Hey everyone, the final update is that the boat is staying the winter in Homer, AK. I was able to catch a flight out on the morning of the 25th and I got home yesterday, the 26th. It was a long trip, with lots of good memories. Unfortunately due to the weather we couldn't make it all the way to Vancouver through the inland passage but Homer seems like a really nice small Alaskan town with good facilities so it should work well for Nordwind. Other than that, thanks for following me on my trip!

On to Homer

The Seward harbor master determined that Nordwind was too nice and too expensive to take responsibility for protecting it all winter. Then, every other port we talked to said the same thing. As of yesterday afternoon we were going to make for Sitka (across the Gulf of Alaska), either leaving this morning, or waiting another week in Kodiak for more bad weather to pass. Then late yesterday we got word from Homer, that there might be a possibility for wintering over there (much closer). We are about to leave for Homer and evaluate the facilities for wintering.

New Updates: I posted more photos which can be seen here: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.4329229989465.2183790.1248679119&type=3&l=a96d23d88e The other latest update is that we are not leaving Kodiak in a hurry anymore I guess because of the flooding thats happening in Seward and the terrible weather in general so we're here until around Wednesday. But Alex did talk to the Seward harbormaster and apparently they can haul us out and they are sending Alex the forms to fill out now so if all goes well the end of our trip is 170 miles away. ALSO Rob caught a ride back on a boat with the crew of Time Bandit from the Deadliest Catch and they said we were absolutely crazy doing what we are doing!

Through Hell and High Water

So after 4 days here in Kodiak (the longest I’ve been in one place since being home) we found out yesterday that after all the harbor master’s bs-ing they actually don’t have a spot for us to keep the boat for the winter. That means like it or not we have to push on. The plan is to leave early tomorrow morning (Saturday) and probably make for Seward, or may go for Yakutat Bay. Seward is the next potential port where we could haul out and keep the boat for the winter. They have a large storage yard good marina facilities and there is bus service to Anchorage. Unfortunately they are undergoing some flood problems right now so we haven’t been able to get in touch with the harbor master. If we don’t stop there and go for Yakutat, we’ll be playing with fire so to speak but in reality wind and water because we have a little less than a 48 hr window of clear weather in between ugly looking low pressure systems and Yakutat is about 2 and a half days away… If you go to passageweather.com and click through the map to get to the Gulf of Alaska you can see what we’re dealing with up here. The litte arrows on the map are the wind speed, each little barb is 10 kts, and the color is also related to wind speed. At this point, especially after spending 4 and now 5 days here in Kodiak, we’re all pretty tired and are struggling to get back in to sailing mode. Once you stop somewhere, let yourself relax, and start thinking about ending the trip and going home it’s really tough to shake it off and go again. Kodiak has been cool and really fun but unfortunately we have no choice and tomorrow we dive in to the 20 ft seas and hopefully mild 20-25 kt instead of 40-45 kt winds of the Gulf of Alaska as we try to push on and find a place for Nordwind to call home for the winter.

Catching up in Kodiak

Heyyy everyone! Sorry I haven't been posting anything recently, we've been busy moving around a lot and I got back into cell phone range and got caught up calling people instead of blogging. Anyways, we are now in Kodiak on Kodiak Island. We spent the 15th in Geographic Harbor which was spectacularly beautiful even if it did rain all day...We saw lots of bears walking the beaches and feeding on salmon in the rivers. There were also lots of seals and eagles and other exciting things all nestled into lots of little waterfall filled coves amongst 3-7,000 ft peaks. We met a fisherman named Justin who was stationed there working for a lodge. He was spending 9-12 days living alone on a little fishing boat and the company would radio him at 7am every day telling him whether they were going to be flying in clients that day to go halibut fishing. If the weather was bad they didn't come and he had the day to himself. Needless to say he was pretty excited when we showed up around 9am and anchored next to him. That night the wind picked up and in what is becoming Nordwind fashion, our anchor started to drag. Around 3am we all woke up and after dragging in a few more gusts down off the mountains we pulled anchor and motored in circles around the bay until daylight when we could make it out of the narrow canals, since ya know our radar doesn't work and what not. We then set out across the Shelikof Strait between the Peninsula and Kodiak. It was a beautiful sunny and 40. That being sunny and blowing 40kts. There were steep 15+ foot seas and 30-40kts as we set out on a beam reach motor sailing across. It was another wet and wild ride but at least it was sunny which made for some fun driving. We made it across and into the islands off of Kodiak where we encountered a 6kt current in one strait propelling us along at 12-13kts over ground and there were sea otters everywhere just floating along on their backs alongside us! It was very cool. We pulled in to Kodiak around 5 o'clock local time and got a spot alongside the dock amongst all the fishing boats. Yesterday I spent the whole day walking around, I went all through town and then a couple miles out of town to Fort Abercrombie State Historical Park and hiked around there for a few hours. My legs are killing me. Franco and I were joking today about how the most hiking we've done is from our cabin to the doghouse, and then maybe the long trek from the doghouse to the bow...Anyways Abercrombie was very cool and very beautiful. It was a navy base in WWII as a part of the Aelutian campaign, which honestly I didn't even know existed. Apparently Dutch Harbor got bombed by the Japanese? I should probably learn a little more history. Now the park is all forest and lots and lots of rasberry bushes. Actually most of the island is lots of rasberry bushes and it's peak season right now...it's been a delicious few days. On to the more important matters at hand, there is an increasingly good chance that this may be the end of our trip. We have been looking at the weather for crossing the Gulf of Alaska and to say that it's bad would be an understatement. It's terrifying. 30-40kts with 50-60 predicted in some places and 20ft seas for the next week with maybe 1 day inbetween low pressure systems that are stacked up across the Pacific. This weather, on top of the increasing list of repairs necessary for Nordwind, is giving Alex more and more reason to look at leaving the boat here for the winter. There are facilities here for most of the repairs we need; all of which could be started on now instead of in 3 weeks. We also don't have a good anchor and chain that would allow us to weather out these storms in a random bay if we do continue on. Plus, Hans' plan for next summer is to cruise Alaska, and what better place to start from than Kodiak? We are hoping to get some more weather information tonight or tomorrow, and tomorrow morning we also confirm if there will definitely be a slip for the boat for the winter. So for now we are on hold. While it would be a bummer to miss the inland passage and Alaska panhandle down to Vancouver, I think we are all pretty exhausted at this point and floating around the idea of just stopping here is pretty appealing to all of us.

