Will Stirling narrates a hair raising traverse of the North West Passage executed with traditional navigation aboard the beautiful 23 ton classic cutter Integrity.
Integrity set sail from Lunenburg, Nova Scotia on 1 June, bound for Alaska via Greenland and Arctic Canada. Having mis-diagnosed one of several narrow channel entrances passing between two low lying islands and out onto the sea, we almost encountered the sea bed within a mile of departure port. Running aground on mud is not too bad, rocks tend to have a more serious impact. Having overseen various sailing mishaps and therefore accustomed as I am to general embarrassment and small scale humiliation, a call for help so close to the start would have been a little difficult to wear with grace.
The navigational misadventure was soon forgotten and given what came afterwards, perhaps had I not mentioned it here, the incident may never have been remembered. By dark we were roaring up the Nova Scotian coast. The crew of four divided into two watches; one to steer and one to pump.
By the time that the small electric bilge pump had packed up and the re-built engine-driven emergency pump had broken down, a rota of the off-watch team clearing the well once every 10 minutes with the manual pump was in place. Everyone’s first night out at sea, we had done 20 miles of the 6,000 ahead. No sickness but a general distaste for the job in hand.
The boat had been in re-fit overwinter and regrettably seemed to be in worse condition than when sailed from Greenland to the Lunenburg yard the previous autumn. The most immediate issue (amongst a catalogue of grumbles, the most minor of which was my climbing boots having been inexplicably melted in acid) was the re-finished topsides, through which the pumping team seemed to be able to note the dipping heights of the numerous passing lighthouses.
It remained dark, the wind increased, the sea rose, water ingress continued and the gaff jaws came adrift aloft. At this point a meek suggestion was made that we might ‘go in’ somewhere to resolve some of our more pressing problems. On the face of it, this was a sensible proposal. However, with a fair wind and no immediately available harbour, I felt that first we might try to tackle our problems one by one and then re-assess. On we sailed for 100nm to the rural quay at Fisherman’s Wharf. Readily supplied with lobsters by the kind fishermen, we set about where necessary, re-fitting the re-fit. One was reminded that if one couldn’t sort out the raft of issues tha
