I got going south at 9 am the next morning headed for Annapolis after first calling Jabin Yacht Yard and setting an appointment to have Phywave hauled out first thing on Tuesday morning. From Ford Landing it was another full day of motoring with winds up to 15 kts on the bow retarding my progress and only weak currents that both helped and hurt my progress. 

I arrived in the not so great anchorage off Horn Point in Annapolis at around 5 pm, not great because it’s rolly and exposed though the anchor holding is ok. Power boats sometimes don’t obey the “no wake” rules and that adds more rolling around. There were several other boats anchored there, many launching their dinghies to go into town while others chose to taxi the water taxi that will pick you up at your boat. I didn’t bother with that since I’d be ashore soon enough.

My haul out date was Tuesday, October 6, but I could bring the boat over the afternoon before and tie it to one of the long docks alongside the chutes where the travelifts operate so it would be ready to haul first thing in the morning. They wanted it stern-in but without the bow thrusters working, there wasn’t much room for me to rotate the boat so the Jabin crew did that by hand. One reason I like the Jabin yard is they have plenty of people on the job and they know what they’re doing. Unlike Herrington Harbour North (HHN) where I was earlier this year, they will commit to a specfic date to haul or launch a boat. HHN will only commit to “week of” – not very user-friendly. HHN also requires headsails on furlers to be removed before they will put the boat in the yard for fear the sails might unfurl with a strong wind and pull the boat over. Completely unnecessary, as long as the furled sail is held tight with several wraps of the sheets. That sensible approach to headsails is OK at Jabin.

At a little after 8:30 am they were lifting Phywave out of the water and by 9:30 it was in place and blocked, ready for me to start down my list of more than 50 things I need to fix, maintain, buy, or get rid of. I plan to be here until October 30 to get as much of that done as possible. I plan to fly back home on the 31st.

Reflecting on this summer’s sailing, one word describes it: a fiasco. I had to work through multiple serious boat problems, some of which were due to my own complacency and lack of preparation. Having gotten past those, I was fueled and a day away from leaving Hammerfest and starting across the Barents Sea to the Northern Sea Route when the Russians effectively cancelled our permits to transit their Arctic waters. I basically spent my summer sailing to the northern end of Norway and back – not exactly a significant accomplishment. Not much to point to for all the time and effort I put into it. I guess I did sail north of the Arctic Circle so that’s about the only minor accomplishment I can extract from this summer’s sailing.

As for next year, I have the winter to decide what I will do. There are now new moving parts in Russia which will affect another attempt at an Arctic circumnavigation, and which are too complicated to explain here but which will raise the risk level. It remains to be seen how it might shake out in the coming months.

After the Nor’easter subsided, I left the Sandwich Marina at about 11 am local time in Monday, September 28, to coincide with the start of the ebb current flowing westward in the Cape Cod Canal. There are a couple of fixed high bridges across the canal that are easy to pass under but also a vertical lift railroad bridge that is high when in the raised position (most of the time) but impassible by boats in the canal when lowered to let a train pass over. The train schedules are a little random so it’s hard to know when the bridge may be down. I tried to call the bridge control on the VHF before leaving the marina but got no answer. Once I got in the canal, there were tugs and other commercial traffic which indicated to me the railroad bridge was up and wouldn’t be an issue.

With an assist from the strong current, motoring through the canal to Buzards Bay was quick. As soon as I had some open water to work with I started looking for some wind but true to the forecast, the winds were very light and in the wrong direction. South of Buzzards Bay I finally got some useful wind and could sail through the night.

The next few days forecast pretty much said dead calm or light winds on the nose so I started motoring my way to Breakwater Harbor on the opposite side of the Delaware River delta from Cape May. I had identified it as the most convenient place to wait for the flood current north in the river that would start the next morning.

Curiously, getting close to the harbor I noticed the halyard on my mainsail was loose and flapping in the wind. Normally, I’d tighten it so it pulls on the head of the sail that’s securely furled inside the furling boom with the furling line locked down. I tried to tighten the halyard again but it started raising the sail, now above the first batten, which should never happen. It was then I noticed the furling line was slack. After further investigation I realized the line had snapped at the furling drum at the aft end of the boom.  It was a serious problem since I now had no way to roll in the sail the was already partly pull out. If wind had caught that raised piece of sail, it could have unrolled the entire mainsail since there was nothing to stop the furling drum from turning.

