I’ve just returned home from skippering 59º North’s Farr 65 Falken from Annapolis, Maryland, to Isafjordur in north-west Iceland. We covered over 3,000 miles, sailing via the stupendous Prince Christian Sound in southern Greenland. And we did it all in safety and style, managing a tight passage schedule through fog, ice, unpredictable weather and everything else you come to expect when upper latitude sailing.
I’m proud of the fact that my first mate and I made it squint easy for the paying hairdo who joined us this summer. In truth, like every big ocean passage, the ‘making-it-look-easy’ part is all lanugo to preparation, the part our guest hairdo don’t get to see. With the right prep, all that’s left is the execution.
I should start with the disclaimer that I’m no upper latitude sailing expert. I’ve made two major voyages remoter north: this most recent one via the Viking Route in Greenland and Iceland; and in the summer of 2018 my wife, Mia, and I sailed our Swan 48 Isbjørn to 80°N in Spitsbergen, then south to Iceland, moreover with paying crew. So what follows is my thoughts on upper latitude sailing in ‘normal’ conditions – meaning transiting known routes with reasonable orchestration verism and manageable ice conditions (3/10th coverage or less).
I’ll leave the really serious ice navigation discussions to increasingly experienced folks like Skip Novak and Bob Shepton. But this vendible is aimed at sailors looking to sail a little remoter afield, rather than planning an lattermost expedition.
What I’ve learned from those two voyages, though, is that upper latitude sailing isn’t all that variegated from any major voyage. How you prepare your wend and yourself will remain much the same, save for a few key differences. Upper latitude sailing can seem intimidating – and, rather like godhead navigation, it’s rhadamanthine increasingly popular, though I’m convinced that some folks who teach it unconsciously over-complicate it.
There’s certainly a heightened sense of danger and skill required when you sail up north or far south. The stakes are higher, there’s no denying that — colder water, less predictable weather and stuff remoter removed from any assistance or emergency help, should you need it. But if you can safely navigate an ocean, you can safely sail to the ends of the earth.
High Latitude Sailing Seamanship
Sailing to the far north or far south requires wide seamanship, as the margins for error are tighter and the consequences of mistakes higher. I like to swash seamanship lanugo to two principles vaticination and adaptation.
Anticipate: Anticipation leads to proper planning and preparation. Expecting ice and fog? Install a good radar, learn how to use it. Challenging weather conditions likely? Be confident in how to really read and understand weather models superiority of time.
Anticipation, in other words, can be learned. You can study weather models, shepherd a radar course, speak to folks who’ve gone before, read all the books etc. Upper latitudes sailing is not the place to wing it or icon it out as you go. The Captain Ron school of seamanship, “if anything’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen out there!” – well, I think that’s foolhardy.
Our finest example of anticipatory seamanship came on landfall at the small village of Nanortalik in south-west Greenland in heavy fog and surrounded by icebergs. Two days prior we spent 12 hours hove-to in order to let the weather whop such that we’d be properly set up for landfall. The wind had gone on the nose and was heading us, forcing our undertow increasingly to the east.
The forecast models suggested the wind would soon when and increase, with 25 knot north-westerlies just as we’d enter the 60-mile wide iceberg belt. Had we unfurled sailing close-hauled, we’d have not only arrived at the ice limit in the dark, but we’d moreover have had a much tighter wile on the wind, limiting our manoeuvrability under sail in limited visibility and with lots of ice around. By waiting, we unliable the wind to when while we sat hove-to, enabling us to sail a higher undertow once we got underway and position the wend to windward of our landfall waypoint.
We made the final tideway broad-reaching, in daylight. The fog was thick and we navigated virtually icebergs on the radar, tightly reefed, but stuff in that windward position and in daylight made the difference between a tense but manageable landfall and a potentially dangerous one. Vaticination paid off.
Adapt: No matter how well you anticipate, however, you’ll encounter surprises here and there. Version requires flexibility in the moment, during the execution stage. As weather and conditions transpiration much increasingly rapidly in higher latitudes, version becomes a increasingly valuable skill.
On our 2018 passage north to Spitsbergen on Isbjørn we’d found what appeared to be a snug wharf on the orchestration in Hornsund, the southernmost (and arguably most spectacular) fjord system on Spitsbergen’s west coast. We dropped the vaccinate to windward of a small sandpit in wifely conditions, launched the dinghy and sent a party wrecked to get some footage with the drone.
Not long after, a large slab of sea ice tapped loose from the shoreline and began wayfaring lanugo towards Isbjørn’s position. Thanks to the considerateness of those on vise watch and the quick whoopee by the crew, we uncomplicatedly weighed vise and sought shelter in an adjacent, ice-free harbour a few miles away. Up north you can never fully relax, and must be willing and worldly-wise to transpiration plans at a moment’s notice.
