IRON BARK TO ICELAND, BUT NO FURTHER

A FAILED ATTEMPT TO REACH THE EAST GREENLAND COAST 

Iron Bark III and I sailed from the West Indies to Ireland in the summer of 2021, then pottered up the west coasts of Ireland and Scotland to Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis where I rented a berth for the winter. Stornoway makes fine winter quarters. The harbour is well protected, I have friends in the town and supplies not available locally can be ordered in. I spent the winter continuing the apparently never-ending job of making Iron Bark III into an ocean-going vessel. 

Iron Bark III is an Alajuela 38, a GRP double-ender built in 1977. She has a strong hull and a stout rig but, having been used by her previous owners as a coastal motor-sailer, had accumulated a lot that was detrimental to my usage. Most of that clutter is now removed and I have done a considerable amount towards making her fit for ocean voyaging, but there is always more that can be done.

One job planned for the winter was to replace the standing rigging. I ordered the necessary materials in early January but did not receive the final bits until the last week of April. The rigger on the south coast of England who supplied the parts blamed the delay on Brexit, but that seemed unlikely. The French roller furler and Korean wire arrived promptly. The delay was caused by late delivery of the only UK-made components, the Sta-Lok end fittings. This meant I had to rush to get the job done before the harbour dues increased to summer rates. I jumarred up the mast 20 times in the space of four days, replacing one wire at a time to avoid the cost of hiring a crane to lift the mast out.

My UK tourist visa had expired and I needed to leave Britain as there was apparently no way of extending it. A short summer voyage north seemed attractive: Faroes, Iceland and, if possible, the east coast of Greenland. Unfortunately, the visa issue meant I could not visit Shetland or Orkney on the way. The spring weather was unsettled so I lurked in some of the Minch’s less-frequented lochs waiting for it to improve. I ended up in Loch a'Chadh-Fi, an arm of Loch Laxford, in the northern Minch. This was a fine place to wait before heading north, well protected with good holding and a convenient watering stream. It is quite isolated and I could not get weather forecasts by phone or VHF, but the isolation also meant that I was unlikely to be boarded by Border Force demanding to see my papers. John Ridgway and his wife Marie Christine live in a house overlooking the loch and the adventure school they founded; the school is now run by their daughter Rebecca and her partner Mark. I had tea with John and Marie Christine, whose fame and widely varied achievements are too well known to need re-iteration.

A common view of the Minch's scenery

Loch a'Chadh-Fi. It is not always foggy.

On 20 May, with an apparently fair wind (the hills around Loch a'Chadh-Fi make it hard to tell what the wind is really doing), I sailed for the Faroes. John and Marie Christine Ridgway rang their bell and waved goodbye from their house on the hill side as I sailed out. 

Once in the Minch I found a fair wind that carried me north, with Cape Wrath and the island of Rona intermittently visible through rain. Rain set in again as we approached the Faroes, but visibility was good enough for me to make out the lights leading in to Tvøroyri on Suđeroy where I anchored at 0200 on 22 May, having carried a fair wind for the entire 200nm from the Minch. 

In the morning I found the harbour master who rang customs for me. The customs officer took the boat's name over the phone, enquired how much alcohol I had aboard and that was the end of the formalities. 

The Faroes are a large pile of lava thinly covered by soil with almost no trees so I expected most older houses would be built of stone, as they are in the highlands and islands of Scotland. Instead, imported wood is the preferred material and has been for most of the history of the islands. Another oddity is that although the hillsides are dotted with sheep (Faroe means 'islands of sheep'), most of the mutton on sale is from New Zealand. The open countryside makes for pleasant, sometimes vigorous walking with superb views from the sea cliffs. 

Faroe, the islands of sheep

Trølkonufingur, the troll-wife's finger, Vágar,

Faroe sea cliffs, Stóra Dìmun

Faroe sea cliffs,  Suđeroy

I got to Suđeroy without meeting the ferocious tidal streams for which the Faroes are infamous, but had my share of them on the next move, a 40nm sail to Miđvágur on the island of Vágar, dodging close inshore to avoid the worst of the overfalls and foul tide. Miđvágur harbour is protected by breakwaters and has plenty of room to anchor or come alongside. The holding is excellent so I anchored off, always my preferred option. Miđvágur, like most villages in the Faroes, has a rowing club with several traditional Faroese pulling boats, much used by crews of all ages starting at about twelve years old. These boats look like miniature longships and the Faroese row like Vikings. 

Faroe pulling boats

The Faroese row like Vikings

I made bus trips to Tørshavn and Vestmanhavn on the adjacent island of Stremoy to see those towns but more interestingly to see the countryside and the network of road tunnels that go under the sounds between the islands and through the hills. There are about 20 road tunnels joining the Faroe villages with more being drilled, a big investment for a small community. Danish subsidies may play a part in their proliferation. 