Unimak, Nagai, Alaska Peninsula

So to catch everyone up to speed, we spent a couple of days in Dutch Harbor for some much needed R&R which basically just entailed some time on land being real people after 2 weeks straight cooped up in boat. The agent lady who I talked (complained) a little bit about in one of my last posts gave us her Chevy Silverado pickup while we were there, for which I immediately asserted myself as primary driver. It was so nice just being able to drive around, even if there were only about 3 roads, after spending 2 months sailing. All in all Dutch Harbor was great. From the stunning beauty of the island itself which I described in the last post, to the wildlife of bald and golden eagles and the massive salmon run going up the river right through the center of town. It was also great for me to be back in America. There is something very comforting about driving a big gas guzzling pickup truck and knowing what to expect when you walk into a big American grocery store after shopping in mom and pop type shops for the entire trip. Anyway we are now a few days back on our way and we expect to be in Geographic Harbor on the Alaskan Peninsula across from Kodiak on the morning of the 15th. We've had smooth fast sailing so far from Dutch with good wind from behind we've been doing around 8 kts with only a few light patches to motor through. Since this trip is anything but uneventful, the latest development for yacht Nordwind is that our radar isn't really working. And by not really working I mean it doesn't see the massive 5,000 ft. mountains rising out of the water 5 miles away from us let alone little things like 300m cargo boats. We're working on it and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but hopefully either we can fix it or someone in Kodiak can. Hopefully my next post will be of some beary merry tales of bears slapping salmon out of the air as we watch them fish straight out of National Geographic! From a very safe distance of course…Also the AIS tracker on marinetraffic.com should be working now that we´re back near civilization, there is a link to it on the left hand side of the blog!

New Photos up! http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.4329231469502.2183791.1248679119&type=1&l=be1fa17918

Paying our dues

That is basically the best way we can reason what we did for the past 2 weeks, we paid our dues. We spent a month and half going up to and through the Northwest Passage, and we saw some amazing sights. We encountered a lot of icebergs, some pack ice, and we had our own problems along the way, but it was nothing we couldn’t overcome thanks to Alex’s careful planning. The price for all this relatively easy going was 2 weeks of cold, bleak, grey sailing around Northern Alaska with a 40-50kt low pressure system built in for good measure. We paid the price and were greeted with the reward on our last few miles in to Dutch Harbor today. I don’t think any of us really knew what to expect, but whatever it was, what we got blew us away. Dutch Harbor and all of the Aleutian Islands, from what I can tell, are beautiful. Lush green volcanic mountains rising straight out of the sea up to jagged and occasionally snow capped peaks. It’s spectacular. We were also greeted with the mesmerizing sight of what must have been well over one hundred humpback whales right outside of Dutch Harbor. As we approached, the sun broke through the clouds, the forecasted 25kts disappeared down to a glassy calm and all of a sudden whales began surfacing everywhere. I mean literally every direction you looked there were a dozen blow spouts and whale’s tails high in the air as they continuously dove back down. We were all spinning in circles on deck trying not to miss the next whale breaching in gigantic smack back into the water. This went on for at least the last hour of our trip if not the last two and, don’t forget, this was all happening with the spectacular sunlit mountainous backdrop…we were blown away. We paid our dues and were justly rewarded, after 2 weeks at sea, with our first real view of what Alaska is. And with fair assurances I’m going to say that Alaska is and is going to keep being, breathtaking. We’re hoping to leave Dutch Harbor Wednesday morning making our way up the southern side of the Aleutian Islands and the Alaskan Peninsula. The plan is to stop in Geographic Bay, where apparently bears play volleyball with salmon in the rivers, then continue on for a quick stop in Kodiak before making for the Alaskan panhandle and the Inland Passage to Vancouver.

170 to Dutch

56 deg 43'.50N 167 deg 01'.30W COG 174 SOG 7.5kts temp 9.1C Nothing much to report out here, we're chugging along motor sailing our way to Dutch Harbor and right now it looks like we'll be getting in Sunday night which will put us exactly 2 weeks out of Cambridge Bay. We're racing to beat a low pressure system moving into the Bering Sea, but it looks like the last bit of the trip tomorrow is going to be against strong head winds. The breeze is light right now though so we're making the best of it. Hopefully there will be good internet connection in Dutch Harbor and I'll be able to get some more pictures up! I take back the nothing happening, we just had Orcas surface next to the boat! They were amazing!

