The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Rose-colored Shades

Sitting alone in the saloon on Polar Bear. I dinghied Boogie and Marlies in to shore about a half-hour ago; they’re off to find the station chief and tackle the pleasantries. A radio report a few moments ago said that the chief was due back in an hour, so Boogie and Marlies were settling in for a cup (or two) of coffee with the station crew in the meantime.

In contrast to the tea party ashore, I find the tranquility out here on board delightful, which again will come as no shock to anyone who a) knows me, or b) has read any previous posts from this summer. It’s as close to being on my own boat as I’ll get this summer: no guests to tend to, no to-do lists to check off. Yes, if it were my boat (and I wasn’t in as forbidding an anchorage as Jan Mayen, which is why I was left behind: as insurance for the boat) I’d likely be ashore hiking or in the water surfing or swimming, or even — gasp! — out sailing. But regardless of where I was or what I’d been doing, there would also be down time during which I’d enjoy the gentle rocking of a boat at anchor, a cozy saloon in which to sit and chill, music on the stereo (Neil Young right now, FYI), the sound of the wind in the rigging overhead.

In this particular boat saloon, I can see a calendar hanging in the galley. Today’s date — Sunday, July 10 — has a red square highlighting it, and it also highlights that at this time in one week, I’ll be back at my childhood home on Plum Island. I’ll leave Polar Bear in Akureyri, Iceland, on Saturday and fly to Reykjavik. The next morning, I’ll catch a flight to Logan Airport in Boston, and then a C&J Trailways bus to Newburyport, Mass. Sometime after lunch on the 17th, my folks will pick me up and we’ll head out to the island. And the curtain will come down on the first act of this summer of my life.

The intermission will likely bring much introspection, a big retrospective on the show so far. And as I sit here, a week out from that break, I’m curious as to what the tenor of that analysis will be.

I’m concerned that being back in the States will be so comfortable and familiar that a return to the normal, to a life back in Corporate America, will be really appealing. I’m also concerned that being back in the States will be so comfortable and familiar that I’ll be clamoring to get back to the new-vista-around-every-corner aspect of life at sea. It’s likely a question of which rose-colored glasses I’ll find most comfortable (though it’s obvious that I’ll wear out both pairs pretty quickly).

And in reality, some of that analysis will take place in the next five days, particularly the three or so it will take to cover the water between here and Iceland. Because if I decided that a return to the mainstream was in order and opt not to return to Polar Bear in Greenland in early August, I’d need to pack everything up and take it with me on Saturday.

I’ve gotten some good and kind advice with regard to that analytical process from friends over the course of this summer so far. One reminded me of the Robert Frost line, that “the best way out is through.” I was encouraged to embrace the challenging lines of thought, the painful, to not take the easy way out (who, me?!). Another friend recalled times in her past when longing for the familiar had gotten in the way of true emotional and psychological growth, and encouraged me to push through those times when I wanted to pack up and go back to what I knew. She said that once she survived those easy-to-quit weeks, she made real progress and found that being out there was indeed just what the doctor ordered.

Putting that sage advice into practice is another reason why my current line of thinking is as I mentioned earlier: rejoin Polar Bear in August for the Greenland-Iceland-UK run — and then figure it all out. At the very least, I’ll get to see one of the world’s unique places and log another thousand or so open-ocean miles. And it might just be that getting back out there after a big dose of the warm, the comfortable and the familiar will enable me to clearly see which glasses fit me best.

Besides, I think I can survive without lobster rolls, In ‘n’ Out Burger and the Red Sox until September.

Constant Companion

I’ve lamented the lack of mega-fauna throughout this journey. And with good cause: the tally so far is one visit from dolphins; a smattering of whales, only one of which was up close; zero orcas; and sea eagles so skittish that they remained little more than dots. But one feathered friend has been with us through thick and thin from day one in Newcastle: the fulmar.