Tunnel entrance, Faroe

I sailed for Iceland on 13 June with south or southwest winds forecast for several days then a northwest gale later in the week. It is about 300nm from the Faroes to Iceland and I intended to use the fair south wind to get to an Icelandic port before the gale-force headwinds arrived. Norđfjörđur, about half way up the east coast of Iceland, has an easy entrance and the chart suggested its small boat harbour is well protected, so I headed there. I decided against the next port north, Seyđisfjörđur, although it is a bigger place and the terminal for the ferry from Denmark, as the small craft berths looked exposed to a northwest gale. The wind held fair and early in the morning of the third day Iceland's snow-streaked hills appeared through rents in the fog. The fog cleared as I closed the coast and I tied up in the small boat harbour early in the afternoon. 

Approaching Iceland

Customs and immigration were friendly but punctilious. Immigration was perturbed that I had entered the Schengen zone in the Faroes without having my passport stamped. How was anyone to know when my 90 days was up? It took several phone calls to Reykjavik to sort that out. The customs/quarantine officer used the old Maritime Declaration of Health, something that I have not seen for twenty years. It has six standard questions including 'Has there been an abnormal mortality amongst your rats?' I assured him my rats were healthy. 

The harbour at the head of Norđfjörđur.  Avalanche defences in the foreground.

Two days later the promised gale arrived, followed a couple of days later by another one so I was content to remain in harbour, if a little bored. The delights of the local village, Neskaupstađur, were quickly exhausted and the wet, windy weather did not encourage walking. There was another yacht in the small craft harbour, the 30 ft Elena, sailed by Björn Tegetmeyer, an interesting young German scientist. Together we scrambled up the hill above the town to look at the banks built as avalanche defences for the village and drove to Seyđisfjörđur in a rented car. Another interesting yacht arrived a few days later, Teddy from Ireland, owned by Nicolas Kats. Teddy is a stout 39ft steel ketch and Björn and I were invited aboard for a meal and yarn. 

Several large yachts stopped in Norđfjörđur while I was there, but true to their type, ignored the small yachts as being too insignificant to merit notice. This proved to be the case the whole time I was in Iceland. I was invited aboard every yacht that I met that was under 40ft and not one of 50ft or more. I thought Iceland might be free of this sort of snobbery but civilization is too close for it to have been left behind. This is in contrast to the more remote parts of the Southern Hemisphere such as Patagonia or Antarctica where the distances are greater and the seas a lot rougher. Anyone who sails there is probably a competent seaman and likely to treat anyone they meet as being one too, regardless of their boat size, budget or electronic gadget abundance. 

On 28 June I set off around the north coast of Iceland bound for the Westfjords in the northwest of Iceland. The distance is about 350nm and having waited for a fair wind I had an easy start. Two days out and north of the island of Grimsey, fog rolled in, the wind died and never returned with any force. We were north of the Arctic Circle and it was cold and clammy with enough fishing boats around to make getting sleep difficult. Drifting in those conditions had little appeal so I started the engine and for the next two days I motored when it was calm and sailed (slowly) when there was any wind at all, a tedious business. The midnight sun would have been more spectacular if it had been able to burn through the fog more often, but there were minke and pilot whales plus a couple of great whales too distant to identify and always many seabirds to watch. By the time I got to the Westfjords I was very tired because of needing to keep watch for fishing boats. 

Midnight sun north of Iceland

Pilot whales

In the Westfjords I anchored near the head of Veiđileysufjörđur and slept. Veiđileysufjörđur is uninhabited and surrounded by steep hills with a rough trail leading up towards the icecap. It is the sort of place that I would usually like, but is open to the southwest and the holding is indifferent in glacial till so I did not venture far from the boat. 

Approaching Veiđileysufjörđur

The low clouds draping the hills did not add to its appeal and two days later I sailed 33nm across the bay to Isafjörđur, the biggest settlement in the Westfjords. Isafjörđur harbour is tucked in behind an eyri, an old glacial terminal moraine and very well protected. A dozen or so yachts were crammed into the small craft harbour, rafted together on grubby pontoons. Rather than join them I anchored a few hundred metres off, well protected with good holding. It was a clean, quiet berth, but as it lacked an electric power connection and needed a dinghy to get ashore, I had it to myself. 

Westfjords 

I topped off my water and diesel, did a bit of shopping and socialised with the crews of some of the smaller yachts, particularly Teddy. The stories of Iceland's exorbitant prices are true and my shopping was limited to bread, milk, vegetables and a little meat. I do not understand how the Icelandic economy works or how prices are set, but the exchange rate seems to be artificially high. Icelandic salt cod is cheaper in the Caribbean than in Iceland, alcohol prices are too high for an honest sailor to consider and even a coffee stretched my budget. 