We made it!...well kind of

Current position 63 deg 53'.71N 168 deg 25'.24W COG 176 SOG 7.0Kts. Yesterday we made it through the Bering Strait into the Bering Sea and out of the Northwest Passage! We celebrated with a bottle of champagne and made lots of toasts out under the cold overcast sky to all our successes. We were only delayed by ice once in the whole passage and had very few bad storms so we consider it a pretty big success! We also have gotten lucky and a good weather window looks to have opened up for us as we make our way down the Alaskan coast so we are still headed straight for Dutch Harbor and we are currently about 600 miles away. So while we celebrated the end to a major, and very important, section to this trip there is still a good chunk to go over the next few weeks, however we expect to be in Vancouver by the end of the month. The one main foreseeable problem for these next legs is dealing with the United States and all the lovely bureaucratic control. Alex has spent more time filling out forms and going back and forth with the "agent" we had to hire as a liaison for us than I thought possible. He has been dealing with pilot exemptions for sailing in Alaska(necessary for any boat over 70ft apparently), figuring out which port of entry we were going to stop in first, if we were allowed to stop in other places if we needed to avoid bad weather before we officially checked in to the country, then figuring out which bays we were allowed to anchor in afterwards and if we were allowed to go ashore without a permit because it might be national park land. It's been a massive headache all around and a big slap in the face from the laid back style of Greenland and Canada...not to mention this "agent" charges like a lawyer for every unhelpful answer they give us. As an example, one piece of paid advice we received was to make sure we anchored on the downwind or "leeward" side of an island...Needless to say I've been getting a lot of backlash from the rest of the crew in regards to my country's workings.

Surfin' in the USA

So we've had one hell of a wild ride for the past 24 hours. That great wind from behind that I mentioned turned out to be courtesy of a massive low pressure system moving up through the Bering Sea. The 25kts that we were loving yesterday quickly escalated to 35-40 kts with a max gusts to 50 coming from basically straight behind us along with 12-15ft seas. We reduced sail eventually all the way down to just the stay sail and the mizzen with a reef in and we were still doing 9-10 kts and more when surfing. Rob holds the speed record at 17 kts down a wave during the night. Oh I forgot to mention we also stopped using our autopilot yesterday evening because it was working so hard for so long that we didn't want to risk breaking it. The low pressure system is moving fast to the North so the breeze has clocked around to the east but is forecasted to move back around behind us all the way to the Northwest and build back to 25kts by tomorrow when we are going through the Bering Strait. Apparently there is another low pressure system coming down off of Russia into the Bering Sea right after this one so once we make it through the Strait we are going to weigh our options for stopping and waiting for better weather or pressing on. We are being very safe with the bad weather and everything is going well other than the fact that we and the whole boat in general are very wet. Franco had a wave crash through the vent in his cabin last night on to his bunk...Hopefully we can get our diesel heater fired back up, although she doesn't like the bad weather, and get the boat dried out a bit and hopefully this next low pressure system is manageable and we can press on to Dutch Harbor. One more thing I have to say is that sailing this boat under minimal minimal sail seems wild in 35-40 kts of wind and pretty big seas and we're only doing 8-12 kts on average. I have a whole new level of respect for the guys in the Volvo Ocean Race who do this going at 25 kts day in and day out on a stripped bare race boat. Now that has to be a wild ride.

It's all downhill from here!

We're finally turning south! We just rounded Point Barrow and gave a toast to the North. Our current position is 71 deg 38'.96N 157 deg 18'.42W COG 266 deg SOG 7.0kts Temp 3.3 deg C So I lied a little, we're actually working a little bit farther west before gybing south but mentally we've all already made the turn. We're one week out of Cambridge Bay and we're almost done with the Northwest Passage. Today we celebrate heading south but we have a few more big celebrations ahead of us too. One for getting to the Bering Strait, one for making into the Pacific, and one for leaving the Arctic Circle. According to Amundsen, and our group consensus, the Northwest Passage officially ends when we make it through the Bering Strait and into the Pacific, making it all the way from the Atlantic via a route around the top of North America. We've had great wind for the past couple days and a great forecast that has this NE wind we're in sticking around for another couple of days at around 20-25kts. This breeze has and will continue to allow us to make around 7-8kts of boat speed. Up until now we've been able to head straight along the rhumb line which has been awesome, but we'll have to wait and see what kind of angles we get after we gybe in a few hours. The only downside to this breeze is that it got really freaking cold again with the wind coming off the ice cap and it's back down to around 3 degrees C and it was snowing earlier. We're looking forward to the palm trees and pina coladas in the pacific...they have those in Alaska right? Anyway we're all just kind of buckled down in routine here now that we're well into the longest ocean passage of our trip. We have another 1200ish miles to go so we're figuring on another week to 10 days before we see Dutch Harbor. Hopefully we can keep coming up with good meal ideas because good food always makes for good spirits. Seeing as it's Sunday today Alex had me make the two of us a full English breakfast during our morning watch with eggs, fresh bread, bacon, baked beans and tomato slices (we don't have any breakfast sausage or hash unfortunately)and right now he's working on dinner which I believe is some kind of fridge vegetable soup... i.e. soup made with whatever vegetables are in the fridge...It'll be warm at least...and hopefully delicious. Other than that there's not much to report from the Nordwind, everything is running smoothly and hopefully it'll stay that way. Actually there is one more point I've been meaning to bring up and that is a very odd eating habit that leaves me vastly outnumbered as the only American on a European cultured boat. This is the matter of cookies, or biscuits as they call them. For me a cookie is a dessert, you have it after lunch or dinner or if you're sneaky maybe you grab one as a mid afternoon snack. Not Europeans or in this case Argentines though, nope for them cookies are for breakfast. Every day its biscuits with their tea/coffee and I'm talking anything from gingersnaps to digestives(some wierd euro cookie) to Oreos. In exchange for eating cookies for breakfast, fruit is a more typical desert option; a banana with caramel or honey or mixed fruit in a bowl with some heavy cream. It seems completely backwards to me, I'm much more inclined to grab a banana, apple or peach in the morning than a pack of Oreos but I guess who am I to judge...plus what kid doesn't secretly love the idea of cookies for breakfast.