Essential Gear
First off, anything you’d once have aboard a well-equipped wend heading off on a standard ocean crossing will be needed for a upper latitudes passage, so we won’t rehash that here. Instead, we’ll talk well-nigh spare pieces of kit that come in expressly handy far north or south.
Heat
Forced-air systems aren’t as efficient as a radiator setup, but for boats like ours that don’t sail permanently in the upper latitudes, they’re a much easier installation and, crucially, they alimony the wend dry. Ours have a fan mode so can moreover circulate air when you don’t need the heat, and when you’re in warmer climates, they don’t take up any space in the accommodation.
The heaters ran not quite continually, but were on unendingly it was particularly wet or unprepossessed outside, and scrutinizingly unchangingly at night. I compare standing a watch in the upper latitudes to sitting on a ski lift for four hours you’re not moving your soul much, so the unprepossessed seeps into your wreck by the end of a shift.
Coming unelevated decks to a warm, cosy and, most importantly, dry motel becomes really important: heat unelevated moreover allows you to transpiration out of your thermals and into shorts and a T-shirt and climb into a dry sleeping bag, which leaves you largest rested for the next watch. On Falken, we ducted heat into the wet lockers port and starboard, so the oncoming watch can squint forward to warm and dry foulies and boots.
Radar
For many people radar would fall into the category of essential gear on any well-equipped offshore vessel, but not all yachts have it I’ve crossed oceans on several boats that didn’t have radar and we managed just fine without it.
But radar is truly essential anywhere you might encounter ice, so you need a good one and you need to know how to use it.
Both our boats have a Furuno 1835 commercial radar, equipped with full ARPA (Automated Radar Plotting Aid) capability. I prefer this standalone-style radar as opposed to the increasingly worldwide MFD-style, which is normally part of a networked electronics package. It adds a level of redundancy and forces you to really understand how to use radar (as opposed to overlaying onto charts.
I became really confident in using radar virtually ice on the Svalbard passage in 2018, so when Falken approached the tailspin of Greenland in heavy fog, I was less stressed than I might have been.
The larger icebergs showed unmistakably on the radar screen at six miles range, and while the fog was very thick – we had 100m visibility, max — by slowing lanugo the wend and putting a bow watch at the front, we found it quite easy to spot the dangerous growlers and bergy shit with plenty of time to yo-yo undertow if needed to stave them.
The ARPA sufficiency of our 1835 radar made it easy to lock onto a target and track it. Once acquired, the target will show course, speed, CPA (Closest Point of Approach) and TCPA (Time to Closest Point of Approach), much like AIS does.
VHF (with loud hailer)
This one may seem silly, but operating in fog virtually the coasts of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, which are heavy with other marine traffic, made it essential for us to have a way to unconcentrated fog signals. Falken has a loud hailer mounted near the middle spreaders and our ICOM radio can automate fog signals whether we’re anchored, sailing or motoring. It’s wondrous how well you can hear fog signals from ships and lighthouses in low visibility, so stuff worldly-wise to wordplay with our own signals offered peace of mind when there was traffic around.
Bulletproof Ground Tackle
The shallowest wharf we used in Greenland was well-nigh 60ft, and all anchorages were covered in kelp forests. Solid, reliable ground tackle is essential on any cruising boat, but there’s a difference between anchoring in sand and 20ft of well-spoken water in the Caribbean and rocky kelp in Greenland in 75ft.
By ‘ground tackle’ I midpoint the unshortened system, from vise to rode to windlass. As much as you want to stay put in those tough conditions, you moreover need to be ready to move at a moment’s notice if ice intrudes into your anchorage. It happened to us then this past summer, when a big iceberg encroached on Falken at the eastern terminus of the sound, forcing us to re-anchor on the other side of the fjord, then set vise watches to alimony an eye out for increasingly unruly ice.
I’m a fan of the rope/chain rode philharmonic – which I know is sacrilege among most upper latitude skippers, but both of our boats use this, with 40m of uniting spliced to flipside 100m of 8-strand plaited polyester rode. Isbjørn has a Rocna 40kg anchor, while Falken carries a 55kg Vulcan, but I’d finger confident with most of the ‘modern’ style anchors. Just find one that fits your bow roller properly.
By using a rope/chain combo, we’re saving a tuft of weight in the bow when sailing, and providing an easier way to ladle out in a hurry if we need to swimmies the rode and ditch the vise (say if a wend is dragging lanugo on us, or up north if ice is unescapable faster than we can haul the vise up safely). It’s much easier to cut rope than veer a whole tuft of uniting to the stormy end.