As soon as I was anchored in Breakwater harbor, I pulled that deployed piece of sail down, wrapped it around the boom, and lashed it there so the wind couldn’t catch it. It was my only choice since replacing the furling line is not a simple thing on that boom. I’d have to make that repair after the boat was hauled out back in Annapolis. If I fould any wind for sailing, I’d have to do it with the headsails alone. As it turned, there really wasn’t much wind so the next two days so getting back to Annapolis were all motoring.

At about 7 am the next morning, October 1, pretty much all the boats in the harbor pulled up their anchors and headed north with the same objective: to reach the east entrance of the Chesapeake- Delaware (C&D) Canal when the current is flowing westward to the Chesapeake Bay. It made a random procession of sailboats (monohulls and catamarans) and power boats heading north, with the occasional commercial container ship or tanker adding to mix and causing the rest of use to move to the side of the main channel to give them room to pass by. 

It was a long boring slog with my engine running at 2100 rpm, faster than I normally motor,but I wanted to make sure I got through the canal and to place I picked to anchor for the night in the north end of Chesapeake Bay. With the current assist, I saw my speed over ground (water) exceed 9 knots at times.

I turned west into the C&D canal around 2:45 pm and with the further current assist there made it to the anchorage I had picked out in the north end of Chesapeake Bay by Ford Landing at around 5:30 pm. I always try to time my arrival in a new place for daylight hours though I have anchored at night in new places where I can’t see much – it’s a little spooky. Happy to be back in Chesapeake Bay, I had a calm, restful night at this anchorage along with 3 other boats.

I left Lunenburg at around 0900 local time on Saturday, September 19. Compared to the passage from Norway to Lunenburg, the passage onward to the US from Lunenburg was pretty sublime. I actually had a sunny day of sailing with favorable winds. There were also periods of calm when I’d motor to keep making tangible progress.

The thing that primarily occupied my planning was the forecast wind storm, or Nor’easter, as east coast people call it. It was forecast to reach maximum strength the weekend of September 26, but before that winds and waves of considerable strength were forecast for my route from Lunenburg to Cape May in Delaware. Cape May is at the mouth of the Delaware River and the point where I would leave the ocean and proceed upriver to the Chesapeake-Delaware (CD) canal that connects the river to the north end of Chesapeake Bay. Once through the canal, its straightfoward to proceed south down the bay to Annapolis.

Not being able to make it to Cape May in one passage, I began looking for marinas in New England where I could wait out the  Nor’easter. I considered marinas in Portland, Maine, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire, but decided it would be most efficent if I went further south so my route to Cape May after the storm passed would be shorter. Not having any personal knowledge of any of these places, I had to rely on various websites in my search. I finally settled on the Sandwich Marina in Sandwich, Massachusetts. It’s a small marina located at the east end of the Cape Cod Canal, a canal which cuts across from Cape Cod Bay to Buzzards Bay, thus avoiding going all the way around the ocean side of Cape Cod, and also avoiding the Nantucket Shoals. Knowing boat shelter would be in high demand for the storm, I felt lucky to book a slip here through the Dockwa website for September 22-28.

As I’ve often done, I substantially slowed the boat approaching Cape Cod so I would cross Cape Cape Bay and arrive at the marina in daylight. The forecast said the winds at the marina would be about 12 kts. Wrong again.

Crossing the bay south I expected the winds to diminish from 20-25 kts to 12 kts but they didn’t, instead staying the same strength; I noticed one gust at 28 kts. I now faced the prospect of having to drive my boat into a slip in a small marina with a 20+ kts crosswind. Phywave has a lot of freeboard (exposed hull above the waterline) and a large dodger giving it significant so-called “windage” which makes it more prone to be pushed sideways by the wind compared to boats with a more streamlined profile. 