Proving Geometry Wrong

Current position: 70 deg. 58'.31N 138 deg. 40'.81W. Now I was always taught that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. It always made sense and I never had any reason to doubt it. I have now learned that like all rules, there is an exception to this one as well. As we left Amundsen Gulf and entered the Beaufort Sea we started heading in a straight line on our chart plotting software, almost due west, towards Point Barrow at the top of Alaska. After a little while we plugged in a way point off of Point Barrow to make it easier to see our course. It turns out that the shortest distance for us to get to Point Barrow is actually an arc to the North. We are still so high up on the globe that the shorter distance is more over the top, but of course you can't see that on a flat chart. I have another point to bring up about being so far on top of the globe as well. Yesterday we had a southerly breeze that seemed so warm (11-12 deg C) and I started to say "oh well that makes sense, southerly breeze off the land should be warmer..." What's south of us is Northern Canada and Alaska...somehow it's still hard to accept that fact. But now we are in a 20-25 kt Northerly that's coming off the Polar Icecap and it's back down to around 5 deg. C so I guess everything has to be taken in perspective. Right now we are 21 miles from the Alaska/Canadian line doing about 7 kts so by the end of my watch we will be back in the good ol' US of A! It'll be good to be back in America for a bit. In a copy of Time Magazine that one of Hans' friends left on the boat there was a little blip about the Walmart on Kodiak Island...I wonder if I can get a dunkin donuts iced coffee and a big mac when we get to Dutch Harbor? I probably shouldn't joke about that because I probably can.

Aurora Borealis

So I'm writing this at 8:30 pm central time on 8/27. We're at 68 deg 22´.50 N 112 deg 50.32´W doing 6 kts. We left Cambridge Bay yesterday afternoon around 4 o'clock after saying goodbye to Anthony, Wolfgang and Nestor; Hans' friends. We headed out of the harbor under warm clear sunny skies with 20-25 kts on the beam to slightly behind. It was perfect sailing conditions and it instantly got all of us into great spirits. We were cruising along at 8-9 kts and maintained that all through the night. Alex and I had the 11 pm to 2 am watch and as I just said had comfortable sailing at great speeds. Near the end of the watch Alex was down below fixing something and I was hanging out in the doghouse (the little nav station in front of the cockpit). I poked up on deck to make sure everything was still fine. We maintained a dark twilight all through the night so you could just barely still see everything ok. I looked up and there was a thin white cloud stretched across high above the horizon in front of us. All of a sudden it started moving, disappearing in one spot and getting brighter and bigger in another. I ran down got Alex and then we woke up the rest of the crew. It was our first sighting of the Aurora Borealis aka Northern Lights. We spent the next half hour watching the show. It looked like veils of dust falling out of the sky constantly changing shape. Unfortunately we didn't get any crazy coloration, only white, but it was still incredible and awe inspiring. Hopefully we get some more clear nights as it gets darker so the show will continue. We are now back under motor power as the wind died out around noon today and we are making ground towards our probable next stop of Dutch Harbor, Alaska. It's about 2,000 miles from here and we have to make it out of the Northwest Passage proper, across the top of Alaska, through the Bering Strait and down to the Aleutian Islands. It's a lot of ground to cover and should take us around 14 more days. It's a long stretch of sailing but there are not many exciting places to stop, or not any exciting places to stop for that matter, so we're going to try to press on and knock off this big chunk of our remaining trip as fast as we can.