The ice reports still showed too much ice along the Greenland coast for a small yacht to negotiate so, after six days in Isafjörđur, I went to look at more of the Westfjords while I waited for it to clear. I sailed 30nm to anchor behind a small eyri near the head of Hrafnsfjörđur. The fjord is uninhabited and surrounded by steep hills that were still snow streaked although it was now past mid-summer. There was a constant roar from the numerous waterfalls. 

Hrafnsfjörđur anchorage. The spit is an eyri.

For two days the weather was windy, cold and bleak. I huddled by the cabin heater, reading and feeling a inadequate for not being more venturesome. When the wind eased, I launched the dinghy and went for a walk. The streams rushing down the hillside were still snow bridged, but the bridges looked too fragile to trust. The bird life was prolific. Ashore ringed plovers did their broken wing act to draw me away from their nests and there were many wheatears. On the fjord eider ducks in same-sex rafts cooed and gabbled and two whooper swans whooped. There were Icelandic/glaucous gulls (I can seldom tell the difference), a few greater black-backed gulls and guillemots, both black and Brünich's. 

Three days after arriving in Hrafnsfjörđur the wind picked up to F7, funnelling down the fjord and swinging us close to the eyri. I could have shifted closer to the head of the fjord, but would have had to move again as soon as the wind changed. Instead, I got the anchor and ran back to Isafjörđur under staysail alone. I left at 1930 and arrived at 0330 but had no difficulty navigating as there is no darkness in July this close to the Arctic Circle. 

Icelandic fishing boats. The fish do not have much  chance

Back in Isafjörđur the ice charts showed the pack ice off east Greenland to be opening up but still not navigable for a yacht. A week later the ice looked as if it might be passable and the weather forecast was for six days of moderate weather followed by a nasty low-pressure system. I cleared customs, paid my harbour dues and sailed from Isafjörđur at 0600 on 22 July, hoping to make the 400nm across the Greenland Strait and through the ice into Tasiilaq on Ammassalik Ø before the low arrived. 

Once clear of the land, the breeze was northwest giving a comfortable reach, but it died before midnight. I wanted to be clear of these waters before the forecast gale arrived so started the engine. When the breeze returned, it was a headwind, puffy and variable. I was now in the Irminger Current, a warm offshoot of the North Atlantic Drift that sets north and east up the west coast of Iceland. It kicked up a small, irregular sea that slowed us down badly. Despite using the engine intermittently, our average speed was below three knots. 

At 1510 on 24 July, the third day out, the first iceberg appeared, looming through the fog about 2nm away. We were 90nm off the Greenland coast and 200nm from Tasiilaq, in position 65°49’N, 030°56’W. I had hoped to be much closer to the coast before encountering bergy water and that the visibility would be good enough for me to find an ice-free area to heave-to and get some sleep before tackling the close pack along the coast. Meeting ice so far out and in fog dashed that hope. 

Bergy bit, sun and fog

Visibility varied from 100m to perhaps 5nm and we passed a steady stream of bergs and bergy bits. Some were very close before they appeared through rents in the fog. Although there was not enough ice to impede progress, a close watch was necessary. Heaving-to for sleep in poor visibility with that much ice about was riskier than I liked. I turned back out of the cold south-flowing East Greenland Current into the warm, relatively ice-free Irminger Current. 

Once back in open water, I hove-to and considered the matter. Getting to the Greenland coast was going to require a continuous watch for at least two days and, without someone to share the watch keeping, I was going to be very tired by the time I got there. The last part, threading through close pack near the coast, was going to be the most difficult and I would have to tackle this when I was most tired. 

One option was to heave-to for a day or two and hope the visibility improved, then try again. The gale was forecast to arrive in four days, which limited how long I could hang about. I have dealt with the combination of gale, fog and ice in the past and it is a frightening affair that I did not want to repeat. 

Watching for ice in fog. The lighter patch above the horizon centre right is blink from a hidden berg

At this point I found the bracket holding the alternator was broken due to metal fatigue. I could do without the alternator but the alternator belt also drives the engine's fresh water circulation pump. With the alternator loose I could not tension the belt which meant I could only run the engine for short periods and at low speed. The prospect of attempting to penetrate pack ice without an engine convinced me to abandon my attempt to get to Greenland. 

I tried to convince myself it was a prudent decision but it seemed more like an ignominious retreat without having given the ice off the Greenland coast a fair try. The redoubtable Tilman tried to close the coast still to near here in the pilot cutter Seabreeze with a full crew but without a functioning engine and lost his vessel in the process. His warning after losing Seabreeze that '...the lesson of this sad story is not to mess about in Greenland fjords without an engine' is undoubtedly correct, but quoting it sounds like an attempt to justify my abdication. I do not expect to succeed in every endeavour of this kind. Indeed, a perfect record of achievement is probably evidence of never having tried anything challenging, but in recent years I have become more cautious in marginal situations and as a result achieve less than I once did.

