGH SEA

Leven had left me with the impression that with receding tides the shaking and rolling and the insanely loud sounds were going to calm down. However, the opposite was true, at least for now. Hermione had started to list by at least 30 degrees off the vertical angle. Each wave rolled straight onto the deck and caused havoc. Even just getting into the cabin through the latch door required ninja-like speed and precision unless your intention was to turn the cabin into a swimming pool. The whole deck had filled with a thick layer of smelly rotting seaweed and a lot of water.

CABIN FLOODED

When Mike and I woke up in the bow cabin around 7am, we discovered that in the lower section of the tilted cabin some 150l of seawater  including debris, little pebbles and seaweed, had accumulated. We had slept in the slightly more elevated section, so hadn’t noticed earlier. For several hours, Leven searched for the leak. At first he suspected that the barrier between the space in the bow cabin, under the floor level, just behind the latch door, where we store the life raft, might be faulty, allowing water from the compartments under the deck, to seep through. However, no water had gotten into any of the compartments under deck.

ALL GEAR ONTO THE BEACH

Meanwhile, the rest of the team emptied the two cabins’ contents onto the beach and laid everything out to dry. In case you missed it, there had been a leak in the stern cabin, too, while we had still been anchored in strong winds in the bay. About 5 litres (1.25 gallons) of water had seeped through the tiny, sealed holes in the hull, through which electric cords and pipes go.

LEVEN LOOKS FOR LEAKS

Leven knows no fear, when it comes to rescuing his beloved Hermione. He didn’t care for the breakers that relentlessly and continuously pushed him hard against the starboard, windward side of the boat. As soon as the water levels briefly got lower between two waves, he was at it again, inspecting every square inch of hull. The task at hand was further made difficult by the fact that the hull was at times partially encased in sand and pebbles, at the best of times sitting on sand and pebbles whenever there wasn’t a breaker lifting and tossing it.

LEAK FOUND, SAFE & SOUND

This is why, in the end, Leven discovered the crack from the inside, not the outside of the hull. It was in the tiny compartment directly under the generator, with space just for a few pipes and construction elements that had been installed there. This corresponded with the location at the bottom of the hull (neither portside nor starboard) below the “N” of the “safe + sound” sponsor sticker, roughly half the way from the bow to the far end of the bow cabin.

A VERITABLE CRACK

The crack was about one foot (30cm) long. With every wave hitting Hermione, seawater, sand, pebbles and bits of seaweed were gushing through it into the hull. You could see the seaweed dangling from the leak, if you knew where to look. During the time Leven discovered the hole, it was relatively low tide, so the crack was clearly visible once you opened the tiny, pot-lid sized latch and shone some light on it with a hand torch. As soon as the tide rose a little more, the bow cabin started filling up with water again.

THE PLAN

It was decided to motor from Cape Hope to a new anchoring point next to a radio station, about 10 miles (16km) towards Paulatuk, to escape this storm-prone witches’ cauldron, at 6pm, when winds were supposed to die down and seas to flatten for a few hours.

A TRIP ON A BAILING SHIP?

The trip would also be a test to see how well we would be able to counter the effects of the leak through bailing. For the first 30 minutes we would stay inside the bay, mere minutes from our current location on the beach. In case the bailing would not be sufficient, we could always reach the beach almost immediately during that period.

FIXING THE LEAK?

Once we would have completed our 10-mile motoring trip, we’d see if the guys at the radio station had some repair kit items to top up what we already had. Like foam, which we don’t have. Either way, we would fix anything that can be fixed at this stage. What gave us some level of comfort, is, that if, in a relatively unlikely worst’ish case, the whole of the bow cabin should flood, Hermione would still float.

TWO DAYS TO PAULATUK

For the following two days, we would motor non-stop to Paulatuk, keep our fingers crossed that we would find all the material and tools we needed, or even a skilled repairs specialist. We’d get the boat fixed properly, then we’d motor back to Cape Hope and pick up our rowing game where we had left it.

But there was still time until we’d leave.

MIKE’S POEM ABOUT OUR EXPEDITION

I finally found time to read Mike’s poem about our Northwest Passage Expedition. I really enjoyed it. I liked his equally unpublished collection of connected short stories even better, though.

MIKE & LEVEN GO ON A SIGHT-SEEING TRIP

Mike & Leven did an extended walk around the area near our beaching location. At first they found out that that rock with a white plaque on it was just a seagull toilet. Then, more interestingly, they discovered two muskox skulls and an ancient Inuit food cache called piruliaq.

I GOT SOME ADMIN DONE

I updated my main sponsor, LPA, and the three charities I raise funds for, checked my GoFundMe expedition costs fundraiser, and got some admin done on my phone. One of the LPA guys joked that it all looked very romantic there on Cape Hope with the log fire on the beach next to the ocean with the gently breaking waves.

GETTING BACK TO WORK

From around 3pm we all got super-busy, first clearing the deck from all the seaweed, then loading all our gear back onto the boat. Then trying to work with the violent breakers, large beams of driftwood we stuck under the hull, and by pulling on the rope attached to our reserve anchor, in order to get the old lady floating again. Not just that. We also had to avoid two large submerged boulders trying to block our way.

BAILING

Throughout the exercise we were bailing in shifts, using our hand pump. The bailing job was the most dreaded one, because the bailer had to be inside the confined bow cabin of a boat that was violently kicked about by waves from one side and by three untidy fellers with wild hair and long sticks from the other side.

CHANGE OF PLANS

At around 7pm and after a lot of sweat and next to no results, we gave up. On the plus side, probably a good thing we hadn’t been successful, because, if anything, the sea had become more furious, not calmer during the past few hours. Weather forecasts around the world, no matter if expensive, specialist services for seafarers in remote regions or your run-of the mill TV meteorologists, have one thing in common: they are entirely useless. According to the latest forecasts the weather will get a lot worse until it finally calms down on Tuesday. So we are now planning to start motoring to the radar station 10 miles from here on Tuesday. Then all the way to Paulatuk from later that day or Wednesday morning.

NOT A LUXURY HOLIDAY

We offloaded a lot of our stuff onto the beach again. We sat around our log fire for a while, not talking much. I was the first one to tap out for the day. In the no longer flooded, but wet and damp bow cabin. In my wet, damp, full gear of the day, 7 layers, wrapped in two slightly wet, damp sleeping bags. Wearing proper wet boots and socks. I didn’t want to change into my only other pair, dry running shoes, and dry socks, only for those to get wet once water got into the cabin or once I left the cabin. The inflatable sleeping mat had had a malfunctioning, leaking valve, for a while, so had zero insulating effect.

TIME TO SLEEP

I had forgotten somehow to bring my water bottle. It was still on the beach. It took a good couple of hours until I fell asleep. I believe Leven hit the sack a short while after me, in the stern cabin in his case. Mike joined me in the bow cabin around midnight, and Karts went for a night’s sleep in his tent on the beach.