Sh!t hits fan Bay

As I´m writing this it is 4:30 on 8/22. We are at 71 deg. 05.24N 96 deg. 38.90W motoring South through Peel Sound towards Cambridge Bay at 5.7 kts in calm seas and we are all safe and the boat is running properly. Now let me explain the hell we went through during the past 4 days. On 4/18 we left Bellot Strait and motored south. We anchored in a small bay in the Tasmania Islands 50 miles south of the strait to wait for the ice to clear ahead of us. That night was fine. 4/19 was a nice cloudy day but blowing 20-30kts out of the southeast, which was actually great because it cleared the ice away from the coast for us. Dodo´s Delight came in and anchored next to us on the 19th to also wait for the ice to clear. That night we had them over for drinks after dinner. As the night progressed the wind picked up and we started seeing gusts up to 40kts. We started to drag our anchor a little bit so we payed out more chain until we had all 100m out. While the Dodo´s guys were getting ready to go back to their boat around 1am our anchor chain snapped off the boat as the breeze clocked up to consistently over 40kts. We immediately threw the engine on and dove into getting safely out of the little bay and getting our emergency anchors out and assembled. Everyone worked fearlessly and tirelessly for a few hours as we got ourself out of danger. We then unsuccessfully tried to re-anchor as we kept dragging our backup anchor, so we decided to motor around for the night while the breeze died down. Only the owner of Dodo´s Delight was back aboard their boat and with the conditions as they were the 4 South African climbers ended up spending the night sleeping in our salon. After a very short few hours of sleep we went back into the bay to search for our lost anchor. With Hans at the helm we dragged an anchor back and forth trying to hook the chain. All the harsh forward and reversing involved in the process threw a bolt from the gear box of the engine and during the last hard reverse the drive shaft slipped in the coupling and slid out roughly 8 inches. Luckily we had the dinghy in the water and the wind was light when this happened and we were able to quickly tie the dinghy alongside and motor ourselves out into the middle of the bay away from the lee shore that we were less than 50ft from hitting...We were then able to secure ourselves with somewhat of a tripod with our 2 safety anchors and a line to a large boulder on shore. We then set directly to work analyzing the problems with the drive shaft and trying to figure out the best method to find and recover our anchor. The 4 Dodo´s climbers; Clinton, Dave, Andrew and Steve, all jumped right in to help us (they are our new best friends). These tasks turned into over 48 straight hours of trial and error work and a massive MASSIVE amount of jury rigging. We determined what had to be done with the shaft and confirmed our theories with a satellite phone call to an Argentine mechanic, Nico, who has worked on the boat before. He was in Ushuaia which is southern Chile, the complete opposite end of the America continents. We then rigged up two pulley systems to try to get the shaft back into the proper position. For those of you who know the boat, the access to the shaft and gearbox is right in front of the fridge which is at the bottom of the steps going from the doghouse just into the galley. We had one pulley system running in under the floor and out the doghouse to a pulley on the mizzen mast and then to a winch. The other pulley system was rigged up with a line around the propeller with both ends feeding to the bow of the boat, through pulleys and back to the largest winches on the boat. Xurxo had to dive to get the line around the propeller. Even in a 7mm wetsuit, a hood, boots and gloves he said it was veryyyyyy cold. These two pulley systems allowed us to simultaneously push and pull the drive shaft to move it back into place. We also then had to replace and reposition the bolts on the collar that holds the shaft in place. In the process of all this work we lost one of the nuts for one of the bolts...we couldn´t find a replacement anywhere on the boat. What we did find was 1 very large shackle that happened to be the exact size and thread pattern of an m24 nut. In order to use this we had to cut that end off the shackle...it is currently the sole reason our boat is working. That is basically the best explanation of the engine problems and solutions that I can give because I spent most of my time working on finding the anchor. Our first attempts were made by dragging a chain and grappling hook anchor across where we thought we had lost it. Of course the bottom of the bay happened to be covered in massive amounts of huge pieces of kelp which immediately fouled the anchor and eliminated this possibility. Our next option was to hope to see the anchor or chain because the visibility in the bay was amazing...however it was still about 10-16m deep where we think we lost the anchor and chain. We attached a GoPro camera to the longest pole we had on the boat (only 4m) and stuck it down but still didn´t have a clear picture. We then went back to jury rigging and I put together what basically became an unmanned submersible to use to search the bottom for the anchor. I used a GoPro camera on a headstrap mount and strapped and duct taped it onto the bottom of a "bruce" anchor. Then using the dinghy, a GPS and a stopwatch, Hans, myself and another assistant went out and trolled just off the bottom of the bay hoping to catch a glimpse of chain. We marked waypoints and the time at every turn and had the stopwatch synced to the GoPro footage so if we saw the chain we would be able to determine which way points it was between using the time. You would think that at some point we would be able to see part of the 100m of chain we lost. I spent 2 straight days dragging an anchor around behind a dinghy for 40 minutes at a time and then going back into the boat and watching the footage. Let me tell you, kelp and a rough sandy bottom look a hell of a lot like anchor chain and every time someone thought they saw the chain 2 other people disagreed. After filming basically the entire ocean floor in this bay we still had no conclusive sightings but had dropped marks in our most likely spots, most of which formed a rough line. As tempers wore thin we started fishing for our anchor where we thought it was likely to be, again to no avail. A passing motor yacht stopped for one night somewhere in here and, with a proper drysuit and the scuba gear we had on Nordwind, one of their crew, who Laura happened to know, attempted a dive where we had the highest likely hood of anchor chain based on filming. Unfortunately the cold water froze his regulator as soon as he got to the bottom and made for an unsuccessful adventure. Coincidentally Laura met Richard when the boat he was working on was fixing their drive shaft...lol. This morning we finally finished fixing the engine but we are only using forward and only at low rpms to reduce the risk of breaking anything and hopefully avoiding having the drive shaft slide back out. We then took a few more fishing trips with an anchor and chain in hopes of recovering our anchor but were still unsuccessful. By this point we were all incredibly frustrated and both mentally and physically exhausted. We finally gave up searching for the anchor and left that godforsaken bay with Dodo´s Delight close by for potential assistance. As I said at the beginning we are now headed for Cambridge Bay. There we hope to replace the shackle holding the drive shaft collar together with a real nut and potentially get a new anchor and chain delivered. As I also mentioned at the beginning we are all ok, aside from some very sore backs, myself included, and the boat is running well. As things progress I will keep you all updated but right now it seems hopeful that we will still be able to make it all the way to Vancouver. OH and our black water tank is full and not pumping right now so sh!t really is hitting the fan...

