{"id":132369,"date":"2021-06-18T09:05:48","date_gmt":"2021-06-18T08:05:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/?p=132369"},"modified":"2021-07-01T11:25:20","modified_gmt":"2021-07-01T10:25:20","slug":"the-viking-route-across-the-atlantic-via-nova-scotia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/cruising\/the-viking-route-across-the-atlantic-via-nova-scotia-132369","title":{"rendered":"The Viking route: Across the Atlantic via Nova Scotia"},"content":"Specialist high latitude yachts invariably have metal hulls and are very solidly built with large fuel tanks and internal steering positions. But that doesn\u2019t mean that a well-insulated, properly prepared, solid oceangoing yacht<\/a> built of other materials can\u2019t cruise some high latitude areas.\r\n\r\nThe key is that a yacht needs to be solid \u2013 solid hull, solid rig, solid systems and solid crew and, if of fibreglass construction, avoid high-risk areas. You\u2019ll need to outfit and equip to commercial standards: a vast amount of yachting gear will not last in these conditions.\r\n\r\nAny boat so lightly built that it deforms in a seaway should be avoided, so if your rigging goes slack or you find doors and drawers don\u2019t fit when pounding to weather, forget it. Water will find its way in and make life below miserable, quite apart from the risk of a catastrophic ice or ground impact.\r\n\r\nThe hull and rig should be capable of taking a full speed grounding on solid rock and the stem strong enough to smash into that unseen berg. Glacial ice should be considered rock hard and even a small bergy bit could weigh tens of tons, probably more than your yacht. Unless you have absolute faith in your stem you should consider protecting it with a stainless or Kevlar sheath.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_120888\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"1200\"]\"high-latitude-sailing-faraday-antarctica\"<\/a> Anchored at Faraday, a British Antarctic Survey station in Antarctica[\/caption]\r\n\r\nIf nothing else, this will protect your gelcoat against abrasion if you do decide to get involved with the brash in front of a glacier. Three-bladed fixed propellers are much tougher in ice, but never engage reverse gear unless someone is watching astern for ice that might get sucked under the hull. Carry a spare propeller.\r\n

Preparing for high-latitude sailing<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nAll systems must be in tip-top condition. That means a full service or overhaul of the engine and its associated systems. If your engine is at all reluctant to start, go back to first principles before you leave home.\r\n\r\nAre the batteries in good condition and getting properly charged? What condition are the starter motor cables in? Do you have a spare starter motor on board? Is it easy to change fuel filters? Duplex fuel filters are a great idea here. Change your gearbox oil and carry spares and repair materials for everything. Make sure you know how to service and fix all the systems on your boat.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_120889\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"1200\"]\"high-latitude-sailing-forepeak-stowage\"<\/a> Deep stores, spares and shore gear are all essential[\/caption]\r\n\r\nIf there are items you consider too big or too expensive to carry, do some research before you leave homeport for suppliers that have stock and are used to dealing with international couriers. Make sure you have serial and part numbers and supplier details written down. Download manuals for everything.\r\n\r\nResearching these details online once you get to remote locations may very well be impossible. Many a high-latitude expedition has wasted its time waiting in port for spares to arrive.\r\n\r\nThe polar high extends south in the northern hemisphere during the summer and long periods of calm are common. The same is true on the southern half of the Antarctic Peninsula. Consider the fuel range of your vessel and remember heating and generation demands as well.\r\n\r\nExamine the distances between fuel stops along your proposed route and remember that remote northern communities may only have enough fuel for themselves.\r\n\r\nArticle continues below...<\/em>\r\n\r\n[collection]\r\n\r\nThe same is true of the south but there is no fuel available in Antarctica, South Georgia or any sub-Antarctic island. Look at where a fuel bladder could be securely placed as low down as possible in your vessel and revert to jerrycans on deck only as a last resort. Have a naval architect investigate how this added weight will affect your stability curve.\r\n\r\nIf you must have cans on deck they should be of the very strongest design and they\u2019ll need a bombproof cradle system to hold them in place in the worst conditions. And are your stanchions strong enough?\r\n