As I usually do, I called ahead to the marina with the VHF radio and asked that dockhands meet me to take my docklines because I’m sailing solo. Given the winds, and my relative inexperience with docking under such conditions, I was really concerned about making it into the slip. The situation was further aggravated because my bow thrusters were not working, something I discovered when coming into Lunenburg. The motor runs but I was getting no sideways propulsion, probably indicating the prop blades were gone. I had last used them leaving Hammerfest and they worked fine there so apparently the bow thrusters prop blades were another casualty of the passage to Lunenburg, like the battens and masthead antenna.

I resorted to the only technique I knew – make the turn into the slip going fast with a lot of power on, like I intend to smash the boat right through the dock. Once in the slip go to maximum reverse power to stop the boat before it actually does crash into the dock. It worked out better than I expected, but once in the slip getting it secured with the help of the dockhands took some work because the crosswind was pushing Phywave away from the finger dock where it was supposed to be tied. We finally got it done but I’ll probably double up on the dock lines and add snubbers before the maximum winds hit this weekend.

Sandwich Marina is in a good location with a couple of fine restaurants on either side which I’ve already visited. There is a shopping plaza a 10 minute walk away with more restaurants and a typical mega American grocery store with everything you could possibly want, quite a contrast to the small, but adequate, grocery stores I see in most foreign locales like Hammerfest and Lunenburg.

Clearing Customs and Immigration when arriving in the US in a private pleasure boat from a foreign port has never been easier. The CPB ROAM app is designed to let you arrive pretty much anywhere, not just at a designated Port of Entry and show up in person at a Customs facility . After securing Phywave at Sandwich Marina, I got on the app and filled in the details about my boat, my arrival location, and me personally as the ship’s master and only person aboard. I hit the button to submit the info to a CPB officer for review. Thirty minutes later I got a message that my entry into the US was approved. I used the same app when I arrived in Fort Lauderdale in 2025; it was just as easy then.  

Unfortunately, it appears you can’t use CPB ROAM when arriving in the US by private aircraft. The last time I flew my plane into the US from another country (Canada) was in 2019. I had to fly to a particular airport and make an appointment by phone with a Customs guy to meet me there. Apparently, that process is still necessary. I don’t see an obvious reason CPB ROAM couldn’t be used for aircraft arrivals, allowing you to basically fly in to any airport, not just a designated Customs airport, and use CPB ROAM to report that arrival.

After a brutal, non-stop 30 day passage from Hammerfest, Norway, the floating dock alongside Zwicker’s Wharf in Lunenburg was one of the most welcome sights I’ve ever experienced. Sailing westward across the far North Atlantic is definitely an upstream battle, trying to effectively leverage the winds of a conga line of low pressure systems moving west to east against me. There was a lot of upwind sailing, made all the more difficult because I lost two upper battens in my mainsail. With the sail reefed in the high winds so only the upper portion is in action, the bagged out sail without battens made for pathetic upwind performance. Upwind sailing was further aggravated by wind forecasts that had the wind direction wrong by 20 or 30 degrees. It’s hard to devise a workable upwind strategy with wind angles so wrong.

The forecast wind speeds and seas were similarly wrong: 20-25 kts in the forecast were, in reality, sustained 30-35 kts.  Two meter waves turned out to be 3 to 4 meter waves with short periods, rolling or slamming into the boat every 5 or 6 seconds, many crashing right over the entire deck giving the boat a saltwater bath. In the past I’ve described such conditions as “rough”. When I reluctantly went up the companionway into the cockpit to adjust sails, and looked out at the surging, windblown seas and felt the howling wind as they twisted and tilted the boat, especially in the pitch black of night, only one word came to mind to describe it: violent. It was like walking out the front door of your house into a full blown street riot.

Of the 30 days, I can count on one hand the number I would describe as having some pleasant sailing. Even the weather was dismal, almost always a solid overcast with very rare sunbreaks.  I remember one afternoon, though, when it was actually pleasant enough to sit in the cockpit with my daily finger of Chivas watching a pod of dolphins swim alongside for awhile. Surprising, because I was more than 500 nm from any land. Normally, you only see dolphins in coastal waters so I thought “where are these guys going?”  They had unusual colors – mainly brown with a muted white stripe on their sides. I should have gotten sea bird and marine wildlife books for the boat long ago so I had some idea what I was looking at. Normally, I’m an astute observer. I can almost always tell when the dinosaurs in a movie are fake.