Peel Sound

(This is a long one sorry everyone) Current Position: 71 deg 14.45N 096 deg 28.24W So I said I hope Han's brings some good weather with him, and so far it's been pretty great. We left Resolute the night of the 15th after dinner and by the time we got the sails up we were in the middle of a blizzard and it was blowing 20-25 kts from the west. This may not be exactly what you would picture as good weather but it was a welcome change and gave for some good excitement. With the wind up we couldn't use the auto-pilot so I got some very cold but fun helm time in the snow. For the next 24 hours we only had to motor to get through a few strips of pack ice at the top of Peel Sound. We had great wind all the way down this first stretch of Peel Sound with 15-20 kts on the beam or just a little bit behind. Now I have to say, coincidence is an incredibly funny phenomenon. As we were sailing along I was thinking about how a marine photographer, who happened to also have lunch with us on Billy Budd a few days ago, said that Beluga whales only come up here for a few weeks, maybe a month tops, and she thought that at this point they had likely already come and gone. I was standing by the rail thinking well maybe there will still be a few up here and we'll see them on their way out. BAM Beluga instantly pops up right next to me. I couldn't believe it. After that we kept seeing the little white whales every 20 minutes or so as the swam North against us up the sound. They were amazing. We sailed all the way down to False Strait which is a bay just north of the entrance to Bellot Strait. There we spent the night alongside Dodo's Delight, a 33 ft. fiberglass boat owned by Bob Shepton out of Scotland. Bob is somewhat of an Arctic guru at this point and has been coming North to Greenland and the surrounding area for at least the past 10 years (not sure exactly). On board with him were 4 climbers from South Africa who he brought up to climb in Greenland. They sailed all the way from Scotland with him and are continuing on through the Northwest Passage. Before this trip 2 of them had never been on a sailboat…the phrase baptism by fire comes to mind but I think ice is more appropriate. The next day we both headed through Bellot Strait with plans of meeting on the other side at Fort Ross which is a hut from the old Hudson Bay Trading Co. Bellot Strait is beautiful and famous for its ripping current that can top 8 kts…It connects Peel Sound to Prince Regent Sound and marks the Northern most point of the continental Americas. Hans and Alex have now both rounded the Northern and Southern most points of the Americas on Nordwind…pretty impressive. We had a very relaxing motor through the strait and arrived at Fort Ross in the early afternoon and went ashore after lunch. I have to say that this is the first place on the trip that I would really like to come back to. It was beautiful. There were 2 buildings there, 1 was an old house from the 50s or 60s that was really beat up but had the remnants of an electric stove and refrigerator inside. The other was a fully intact and equipped hut maintained as a refuge for whoever may need one. The hut was fully stocked with beds, pots, pans, some food, matches, a stove, barrels of diesel, shotgun shells of a varying bear deterring variety, spray in insulating foam for any leaks in the existing insulation, shovels, brooms, and even a bit of what looked like very old rum… all in all very well provisioned. The hut was just up from the beach on a little peninsula on the Prince Regent side of the strait and had beautiful rolling, albeit rocky, hills for a backdrop. There was also a lake just up from the beach that had a field stretched out behind it. Maybe it was just the fact that there was grass, but I thought it was spectacular. That night we had the entire Dodo's crew over for dinner, which was a lot of fun and, thanks to Laura, a well fed success. Turning out food for 15 people on a boat is no small feat. We woke the next morning a little groggy but headed back to Bellot Strait to resume our trip south. This time through the strait we hit a 5-6 kt current head on and really put the 480hp engine to work. The water was flat calm other than the current ripples and with the sun out it was actually a really nice day. I was sitting on deck reading glancing up every so often, but we had just come through the strait the day before…on one of my glances I saw some seagulls flying around a white spot on land that looked like it had legs. Now I couldn't possibly tell you the number of times that in the heat of the moment I've turned chunks of ice into polar bears in my mind, and just the day before I excitedly thought a flock of Canadian geese by the lake might be Caribou…This time I said nothing, went and got the binoculars and took a good long hard look before shouting POLAR BEAR!!! We took the boat right up along shore, thanks to the 60m depth 4m from shore, and followed this massive polar bear along as he tried to scamper away from us along the beach. He even ended up swimming a little but gave up quickly because of the current. After lots of excited photo taking we continued on towards these beautiful orange cliffs with bright green grass patches which were equally photogenic. As we were taking pictures of the cliffs we happened on ANOTHER bear hanging out at the bottom! Boom 2 polar bears in 20 minutes. Great success. We are now anchored up in a cove on one of the "Tasmania Islands" 50 miles south of Bellot Strait. It's blowing 25-30 kts right now out of the south which is good because there is a massive plug of ice locked up all around King William Island that is blocking our progress. Hopefully the wind will break up the ice and allow us to pass but until then we are stuck waiting... To see the ice charts that we get, google "Canadian ice charts" and click the first link. Then click on the map for the area where we are, bottom left part of the Northwest Passage, and then you can download a bunch of .pdf or .gif files which will show you the daily ice flows for the area.

New Photos

If you scroll through this album you will come to some recent photos. http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.4428019979153.2186037.1248679119&type=3&l=c3b353c676