Generating and managing water<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nDrinking water can be made from glacial ice but not sea ice, and clean, fresh water can be hard to find in the Canadian and American Arctic. If you have a watermaker, check with the manufacturer what its performance is like in 2\u00b0C water. It can be as little as 20% of that in 20\u00b0C water. If you think that will be an issue, plumb a heat exchanger into the raw water side of the system.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_120895\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"1200\"]\"high-latitude-sailing-morning-haze-credit-benedict-gross\"<\/a> Morning Haze<\/em> is an aluminium-hulled Bestevaer 55ST built specifically for high latitudes cruising. Photo: Benedict Gross[\/caption]\r\n\r\nThe art of safe, enjoyable high latitudes cruising is a comfortable life on board so you can keep a fully vigilant watch on deck. At the very least, a good dodger will be needed and excellent clothing. All-in-one insulated waterproof suits from the likes of Mustang and Fladen are easy to get into and solidly warm. Breathability is not as important as being 100% waterproof. Semi-permeable membranes don\u2019t work well in cold, damp conditions.\r\n\r\nDon\u2019t bother with any form of \u2018winter\u2019 sailing or mountaineering glove; buy rubber fisherman\u2019s gloves with removable liners and several pairs of cheap fleece gloves to go inside. Most of them will be on the drying rack most of the time!\r\n\r\nNeoprene welly boots and hats that cover your ears should complete your outerwear, along with plenty of layers of fleece and\/or wool underneath \u2013 avoid cotton. Every crewmember should have an immersion suit and practice getting into it in a hurry. Clear goggles such as those workmen use to protect their eyes will help you see into windy blizzard conditions without hurting your eyes.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_120901\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"1200\"]\"high-latitude-sailing-waterproof-outers\"<\/a> Warm underlayers need to be kept dry with 100% waterproof outers[\/caption]\r\n\r\nBelow decks it\u2019s all about heat and moisture management<\/a>. Keep doors open to allow air to circulate and open all the hatches on those warm sunny days. Drip pot diesel heaters are reliable and don\u2019t use any electricity and as they\u2019re designed to run non-stop on small and medium fishing vessels most come with hotplates and even ovens for cooking too. Consider a rack over and around the heater for drying wet gear but make sure it\u2019s impossible for anything to fall on the hotplate \u2013 which is the best place to keep the kettle hot.\r\n\r\nIf you can\u2019t find a space for a drip pot heater you\u2019ll probably have to revert to a diesel fired forced air heater, often called a night heater or bus heater. They use considerable electricity and can be unreliable and are tricky to fix so carrying a spare is a good idea. They\u2019re also a bit noisy so think about where to install it and the routeing of the hot air ducts so you lose as little locker space as possible.\r\n\r\nLead a duct to the bathroom and, if sufficient ventilation can be arranged, you\u2019ve got an instant drying room. They crew will be much easier to encourage on to deck if they have nice, warm, dry foulies to get into.\r\n\r\nHatches and portlights are likely to run with condensation and can be insulated with closed cell foam pads, temporary acrylic double glazing and even bubble wrap can help here. Take care that any added insulation is instantly removable from any hatch that may be needed in an emergency.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_120899\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"320\"]\"high-latitude-sailing-stove-kettle-credit-km-yachtbuilders\"<\/a> A biodiesel stove provides warmth, comfort and reliability below decks. Photo: KM Yachtbuilders[\/caption]\r\n

Home comforts<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nYour crew\u2019s consumption of hot food and especially hot drinks is likely to go through the roof as it gets colder and you\u2019ll therefore use more propane\/butane for cooking.\r\n\r\nThink about shipping twice the gas you\u2019d usually need for a cruise of the duration you\u2019re considering. Where will the bottles live? You may not be able to get your gas bottles filled in faraway locations but if you carry a universal adapter kit you can use local bottles if you can find them.\r\n\r\nThe crew may also develop a taste for roast meals and the oven will warm up the cabin but the attendant condensation will need to be dealt with. Amazingly, every 13kg bottle of gas burned in your galley produces 20lt of water as steam!