In addition to the lost mainsail battens, sometime in the last few days before arriving in Lunenburg the VHF radio antenna at the top of my mast blew away. I don’t need to use the VHF marine radio much, but that antenna is also used for the AIS system. The AIS system broadcasts my boat’s position, course, and speed, among other information, so other boats know where I am and where I’m going. Similarly, other boats  broadcast the same information so I know what they’re doing. The AIS receiver automatically takes this information and calculates how close ships may come to others, and whether there is a risk of a collision. I regard it as a mission-critical system, especially in busy waterways. With the antenna gone the system was inop and I was blind to nearby ships. I had to get a replacement antenna installed before leaving Lunenburg. Unfortunately, the 3 1/2 days I spent there were largely occupied with buying a replacement antenna and finding a rigger to climb the mast to install it. Even though Lunenburg is mainly a tourist town, in fact, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, I was surprised to find a marine electronics shop that could order anything, like an antenna and fittings, and have them arrive the next day. There was also a rigger in town; I thought I’d have to go to Halifax an hour away to find a rigger. 

I got the replacement antenna installed pretty efficiently given where I was, but it meant I had little time in explore and enjoy Nova Scotia. I certainly made the most of the variety of restaurants within a short walk of my boat. Scallops are a thing here: scallop PoBoy’s, scallops wrapped in bacon, grilled scallops on risotto, etc. A very welcome break from my boat food, I ate it all.

My destination is Annapolis, MD, still about 700 nm away with a  seriously bad looking weather system, perhaps a tropical depression moving north, in the long term forecast standing in my way. I may have to make the remaining passage to Annapolis a multi-hop process as I deal with that looming weather system.

Torn batten sleave and broken end cap

After being informed on August 12 that my transit through the Russian Arctic, and hence my solo Arctic circumnavigation, was no longer possible because the NSRA determined that ice and weather conditions were too difficult and dangerous for small boats, I started looking for a weather window to return to the US East Coast. 

I waited until August 16 for that window. After motoring from Hammerfest to the open ocean, I was met with strong winds out of the north, much stronger than forecast, with attendant high seas. It was a fast but rough 3 – 4 days of sailing. Arriving east of Iceland, things only got worse with now upwind sailing conditions, with variable wind directions, as I tried to work my way south and west around the southern side of Iceland. The winds finally rotated to the south but for 12 hours I was on a very rough beam reach with 30+ kt winds and 3 to 4 meter seas. Very rolly, heeled over conditions. Three reefs in the sails. Some of the roughest sailng I can recall.

I’m past Iceland now in lighter winds and seas, on a route largely southwest toward Newfoundland, my target landfall. I don’t know if I’ll stop there, but perhaps move on to Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, for a rest stop instead. I’ve never been to Nova Scotia. 

There’s a big low pressure system looming in the forecast between Newfoundland and my current position, several days off. Hopefully it will dissipate or I can work my way around it without too much drama.

The photos are of Iceland as I sailed by along the south side, taken on one of the very few blue sky days I’ve had on this entire voyage into the Arctic.

Because of the very difficult and dangerous ice conditions in the Russian Arctic along the Northern Sea Route (NSR) this year, the NSR authorites advised us yesterday to postpone our planned transits until next year when more favorable ice conditions may be present. Currently, things are so difficult that ice-rated commercial ships are getting stuck and requesting icebreaker assistance. The weather forecast calls for sub-zero temperatures across the Chukchi and New Siberian Seas next week. Obviously, ice conditions will worsen with such weather.

In a previous post I noted how I was waiting in Hammerfest, Norway, for ice conditions to improve in the Vilkitsky Strait. Well, now I will be looking for a weather window to head back to the US East Coast; my plans are uncertain after that. It’s unlikely I’ll try this solo Arctic circumnavigation next year.