Recriminations could wait; I needed to address the immediate situation. I was about 40nm from the Arctic circle in poor visibility with ice about and there was a gale forecast. Also, I was without an engine though this was of little significance unless I was trying to negotiate close pack ice. I had no reason to return to Iceland so set a course for Ireland, about 1300nm distant. The first leg was south down the Greenland Strait for about 400nm, which would get me out of narrow waters and clear of ice. I could then alter course towards Bantry Bay, about 900nm further on. This leg might be rough at times but there would be no ice and plenty of sea room to deal with bad weather. 

Initially I sailed south with a light, fair breeze that gave slow but steady progress in fog and drizzle. The last ice disappeared into the haze at 2000 on 24 July, though I of course did not know this was the end of it. The water temperature rose 2°C which I hoped meant we were in the Irminger Current and beyond the ice. 

Two days later and 200nm further south and without having seen any ice for a day and a half, a front brought an abrupt wind shift to SW3, which put us close hauled on starboard tack. The wind increased and by 0200 the following day, 27 July, was SW6 and we were crashing along close hauled and close reefed, cold, wet and uncomfortable. To my delight the wind then veered to W5 giving a fast reach. This fine, fair wind held for a day and carried us to 60°N, the latitude of the southern tip of Greenland, where it died away to NE2. By noon on 28 July, four days after turning away from Greenland, we were out of the Greenland Strait, 400nm clear of Greenland, 250nm from Iceland and probably 250nm from the nearest ice. 

I had room to ride out a gale and could alter course to the southeast towards Ireland. I expected the rest of the passage would be straightforward, though not necessarily easy. Initially the breeze was light though generally fair, which was reflected in the next two day’s runs of 86 and 84nm. A SW4 then gave us a 106nm run. When it died away the wind that replaced it was SE6 gusting 7, a dead noser. With plenty of sea room, there was no reason to knock the gear or myself about so I hove-to and ththat day's run was only 23nm. The calm that followed this was short lived, quickly replace by a SW7, a fair wind but stronger than one would wish. I ran off under staysail only. As the barometer began to rise the wind veered to NW8, later easing to NW4; 74nm noon to noon. 

A fair wind

The next night, 4 August, was clear and starry. For the last two months the stars had been obscured, initially by 24-hour daylight and latterly by clouds, and it was good to see them again. Two days of moderate northwest wind and runs of 105 and 111nm took us to within 200nm of the Irish coast and back amongst fishing boats. There a high settled over us, bringing clear sunny weather, light airs and calms but with enough swell to set the sails slatting and crashing despite preventers, vangs, topping lifts and other rolling gear. 

I would usually douse the mainsail in these conditions and enjoy the quiet, but with no working motor and many fishing boats about I kept it up to give steerage way. The slatting was more than the mainsail’s gooseneck could stand and it disintegrated. The gooseneck was an example of the sort of thing too common on yachts, made to look good but only suitable for fair-weather sailing. I had already replaced numerous bits of highly polished, totally inadequate yachty nonsense (bow rollers, rudder head and so on) but, although it was on the list, had not yet built a new gooseneck. I lashed the boom to the mast and kept sailing. The wind remained light so my fix was never tested, which was fortunate as it looked insecure. 

Waiting on wind off the Irish coast

The light airs and calms persisted as I slowly closed the Irish coast. It took me three days to make the next 120nm, with much slatting of the sails. On 9 August a light breeze carried us the final 20nm into Bantry Bay. I anchored behind Dinish Island near Castletownbere, 16 days after turning away from Greenland and 19 days from Iceland, having sailed 1696nm to make good about 1550nm. 

Drifting into Bantry Bay

I did not go ashore as Castletownbere is not a port of entry for Ireland, but spent two days at anchor making and fitting a replacement bracket for the alternator, using material I had aboard. It was still flat calm when that job was done, but now I could motor 20nm to Bantry to clear in. 

Once the entry formalities were dealt with, I set about fabricating a new gooseneck. I had enough stainless steel plate and rod aboard for the job and the necessary tools but it would have been easier with access to a drill press and metal worker's bench. Grinding, cutting and drilling 6mm metal plate in the cockpit is messy and difficult and I am an amateur metal worker at best. I cannot generate enough power to weld aboard so I took the gooseneck parts together with my welding machine to a friend's place on Whiddy Island and welded it up there. The result was strong and functional if a bit agricultural, the antithesis of its predecessor. 

In light of my poor showing trying to get to Greenland, I decided to do something less strenuous next. On 12 September I sailed from Ireland towards the Caribbean intending to take whatever interesting warm-water diversions I could find along the way. No more ice (for now).