\r\n\r\nFully closing the companionway for long periods will make the boat seem colder due to moisture. A hatch over the kitchen will help with this.\r\n\r\nFor communication, VHF will work well for local weather in the north and Iridium for email and GRIB files in both hemispheres and ice reports where they are available. If you have a reliable shore contact they can download and compress ice reports for you and send them by email.\r\n\r\nThe performance of these systems is usually down to antenna placement and condition. Check your coaxial connections for both antennas and consider replacing if there is any sign of water ingress or if the cable or the antennas are not first class.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_120886\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"1200\"]\"high-latitude-sailing-crew-dinner-pelagio\"<\/a> Home comforts are important for crew morale. This was taken during a birthday dinner aboard Skip Novak\u2019s 54ft Pelagic<\/em>[\/caption]\r\n\r\nIridium has just launched a new constellation of satellites which they claim will give high-speed connections worldwide, but this has yet to be proven. If you\u2019re installing new equipment, though, it might be worth waiting to see how that pans out and what costs are like.\r\n\r\nHF radio tends not to be very reliable the closer you are to the magnetic poles and while Inmarsat based systems will work in most of the frequently cruised southern destinations it\u2019s unreliable above 70\u00b0N.\r\n

Keeping a lookout<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nModern radar systems are a godsend and much better at picking up smaller bergs than they used to be but are still no replacement for an attentive watchkeeper with a good view and instant access to the helm and throttle. Make sure all your crew are familiar with the tuning and filtering controls of your radar. It is amazing what a well-tuned radar will pick up and how huge a berg can be entirely missed by a badly tuned set, especially in a seaway.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_120893\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"1200\"]\"high-latitude-sailing-macquarie-island-ice-floe\"<\/a> Ice floes threatening off the sub-Antarctic Macquarie Island[\/caption]\r\n\r\nIn thick fog in the Drake Passage on the way back from the Antarctic Peninsula, we came within 50m of a sheer-sided berg the size of an IKEA store. The radar simply did not see it. I suspect the radar signal was reflected straight off into the distance until we were adjacent to it. Luckily the mark one eyeball was paying attention!\r\n\r\nForward-looking sounders are good for scoping out uncharted territory but have yet to prove their worth for spotting bergs. They just don\u2019t look forward enough yet \u2013 but the technology is improving all the time. A good idea for shallow uncharted areas is launching the tender and sending the crew in with a handheld depth sounder so they can get back by radio with soundings.\r\n\r\nGet yourself a pair of ice \u2018tuks\u2019 \u2013 long poles with a metal spike at one end \u2013 for pushing ice away from the boat or, more accurately, pushing the boat away from ice in most cases. These can be wooden poles or, if you want to be fancy, a pair of two-part windsurfing masts.\r\n\r\nYou\u2019ll need two or three nice big anchors, and all-chain rode. The modern concave designs with the roll bars really do outperform older designs and some stow almost flat.\r\n\r\nAlso useful for awkward anchorages are several very long polypropylene shorelines, some heavy-duty lifting strops to wrap around rocks onshore and a bunch of large shackles to join it all together. The best way to store, deploy and recover these lines is from rope drums on deck but if that\u2019s a step too far for you they can be stored in climber\u2019s rope bags, laundry baskets or even sacks.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_120887\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"1200\"]\"high-latitude-sailing-drum-reels\"<\/a> If you have the space on deck, drum reels are an effective way to stow and deploy polypropylene shore lines[\/caption]\r\n\r\nAs previously discussed you\u2019ll need spares and repair materials for all your systems but what about the crew? Feed them well \u2013 any idea of operating a calorie deficit to lose weight is a recipe (pun intended!) for disaster. Working in the cold is fatiguing. Look out for each other.\r\n\r\nCarry a full medical kit. Annex 1 of MCA UK MSN 1768 Cat A will point you in the right direction for medical stores and equipment. The kit for men and women is slightly different. Do you need gear for both? Invest in training for at least two crewmembers and subscribe to a doctor on call service from a provider like Medical Services Offshore, which can also provide equipment, drugs and training.\r\n\r\nHigh latitudes sailing is very fashionable right now but to head north or south in a lightly built, ill-prepared vessel is to risk your boat, your crew and anyone who tries to help you. Take the time to review, plan, budget, organise and execute solid modifications to your boat and her equipment and you can safely enjoy the wonders of the polar regions.\r\n