There were four solo sailors attempting to transit the NSR this year. Matt Rutherford in Chimera and me in Phywave were trying to sail eastbound. Ella Hibbert in Yeva and a young Brazilian woman, Tamara Klink, in Sardinha 2 were attempting to sail westbound. All of us will have to make new plans.

I’m on “ice watch” in Hammerfest, Norway, sitting here on my sailboat Phywave. My route through the Russian Arctic is currently blocked but uncharacteristically extensive, stubborn ice in the Vilkitsky Strait (shown by that big patch of red in the strait).  The NSR guys I’m working with don’t have a forecast date for when it will open up, so until then, I’m biding my time in Hammerfest.

After a catastrophic failure of my compass and associated autopilot failure that forced me to retreat to Iceland to figure it out, the voyage from Husavik to Hammerfest went pretty smoothly with the compass and autopliot performing well. 

As always, the weather was a challenge with one particularly large low pressure system I had to navigate around to the south before turning back north again.  The southerly winds were so fierce, 30 – 40 kts, when I arrived in the Hammerfest channel in the middle of the night, that instead of trying to enter the harbor and marina then, I decided to heave-to out in the channel until the winds weakened several hours later. At around noon on Saturday, August 1, I was finally able to get in and tie up in the small 8 berth marina they have which is literally right in the center of town with many nearby restaurants and shops. After making a phone call to arrange to meet someone to complete entry formalities at the police station, which is normally closed on weekends(!), I reviewed my tasks list while having lunch across the street.

One thing I haven’t mentioned before is the screwed up whisker pole I use to wing out my genoa headsail when sailing downwind. One end of the pole is attached to a bracket called a mast car that slides up and down a T-track bolted to the front of the mast. When normally stowed, the pole is vertical in front of the mast. To deploy it, I pull the bottom end of the pole forward until it’s more or less horizontal and then attach it to the clew of the genoa. When I do this, the top end of the pole with the car slides down the track.  The mast car is supposed to have plastic inserts that let it slide smoothly along the track. At some point, I don’t really know when, those inserts fell out or were worn away so that there was metal on metal as the car slid on the track. Worse, without the plastic inserts, the car was too loose on the track and would fall off so the rig fundamentally was not working.  The only fix was to get replacement plastic inserts, about $25 a pair, but $250 for express shipping to Norway, to Vardø in this case. 

Which brings up my conundrum when I changed my Norway destination from Vardø to Hammerfest.  In addition to whisker pole car inserts, I had a couple of other things shipped to Vardø, including a new Spade S140 anchor coming from France.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I had serious problems with the Rocna Vulcan anchor hanging so low in rough seas, catching waves, and yanking on the windlass. I finally got so disgusted with it, I decided to replace it with a new Spade anchor, an S140 30 kg model, one size bigger than 25 kg model I had before on my solo 7 continents circumnavigation voyage.  But at the time I ordered it I still had Vardø as my Norway destination so had it shipped there. 

There are direct flights from Hammerfest to Vadsø, an hour’s drive from Vardø, but you don’t bring a 30 kg anchor (in two heavy packed boxes – fluke and shank) as checked luggage on the small commuter plane making that run. The alternative was to rent a car and drive to Vardø to get it, which I did, 7 hours each way across the roads of northern Norway threaded around fjords and across windswept, treeless, highlands. Anybody who knows me knows I’m steely-eyed endurance driving fool but even that was a lot for me – to Vardø on Monday, back to Hammerfest on Tuesday. I had a nice night at the Vardø hotel (the only hotel) and a delicious dinner – their dish named “Cod is Great”. 

After I saw Vardø, I was immensely glad I changed to Hammerfest as my jumping off point for the Russian Arctic, a choice I should have made in the first place if I’d done more effective research. Vardø is a sad, dilapidated little fishing village with one hotel (a few guest houses as well) three or four small restaurants with limited hours, and a fishing fleet. The thought of Phywave being in a berth on the bouncing dock along with the fishing boats, with a long walk to the very few places in the town like the grocery store, was a really depressing thought, especially compared to where Phywave is in Hammerfest. Even the fuel dock in Vardø was a rundown set up. It didn’t help that the wind was blowing 30 kts with driving rain when I arrived – a terrible first impression. Well, at least I got good at typing the “o” with the line through it. Just hold your finger down on the “o” and a bunch of alternatives will appear you can choose from.