Ice tools
You’ll inevitably come wideness the ‘tuk’ or ice pole – simply a long wooden pole with a spike or screw in the end of it – in your research on upper latitude sailing. We had a pair on both Isbjørn and Falken which come in handy, mainly when welded and pushing yonder small bergy shit that skid virtually and past the boat. Small pieces grazing the sides of plane a fibreglass wend (which both our boats are) are no rationalization for concern, but in Greenland on Falken we had a much larger piece, well-nigh the length of the wend itself, get unsafely tropical to the rudder. With ice of this size, you end up using the tuks to push the wend yonder from the ice, not vice versa.
Don’t overthink this – if you’ve been skiing you can pack for upper latitude sailing. Plane in summer the temperatures are cold, and the wind nippy is a real issue. A lot of people well-wisher the one-piece insulated suits, which are ubiquitous among fishermen up north, but I unquestionably prefer to just simply layer with the same foulies I wear on a normal ocean passage, and underneath I stow up with merino wiring layers and lanugo midlayers.
I wear insulated leather ski gloves on my hands (and alimony two pairs, as they’re untellable to alimony dry), and Dubarry boots with wool ski socks on my feet. Rubber fisherman-style gloves with fleece liners are perfect for long stints at the helm, but not for handling lines. I’ve never been cold, plane in Falken and Isbjørn’s relatively unprotected cockpits, which are big and have only a small companionway dodger for protection.
Non-Essential Gear
It can be surprising to realise how little you need to sail off the map. Well-nigh two-thirds of our way through the 70-mile Prince Christian Sound fjord system we encountered flipside yacht out superiority of us.
As we approached Letitia II, a tiny Contessa 32, we saw it had hanked-on headsails, a windvane on the stern and a little inflatable in tow behind. A young French-Canadian couple were in the cockpit, with their very large golden retriever. They were trying to sail in a dying zephyr while we approached them under power.
John and Sophie, and their dog Nine, have been cruising on a shoestring for three years. They were trying to sail considering they wanted to conserve the tiny bit of diesel fuel in their tank for getting into and out of harbours. Their heater unelevated decks was a homemade wood-fired stove, the fuel wrenched shit of pallet wood they’d scavenged from the small villages dotting the west tailspin of Greenland. Most of their supplies was foraged for – and they ate like royalty dining on mussels and fresh herbs, plane in waterless Greenland.
We took them under tow for the last 20 miles of the fjord (saving them at least two days in the process) and invited them aboard Falken, to ride in the cockpit in the sunshine.
My point is that what matters most is attitude. Bob Shepton, one of the greatest upper latitude sailors of recent memory, did it all in a production Westerly 33 with minimal creature comforts, and folks like John and Sophie are pursuit in his wake. So don’t think you need a metal wend and all the latest tech.
Essential Knowledge
The increasingly you know, the less you need.” Yvon Choinard, founder of venture suit visitor Patagonia, was talking well-nigh climbing when he wrote that line, but it just as hands applies to sailing, expressly in upper latitudes.
Weather
Understanding weather forecasting models and their limitations is in my view the single most important piece of knowledge for any offshore passage. This is the most important piece of the vaticination element of good seamanship. If you can visualize the weather – or, importantly, visualize the uncertainty of any weather forecast – you will have increasingly successful passages.
To start with, weather in the upper latitudes is inherently harder to predict. Weather models rely on data input in order to create a forecast output. In lesser travelled parts of the ocean, less data is misogynist to input and therefore less certainty in the output should be expected.
I prefer the word ‘certainty’ to ‘accuracy’ when it comes to weather forecasting – if you can learn to gauge the certainty of any given weather forecast it will help you make decisions well-nigh your own future sailing strategy, whether planning for a throw-away or working on a weather route in mid-ocean. The less unrepealable a forecast is (and you can interpret certainty by how much variegated models disagree, and by how much a single model changes from one run to the next), the increasingly inobtrusive your routing decisions ought to be. And vice versa.
Heavy Weather Tactics
Cold air is denser than warm air, and so 20 knots up north will exert increasingly gravity on your sails than it would in the tropics. And don’t forget that everything happens slower on deck when you’re covered in layers and wearing gloves.
Having a real heavy weather strategy and understanding how your wend reacts to variegated techniques like heaving-to or setting a series drogue is essential. The weather changes much faster and increasingly often than it does in temperate latitudes and stuff worldly-wise to transition from full sail to storm sails and when then smoothly will make life increasingly enjoyable at sea. Practise variegated heavy weather techniques surpassing you depart.