Two posts in two days! Like I said we're in Resolute until tomorrow so we have the luxury of relaxing and getting a couple consecutive days of internet access. Yesterday was an exciting day all around. We all went and had lunch on board Billy Budd which for the record is a 112 ft. Royal Huisman. The boat is BEAUTIFUL. IT looks like a 5 star hotel inside. We had a delicious lunch and then coordinated with them for how we were going to go about getting diesel...this is where it gets exciting. We worked out to get a diesel truck down to the beach with a long hose. Billy Budd went first and borrowed our spare anchor. They went in bow first, dropped our anchor off their stern then got a line to a tie point on land and pulled themselves in closer and got a spring line to an adjacent point of land. While they were in fueling up the wind picked up to around 15kts blowing directly onto the beach where we were trying to get to and it started to snow. Once they were done they took their bowline off the land, their dinghy took the anchor line and our dinghy took the spring line. We then came in off to one side, dropped our anchor and let the wind swing us around so we were stern towards the beach at which point we grabbed the anchor they had dropped so we had a Y off the bow of our boat and then got the spring line and brought our own line from our stern in to pull us towards shore. It was a hell of an operation and took us about 3 hours, but was still so much easier than figuring out how to get over 1000L of diesel from the gas station down to the beach and out to the boat. Today is a big prep day all around, we are getting all of our laundry done while I write this courtesy of the hotel in Resolute, then we are doing as big a grocery shopping as we can and then we have to get the boat all ready for the German invasion. We have to clean and organize and rearrange sleeping spaces. This includes moving the yankee back out of Rob and my cabin so that we can utilize the third bunk in the bow berth which should be fun. Once we're all set we have tomorrow to hopefully relax a little bit and prepare ourselves for the coming stretch which will hopefully take us all the way to Tuktoyaktuk, or if we can't make it there by the time Hans has to go then we'll drop them off in Cambridge Bay. One final note, I would like to give a shout out to my cousin Ellie who used to have a hot chocolate everyday. I have to say that I have now come close to this same behavior and it's amazing. Hot chocolate is delicious, and for me the hot part is also a big factor! As a boat we consume an immense amount of hot water in the form of coffee, tea, hot chocolate and cup of soup. Again all for the warmth factor.

Lancaster Sound

We made it safely to Resolute! As Alex put it, this is a huge accomplishment and what we’ve been trying to plan for since the boat left Maine - coordinating with Hans to pick him up in the North Arctic and then make it to wherever we are picking him 2 days before he gets there. Mission accomplished. We had a good trip over from Greenland even if it was mostly motoring. We went directly for Beechey Island which is where the Franklin Expedition wintered over and where the only 3 graves from their whole lost expedition are located. We anchored there for a few days and met some French people who were camping on the beach for 16 days. One guy was writing a book about a guy, Bellot, who was part of 2 search and rescue missions looking for the Franklin Expedition and drowned during his second trip when he fell through the ice. Another guy was doing some filming for a small documentary. Check out their blog at www.latitude.canalblog.com. Just a warning, I think it’s all in French. While we were at Beechey, Xurxo, Franco and Laura saw a polar bear! I’m very jealous. They were cruising around in the dinghy and saw one on the beach on the far side of the bay. The French people said they had seen 6 in total in the 10 days since being there including a mother and cub. Rob and I went exploring around the Island and climbed to the top and visited Franklin’s Cairn, which was nothing more than a massive pile of rocks with a big pole in the middle but it was the only thing to see other than the graves. Once you go ashore it becomes very apparent that the Arctic really is a desert. There is nothing up here, just rocks and rocks and ice. Beechey Island literally looked like Mars, as you will see in some of the pictures. The landscape was a mess of cracked shale and granite all chewed up by ice. We left Beechey yesterday, made the final 50 miles to Resolute, and pulled in the middle of a snow storm, still very strange in August. While the landscape looks like a desert we have had quite a bit of precipitation up here and not a whole lot of sun which has been a bit dismal. Hopefully Hans ordered some good weather for his 10 days so we get to enjoy it too. We are now anchored alongside the 100 something foot yacht, Billy Budd, whom we are having lunch with today. Resolute is a very bland very small town with nothing to do and a very open very bad anchorage. Regardless we are here until 6 o’clock on the 15th when Hans and company arrive and then we head off down Peel Sound.

TOP OF THE WORLD!

We are currently at 74 deg. 37.33N 75 deg 34.05W doing 8 kts under sail and motor and are nearly at the Northern most point of our trip! Resolute is 74 deg 41N...We are roughly 100 miles from Dundas Harbor and almost into Lancaster Sound. We encountered our first sea ice today which was crazy...all of a sudden you are in it and it's just everywhere all around you, little and not so little chunks of ice. We had to back track a little and make some more ground to the north to get around the little finger that was extending out into Baffin Bay. Our ice charts are very good and showed the ice just a little south of where we found it. We realized that it's very important to remember which way you are trying to go and to know which way is the shortest path out of the ice because once it's all around you its easy to get caught up in just trying to go for the immediate path of least resistance which can just dig you deeper into the ice area. We were able to go slow and make it through with someone on the bow or on the steps of the mast giving direction to the helmsman to avoid the larger chunks. Luckily our Inmarsat communication still seems to be working so we are hopeful that it will continue for the rest of the time we are at 74 degrees and after that its all downhill.

Latitude 72

Right now we are on our way out of Upernavik, our last stop in Greenland. Greenland has been a funny place with odd people. A mix of Inuit and Danish…and all their houses are painted very bright colors. It's really hard to remember that it's summer up here when we are all so cold, but then we see little kids riding around on bikes and guys heading out on their little motor boats to go fishing, hunting or sealing. I can only imagine what winter is like up here…cold. Today we actually had a good taste of summer though; it was sunny and warm (60s) for a while. Rob and I went swimming and hung out on deck and had pizza and a beer with icebergs in the background. Then on our way out we had a brief shower followed by the brightest most amazing rainbow I have ever seen. Anyway we are about to begin our trip across Baffin Bay to Dundas Harbor and into Lancaster Sound to Resolute. We are so far north at this point that we can barely pick up the Inmarsat satellite that we use for email. Last time we connected the satellite was at 4 degrees above the horizon…the earth is literally getting in the way. We have a back up Iridium satphone that will work up here for emergencies but email is going to be limited to none until we get to Resolute sometime around the 14th and then start heading back south! Hopefully we have good wind, fair weather and limited ice for our crossing and a clear shot into Lancaster Sound!