So Hammerfest. I fixed the whisker pole, installed the new Spade anchor (I’ll probably unceremoniously dump the Vulcan at sea), and am now thinking about installing a Furuno SCX-20 GPS compass which is staring at me from a box on the galley counter. After the fiasco with my compass in Iceland, several experienced high latitude sailors said to get a GPS compass.  A GPS compass uses an array of GPS antennas to establish direction so it’s immune to magnetic or electrical interference, but like any GPS system, needs a reasonably clear view of the sky. Until now, I didn’t even know GPS compasses existed. Another failure on my part in my inadequate preparations for this voyage which have become apparent in a number of ways.

The Navico dealer in Iceland connected me with a dealer in Norway who, extraordinarily, was able to find this compass in stock and have it shipped overnight to me in Hammerfest.  It plugs right into the NMEA2000 backbone network and should show up along with the Precision 9 compass as a source I can select for heading information. I’m not sure how and where I’m going to mount it. It’s a waiting-on-ice project.

It’s been a while since my last post. A lot has happened, none of it good.

While sailing north of Iceland I was hit broadside by a big, but not unusally big, wave. The boat was temporarily thrown off course which the autopliot immediately tried to correct by pushing the rudder all the way to one side. This will sometimes result in a rudder limit alarm indicating the rudder is as far over as it can go, as it did in this case. I canceled the alarm but surprisingly, that apparently disengaged the autopilot (AP). The boat quickly swung off course and out of control, coming to a stop facing the wind. At the time the wind was blowing 25-30 kts and the seas were a rough, short period 2 to 3 meters.  

I’ve dealt with a randomly disengaged AP before in rough seas and high winds. Ususally there is no way to sail back onto the right course so I started the engine to get some speed to turn the boat back. Once I did that, I re-engaged the AP but it wouldn’t hold the course. It started rapidly turning away to port. I also noticed the compass heading for the boat was completely wrong, 80 degrees from what it should have been, and feeding the AP bad information. When I manually tried to turn the boat it wouldn’t respond normally so I also suspected I had a mechanical problem with the rudder that was contributing to my inability to hold a course.

For the next 3 hours I tried to resolve the situation and get going again but nothing I tried worked.  I finally called the Iceland Coast Guard on my satphone and explained that the boat and I were in no danger but I was uncertain if I could continue to navigate in a known direction. They made some contacts and came back by email (via Starlink) and said there was an Iceland research vessel, the Arni Fridriksson, a few hours away that offered to tow me to the port of Husavik where they were headed anyway. The last thing a sailor wants to do is accept a tow, a blatant admission that you’ve failed in your ability to get your boat from A to B under your own power.  I was exhausted and at that point didn’t really see a means of fixing my problems while at sea so I accepted their offer of a tow. The alternative was to bob around at that location for a few days waiting for the sea and wind conditions to calm enough for me to try to hand steer while motoring to get to help in Iceland. That certainly would have taken more time.

They hooked me up around 0600 Thursday morning and I was tied to the visiting boat dock in Husavik at 1600 on Friday.

From there it was a matter of figuring out what had failed to see if it could be fixed. That evening a couple of engineers from the research ship donned drysuits and went under Phywave to check the mechanical integrity of the rudders. Thankfully, no problems were detected so that reduced the problem to electronics and perhaps the AP drive unit. I had an AP drive unit fail before crossing the Atlantic.

The most obvious thing that was wrong was the Precision 9 (P9) electric compass. Tied to the dock, Phywave was pointed almost exactly north but the compass said the heading was 268 degrees. I tried a static calibration of the compass that did nothing. I tried a factory reset of the chartplotter – no change. I concluded the compass must be bad. Fortunately, the Navico dealer in Reykjavik had one in stock so I flew down there to get it, not wanting the delay involved in shipping it. I made the same move when I needed engine parts in Indonesia.

