Almost burned down our little windstop around the campfire with all the gear and clothes in its proximity, when at around 3am, a massive random gust pushed over the half of a rusty oil barrel that we had repurposed as windshield, and with it most of the log fire pyramid. Ambers ranging in size from mosquitoes to tennis balls were flying and rolling everywhere. Too much stress in the middle of a pitch black night, while on my own on polar bear watch shift. My shift partner had chosen to do his shift simultaneously from the deck of Hermione, which is perfectly fine.
PUSHING, PULLING, HEAVING
From 8:30am we were all at it again, pushing, pulling, heaving. We worked even harder than during the previous sessions, knowing that with strong winds forecast from tomorrow morning, we would not get much of a chance to put some distance between ourselves and this godforsaken, ridiculously named, Cape Hope, if we didn’t manage to launch the old lady this morning.
WE DID IT! HERMIONE IS BACK IN THE WATER!
At 9:30am we all could feel that the launch was imminent. The boat started feeling lighter and moved differently. At 9:55am it finally happened. Hermione was floating again.
90 MORE MINUTES OF MAYHEM
What followed were another 90 minutes of mayhem during which anything could have gone wrong and ended the expedition right here and there for good.
UNTYING LINES, REMOVING STRAPS, LIFTING THE ANCHOR
We untied the bow line rope from the thick piece of driftwood that we had buried under heavy stones on the beach. One after another we removed the strap that had gone from the bow to a semi-submerged boulder and then we lifted the stern anchor.
PUNTING
We had already put the main oars into the riggers and were now using the spare oars as punting sticks to push the boat away from boulders and from the beach. We were heading towards the middle of the bay and deeper waters. Stern first, moving backwards.
FAILED ATTEMPT AT SWITCHING TO ROWING
Our attempt to switch from punting to rowing wasn’t a great success, because rowing backwards is much harder than rowing forward, the usual way. We couldn’t generate enough power to propel the boat. On skipper’s orders Art and I went back to punting.
MOTORING
Leven then took a leap of faith and asked Mike to man the electric motor controls and steering handles, while he, Leven, was clinging to the side of the bow, looking for boulders, shallows, adverse currents, waves, and so on, shouting orders. By any normal standard or even only common sense, it was still way too early to lower the electric motor into the water and expose it to the risk of damage and destruction.
NAVIGATING FIELD OF SUBMERGED BOULDERS
“OK, switch the motor on but stay in neutral…
…2 knots forward, hard starboard now, harder, now…
…go back into neutral, men on oars punt hard to get us away from that big boulder portside…
…2 knots forward, keep her steady, slightly to port…”
This went on for a long time, while we made next to no progress, bumped into what felt like half the boulders in the bay, at times were sept back towards the beach and almost broke the oars while punting.
A NOTCH UP TO THREE KNOTS
When Leven finally climbed back onto deck from the bow and increased the speed to 3 knots, it was a huge relief. There were still several shallows to pass and breaths to hold before we came into deeper waters for good, but boy oh boy, it sure felt good to see the back of this arse end of the Canadian North and to tuktuktuk towards Paulatuk.
HOW IS THE LEAK DOING?
The leak, which we had been continuously monitoring since we had stopped punting (and thus had freed manpower for this task), was doing well, or rather the temporary patch to fix the leak. At the beginning of our journey, we only had to bail about three litres (0.75 gallons) every five minutes, which is nothing, really. When the winds grew stronger and the sea choppier, there were a few hours when one man had to constantly bail out water. Mind you, we are still only talking 25l (6 gallons) every five minutes, at the absolute peak, 15 to 20l for the rest of that challenging period. When the sea calmed down again, we were back at ten litres every five minutes.
BAILING & STEERING IN SHIFTS
Mike and I covered the bailing. I was bailing while Mike was resting, and vice versa. We started out with two-hour shifts and ended up with three-hour shifts. Leven and Karts were covering the steering and navigating in shifts of varying lengths.
VERY LITTLE SPACE
In the front cabin, things got really crammed. There was just enough space for me bailing while Mike was sleeping and the other way round.
BAILING PROCESS
The process was pretty straight forward. We used Mike’s small aluminium thermos coffee cup, because it is sturdy and exactly the right size. You sat next to the round latch opening, facing your sleeping buddy, then you contorted your upper body counterclockwise, so that you now almost faced away from the cabin entrance.
TWISTED BACKWARD SPIRAL
Your right hand laid on a big black box and acted as a pillar on which the rest of your upper body rested. Your left hand grabbed the handle of the cup from the side at an awkward angle. You then inserted your hand with the cup into the opening and went through a series of complex moves. A bit like a twisted backward spiral, to navigate safely past the pipes, fluid containers, pumps. Once you reached the bottom of the compartment, you put the cup, now entirely out of sight, almost into a horizontal angle, then in one big powerful swoosh tried to scoop up as much water as possible. Finally, you went through the spiralling movement in reverse, lifted the cup out of the hole and emptied it into a big bucket. Once the bucket was full, you emptied the bucket into the sea.
THE MILITARY PLANE
From 7pm we could hear several messages on VHF which did not seem to identify the caller or the intended recipient. Most of the messages were of such bad sound quality that the only bits we could hear clearly were “Cape Hope” and “accident”. We tried in vain on a number of occasions to message back, but to no avail. Until finally the other side responded to our message.
EMERGENCY SITUATION AT CAPE HOPE?
They vaguely mentioned something about Canadian military without clearly ID’ing themselves, said that the Canadian Coastguard had advised them that a rowing boat called Hermione would be in trouble at Cape Hope. We thanked them for the effort, explained that we had indeed contacted the Coastguard to inform them about our emergency beaching and leak.
ALL GOOD HERE, THANK YOU VERY MUCH
However, we had never requested assistance from the Coastguard but instead had been trying to get paid help like a fishing boat to assist us in getting the boat relaunched and pulled to Paulatuk, so far in vain. Furthermore, we informed our new friends that we had managed to apply a patch to the leak and to relaunch Hermione without assistance. We were now in the process of motoring (and rowing) to Paulatuk.
WHY CAN’T WE SEE THEIR SHIP?
At this stage we were still confused why we couldn’t see the military’s ship on our AIS. Then a few minutes later a plane flew over us very close to the ground, did a U-turn and flipped the wings up and down while approaching us again. Over VHF the crew of the boat that had turned out to be a plane wished us all the best and then they were on their merry way.
MAKING GOOD PROGRESS
By midnight, we had already made almost a quarter of the way to Paulatuk. We had done some rowing along the way, but mainly motoring.
THE PLAN
With gradually increasing crosswinds throughout tomorrow, we expect to be anchoring at a protected cove or similar from 6pm, then sit out the winds there for another 24h before continuing our journey to Paulatuk on Saturday night.