This chunky, gull-like pelagic bird gets little respect, probably because it’s a chunky, gull-like pelagic bird. The bump on his upper beak makes him look like a boxer who’s broken his nose more than a few times. The implacable black eyes and flat expression give him an air of haughty arrogance, as though he’s a little put out that you’re intruding on his space out on the open sea. He doesn’t work hard, certainly not as hard as you do out here. Instead, he’ll flap two or three times to rise up out of the water and then he’ll just glide, riding downwind like a jet or coursing upwind in a series of rises and falls. And then he’ll glide past, just out of reach at eye-level as you stand on the deck, wondering why you’re going so slowly. But he’s not above taking a lift, either, riding the rising wind spilling off the sails whenever it suits him.

A few hours ago as we rounded Sørkapp, the southern cape of Jan Mayen, we were surrounded by thousands of fulmars. They sat in great rafts upon the water. They tumbled and climbed and dived on the fierce winds wrapping around the high, colorful headlands. They drifted by Polar Bear within arm’s length. Thousands and thousands of fulmars all in this one place out in the middle of the ocean: it was Hitchcockian at the same time that it was comforting to have so many familiar faces around.

Fulmars may not have the cute factor of the puffin or the awesome wingspan of the eagle; instead they’re the workaday bird of the North and Norwegian seas, and I just wanted to call ’em out.

Adventure A-Plenty

Beerenberg emerges from the clouds for a quick glimpse from our anchorage

I have three words for you today, boys and girls. Wind. Chill. Factor. Put them together and what do you get? You get Lukey freezing his little ass off in the middle of @#%#$% nowhere.

We arrived at the anchorage off the old meteorological station on the north coast of Jan Mayen around 10am. The landing area is a black-sand beach that rises steeply out of deep water. It lies at the base of the Beerenberg volcano which, upon our arrival, was hidden in the clouds. And that’s when the first real adventuring of this summer of adventure sailing took place.

The forecast called for north winds around 10 knots. When we arrived, the wind was north around 15 knots and rising. By the time the climbers had gathered their gear and we bus drivers were ready to shuttle them to the beach, the seas were rising too.

Boogie was the first into the dinghy, and with the way it was getting bounced around by the waves, it was easy to see that he was tense…which made Marlies nervous, too.

I was next. I donned a surplus immersion suit — an orange Gumby suit of thick neoprene that is used in emergencies by oil-rig workers, Alaska fisherman and others who work on low-temperature ocean waters. The suit keeps you dry and warm, and also adds flotation, all of which is supposed to save your life if the shit hits the fan in the Gulf of Alaska or, say, the Norwegian Sea.

By now, Polar Bear was rising and falling in semi-steady rhythm on the short, steep waves driven by the wind. The dinghy, tied along the starboard side, was bouncing around at the end of its painter line before every little ripple, gust and wave like a kid with A.D.D. having an epilectic fit. Getting into the dinghy meant timing a jump from the railing of Polar Bear down into the dinghy just right.

In truth, it wasn’t as hard as it sounds but it was still nerve-wracking. The cold water and roiling seas meant a steep price for any misstep, regardless of the immersion suit.

I timed my leap and fell a few feet to land with a thud in the bottom of the inflatable. Then Boogie and I prepared for our first shuttle run to Jan Mayen. First up: three climbers whose seasickness had returned in the hour that we’d been at anchor in the ever-building waves: winds were now in the high teens with wave height increasing by the minute.

Not surprisingly, Jarl was among the three who joined Boogie and me in the dinghy in the first run for the beach. The trick in landing on the black sand was to time our approach so we could ride in at speed on one of the lesser waves. The problem was that we didn’t know how far out deep water extended and thus, how long we could run the engine to provide propulsion.

With that in mind, Boogie killed the engine just outside the impact zone, the spot where the waves were breaking onto the beach. First miscalculation. I was in the bow and immediately started paddling toward shore. The dinghy rode in on a wave and I jumped over the side, expecting to find the bottom quickly. Second miscalculation: the water was almost chest deep. And right behind the wave that was big enough to push us to shore were three others in a set. Third miscalculation.