\"high-latitude-sailing-magnus-day\"<\/a>About the author<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nMagnus Day has been working and travelling on boats from 40-185ft in the Arctic and Antarctic every year since 2005. He is best known for his long-term involvement with Skip Novak\u2019s Pelagic Expeditions and now runs High Latitudes<\/a>, a consulting company to yacht owners and their captains on vessel choice, modification and refit, permitting, crewing and logistics for both polar regions.\r\n\r\nHe also acts as ice pilot to sailing superyachts<\/a> through EYOS<\/a> and owns expedition yacht Baltazar<\/em>, which is available for interesting projects worldwide.","excerpt":{"rendered":"

Think of crossing the Atlantic from west to east, and most people will picture a pleasant high-pressure route via Bermuda or the Azores. But there is another way of doing it. One that cocks a snook at the rhumbline and flies in the face of the usual assumptions about what constitutes ideal weather. Promisingly, it is known as the Viking Route, so named after the Norse explorers who voyaged as far as Nova Scotia a thousand years ago. Put simply, to follow the Viking route takes you from the east coast of the US, across the top of the planet via Newfoundland, Greenland and Iceland, back down to Europe via the Faroe Islands. Besides the wild and little-visited isles along the route, its chief attraction is how this option breaks the transatlantic ocean passage down into smaller, bite-sized chunks. When Alberto Duhau looked into the route to take his Hylas 63 Shaima from Florida to the Mediterranean, he quickly realised that there\u2019d be no more than six days at sea between landfalls. Preparing for the Viking route After consulting weather experts, ice pilots, and Hylas themselves, Duhau also saw that his boat would need relatively little in the way of modification to tackle these higher latitudes. Not for nothing is this called the Viking route, and if they could do it in longships built of green oak with iron rivets and square sails made of wool, a modern high-spec glassfibre cruiser should have no problems. This is the story of how Alberto Duhau followed in the wake of the Vikings. Shaima\u2019s voyage began in Florida, but Duhau and his ever-changing crew of friends and family took the whole US east coast in a single hop, making their first stops along the coast of Nova Scotia. There are plenty of well-protected anchorages here, and Duhau recalls it as an early highlight of the trip. Article continues below… \u201cWe saw large amounts of humpback and pilot wales in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and a few icebergs along the Newfoundland coast,\u201d he says. \u201cSmall coastal villages of this part of Canada start to have the flavour of the Scandinavian towns that dot the landscape for the rest of the trip.\u201d The planned departure from St John\u2019s was delayed because of gales off Greenland\u2019s southernmost tip, Cape Farewell, but that gave them a chance to explore Fogo island to the north. Fogo is a beautiful and little-visited spot, but it also put them some 100 miles further into the ice-strewn Labrador Strait for the passage north to Qaqortoq. In the end, they completed the 700 miles in just four and a half days with a stiff southerly wind veering west. \u201cFog was common and the need to watch out for icebergs, growlers and bergie bits was around the clock,\u201d says Duhau. \u201cSometimes we could scout for icebergs from the warmth of our cockpit enclosure, but often we had to stand watch unprotected from the side deck while engulfed by a 4\u00b0C breeze and …Continue reading »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":447,"featured_media":132373,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[139,977,972],"tags":[208,1499,1633],"review_manufacturer":[],"acf":[],"introduction":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132369"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/447"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132369"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":132386,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132369\/revisions\/132386"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132369"},{"taxonomy":"review_manufacturer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review_manufacturer?post=132369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}