Back at the boat I installed the new compass – no change, still reading around 268 degrees for the heading. So the problem was not a bad compass.

The only thing left to consider was the environment around the compass, that some magnetic or electromagnetic (EM) interference was causing the erroneous reading. I placed my hand bearing compass next to the P9 and it read the correct boat heading so I knew it wasn’t magnetic interference at that location.

I was perplexed.  That compass, in that location, had been solid and correct for the 4 years I’ve sailed Phywave. Nothing around it had changed. How could it suddenly go wrong?

To further investigate, the technical manager at the Navico dealer suggested removing the compass from its mount, connecting it to a long NMEA2000 network cable, and moving it around to see whether EM interference was the culprit. That, in fact, was the problem.  I was able to find a new mounting location for the P9 in the same locker just a few feet from the old location (see photo). In the new location the P9 correctly indicated the boat heading was north.

With an accurate heading from the compass, and no indication of other electronic problems, I left Husavik around 0830 on July 23, almost a week after the whole episode began. I am bound for northern Norway as originally planned, just crossing the Greenwich Meridian as I write this, but with big  questions and concerns about my boat and what I’m doing. It’s a risk assessment question like I had when I abandoned my first attempt to fly solo to Antarctica because I decided the way my plane was equipped and configured made it too risky.

During my solo voyage to 7 continents and around the world I had various equipment failures. In each case I was able to understand why the failure occured and be satisfied that I had properly addressed it. In this case, however, I have no idea why a compass mounting location that had worked for years suddenly became untenable. It makes no sense. Nothing around the compass changed that would introduce EM interference of some sort. But having it happen, I must consider what major new mystery problem might emerge that will bring me to a halt.

I have changed my destination town in northern Norway from Vardø to Hammerfest which is better for a number of practical and weather reasons. It is only a bit farther away from the start of the Russia NSR passage but is much larger, has better facilities, and an airport with scheduled service. It is also situated on the southwest side of Norway’s northern region making it much more convenient than Vardø if I decide to abandon the Arctic circumnavigation and sail south instead. 

I should arrive in Hammerfest on Friday or Saturday.

After departing Newfoundland on July 1, I’ve reached the first milestone on my attempt to complete a solo circumnavigation of the Arctic. At 260713.1310Z I crossed the Arctic Circle northbound. I’ll remain north of it until I cross it again sailing southbound in the Davis Strait. At this point I turn substantially east to my next stop is Vardø, Norway, about 1,200 nm away for final refueling before crossing the Russian Arctic to Barrow, Alaska, which must be done non-stop. Barrow most likely will be my next refueling stop.

It seems that fuel shouldn’t be so important with a sailboat but this circumnavigation is a voyage with an expiration date. The Northwest Passage will re-freeze in October and become impassable. It’s essential to keep moving even with no wind, a common occurrence in the Arctic. Motoring is also essential to carefully navigate around sea ice that will certainly be encountered.

To provide some scale to the map, it’s about 3,000 nm from Vardø to Barrow along the shown route. From the western boundary of the Northern Sea Route Area (NSRA) at Cape Zhelaniya to its eastern boundary in the Chukchi Sea is about 2,000 nm.

My blog posts have been scarce since I’ve been busy sailing in surprisingly rough conditions, 25 – 40 kt winds and 3-4 meter short-period seas for much of the last 3 days, a very rolly ride with the boat periodically getting slammed by waves breaking right against the hull. I’m expecting easier conditions for the next several days, at least, that’s what the forecast is telling me.

The weather has also been dominated by overcast skies and fog. I think I’ve had only 2 sunny days during the 13 days since I left Newfoundland. Other than the dolphins I saw leaving Conception Bay and the ubiquitous sea birds, I haven’t seen any wildlife. I hope to see whales crossing north of Iceland where apparently they like to hang out, but the fog’s reducing visibility to 100 meters right now. Hopefully it will lift later.

ETA at Vardo is July 24.

A sublime minute in the evening. Music from Lonesome Dove soundtrack played through the cockpit speakers.