The dinghy got swamped by the second wave and the guys all floundered out as though they’d been electrocuted. The truth was: the immersion suits did keep you dry — all except your feet, which were soaked and, well, immersed in cold water. Wool socks were a good idea; barefoot would have been better as the neoprene was insulation enough. Warm? No. But not terribly cold either. My feet have been colder surfing in Southern California in the wintertime.

Boogie and I grabbed the dinghy and pulled it as far up the beach as we could — but not enough before the third wave completely filled the boat. The flotation provided by that third wave enabled us to pull the boat largely out of reach of the remaining, lesser waves and up onto the black-sand beach — really: black gravel since it was ground-up lava, a clear reminder of the volcanic origins of the island; the other reminder, the volcano looming above us, was out of sight, still hidden in the clouds.

Three sickies safely if not stylishly deposited on the island, Boogie and I bailed the boat as best we could with only two paddles and started dragging the waterlogged beast back toward the surfline. Despite our efforts, two more waves filled the boat before we could get clear of the breakers, at which point I paddled like mad until Boogie could get the engine going.

On our way back to Polar Bear, we sat, submerged to our waists in the now-filled inflatable dinghy. What else could we do? And what was the big deal? Yeah, it was a stupid way to do things — we should have landed on the south side of the island where seas were calm, but then the clients would have had to hoof their gear seven miles to this starting point of their climb.

And yeah, it wasn’t actually the most comfortable of experiences. But hey, we’d come this far north for adventure…and now we’d gotten it: we were at 71 degrees north latitude sitting in an inflatable dinghy in waist-deep water that was probably in the low 40s to high 30s, the air temperature was an even 32 Farenheit with wind-chill factors in the teens, the seas were building by the minute, and we were off-loading mountain climbers who were en route to scale a volcano 500-plus miles from the nearest continent. To prove the point, the three other boats present when we arrived departed the anchorage while we were running our shuttles, indicating that conditions were deteriorating — but that only upped the challenge, right?

We rode back to the mother ship, got some buckets and bailed the inflatable out, and then we took on several bags and one passenger. This time, our arrival on the beach was better timed. Knowing the depths involved, Boogie could keep the engine going longer and I knew when to leap for the beach and start pulling. Follow-up waves still dumped some water in the boat, but not nearly as much. And a couple of waves still dumped more water in the boat on the way out, but again, not as much. And we had remembered to bring the buckets with us, so on the way out I bailed while Boogie drove. The launch was mostly cleared by the time we arrived at Polar Bear.

Two more trips to the beach that got better and better — the landings in particular were timed well — and we had put the entire climbing party and their pile of equipment ashore. Mission completed, we reversed the earlier comedy of dinghy-and-mother ship and got the inflatable back on the davits at the stern of the vessel. We crawled out of our monkey suits, surprised to find things still mostly dry: soaked with seawater from the knees down, wet with sweat from the waist up, and only a little cold. Once on deck and out of the neoprene, however, the wind-chill factor took over, and it was a race below to get into warm clothes and get the boat’s heater fired up. A late lunch of eggs, bacon and toast completed the process of regaining normal body temperature.

That was earlier today. We’re now motoring southeast along the north coast of Jan Mayen, the anchorage having become untenable. The other boats had been right; we saw two of the three in a more protected spot halfway down this coast a short while ago. We’re headed for the south coast, over near the base that passes for a settlement here. The base commander told Boogie that there was no swell in the bay there so we’ll go hole up there for a couple of days, until the climbers finish what they’re doing, and then go retrieve the lot wherever it’s safest. In the meantime, Boogie, Marlies and I will clean and repair what needs fixing on Polar Bear, and I’d also like to get back to where we put the climbers ashore: while we were doing our shuttles, several antennas appeared on the bluff by the defunct met station. The rumors of a ham-radio expedition were apparently true and, as I wrote earlier, being the nerd (and licensed amateur-radio operator) that I am, I’d love to check out what they’re doing, help out however I may and maybe even operate a radio or two for a bit.