Bob Shepton relates an epic cruise to eastern Greenland – part of a Tilman style sailing and climbing expedition with the legendary Wild Bunch expedition climbers
It was a simple plan. To sail from Scotland to Greenland via Iceland, and possibly the Faroes, so that the Wild Bunch, my climbers from previous expeditions to west Greenland, could climb a new route in east Greenland. It was not so simple in execution. After a delay waiting for barrels from Amazon for stowing the immense amount of gear climbers need these days, we departed Oban at 0830 on 27 June. A reasonable wind took us up the Sound of Mull and onwards to the north. There were some strange tidal anomalies around the northwest headlands of Skye, but we passed the Shiants and Stornoway the next day and cleared the Butt of Lewis. As soon as we did things got a lot more frisky though the wind was still favourable on the quarter or beam.
A strong boat
The boat was a Bruce Roberts 48. The skipper had done a great job over a two-year period rebuilding the boat, cutting out and welding on new steel plates, both above and below the waterline to make the boat seaworthy, first in Trinidad, where he had picked up the boat, and then in Panama. This was proven by a solo Atlantic crossing and enduring a storm northwest of the Azores, before sailing to Kinsale in Ireland to continue the work.
But this did mean that though the boat was strong and seaworthy and sailed well, he had run out of time for completing some of the finer points for safety and comfort down below. I was reminded of one of Tilman’s classic remarks. “Since the days of Noah’s ark, no boat has ever been ready on time.” The G-forces could be quite considerable down below and it was easy to be thrown across the wide saloon. There was no galley strap on a straight fore and aft galley though this was corrected later. There was no water maker – fine – but no saltwater taps either so washing up had to be done in water scooped from the sea in a bucket – not an easy thing to do when sailing. I had not done this since my first Atlantic crossing in 1986; SeanB (we had two Seans aboard) became an expert at this, so I gratefully left the collecting to him.
Being an oldie, I was thrown by the lack of instrumentation. We had an echosounder, and a control unit for the autohelm and a small radar. We also had a very useful Hydro-vane self-steering