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.4428019979153.2186037.1248679119&type=3&l=c3b353c676

Ice Ice Baby

Hellloooo, we are working our way up the Greenland coast and right now we are near Disko Island. Last night we anchored in the lee of Unarrat Island. For those of you who haven't looked a map of Greenland the names of all the islands are ridiculous and most of them are impossible to say. Some such as this one also have funny translations into Spanish…we did not find the one rat on the island unfortunately. Rob, Franco and I did go ashore around midnight and climbed up to the rocky peak and had a great view of a massive iceberg on the other side of the island. There was an overcast sky and it honestly could have been any time of day. My internal clock is so screwed up it's not even funny. The islands and the coastline are basically just rock with a thick spongy moss and occasional grass that finds a way to hold on. We discovered that Unarrat had a little freshwater pond in the middle of the rocky hills and it trickled down to the ocean through a heavy bog of moss which was literally like walking on pillows. Oddly enough there is also cotton growing on the islands. Just small little patches, but cotton nonetheless. We are also near the biggest iceberg factory in the world. The Jakobshavns Isfjord Glacier has 4-5 miles of abutting coastline and kicks off icebergs like it's nobody's business and we've been seein em. We are cruising through fields of huge icebergs and have gotten some amazing pictures. Right now we are on our way over to the glacier to hopefully get a look, but the visibility is really poor and we're not sure how close we are going to be able to get because of the aforementioned icebergs. It's been smooth sailing since we left Nuuk, well mainly smooth motoring because there's barely been any wind. Regardless the calm is nice and makes it a little big warmer. ALSOOOOO we crossed 66033' a day or so ago so we are officially in the Arctic!

Nuuk Nuuk, Who’s there?

Sorry it’s been a few days since a post. We got caught up with some heavy sailing crossing the Labrador Sea and we now have to start being more conservative with our email usage because as we move farther North we are going to have to start downloading daily ice charts. We had a great sail coming across to Greenland other than the fact that we didn’t see the sun for 5 days, since we left Port Saunders… It was all grey sky, rain and fog. So much fog. We had good wind though, consistently 15-25kts either from the beam or a little bit from behind to make for fast sailing typically around 7-10kts. One unfortunate issue that we had to deal with while we were in Port Saunders that I failed to bring up in previous posts was a fraying forestay. It disabled our roller fuller and therefore the use of the yankee, which is the foremost sail and accounts for 2-3kts of boatspeed. While in Port Saunders we bought a replacement cable and jury rigged an entirely new forestay to back up the fraying one. We then rigged up our old stay sail to act as yankee of sorts by flying the tack of the sail, which is the part you normally attach to the boat, about 8 feet off the deck using a thick piece of spectra. This new jury rigged sail has been dubbed “The Cutré” which is a mix between a Spanish word for messy or ill kept (so I’m told) and cutter which is the style of boat which flies a rig similar to this. Surprisingly our Cutré works amazingly well and really pulls the boat and keeps that 2-3kts from the Yankee available for us. The most noticeable fact about the sail from Newfoundland to Greenland is that it has gotten REALLY COLD. The temperature during my watch last night was 4 degrees Celsius. Slowly but surely everyone has started pulling out their winter clothes and there have been a lot of jealous remarks all around when someone pulls out something especially warm like Alex and my rabbit fur hats. Alex has named his Ignacious. The other noticeable changes are the icebergs… they are freaking HUGE. Luckily for us the fog lifted for as we approached the Greenland coast yesterday and today so we had no problem seeing them. The final notable point is the utter lack of darkness. There is no more night. The sun sets around 11pm and you have a twilight from 11-2 and then you are into predawn light and the sun is up no later than 3:30am. It really throws your internal clock when you’re on the 2-5am watch and it looks like it’s 8 in the morning. I’m typing this as we sit at anchor in the harbor of Nuuk, the capital of Greenland. We are working right now on getting refueled with diesel, doing a big grocery shopping and hopefully finding hot showers and somewhere to do some laundry. While we do have a miniscule washing machine and dryer on the boat, we do our best to do big loads whenever we come ashore. Also, our grocery shopping list just got a lot longer when we heard word from Hans that instead of maybe bringing 1 friend with him when he joined us in Resolute, he may be bringing 4…it’s going to get real cozy on Nordwind up in the Arctic with possibly 11 people on board. With any luck we’ll be headed out of Nuuk tomorrow all loaded up and we will work our way up the Greenland coast checking out all the fiords and glaciers we can as we wait for the right time to cross Baffin Bay to Pond Inlet! We are at latitude 63 right now I believe and the Arctic Circle starts at 67…HERE WE COME!

Driving

Iceberg

Lunch

My bunk

Across the Labrador Sea

Position 55o34'.27N 054o18'.11W Course over ground(COG) 003o Speed over ground (SOG) 7.0kts. Temp. 8.6C 98% Humidity. Raining. We are finally making headway North and East! We are well underway across the Labrador Sea on our way to Greenland and it has been nothing but cold, foggy, rainy and generally wet since we left Canada...the low temperature yesterday, and so far for the trip, was 7.4C which I think is somewhere around 45F. For all the talk that went around before I left how temperatures in the 40s aren't so bad I have decided that it's a load of crap. 40s is freaking cold, especially when its wet. That being said, yesterday completely justified every bit of clothing and gear I bought and packed for this trip. My new Helly Hansen professional grade Offshore Jacket and Ocean Trousers are fantastic and keep me very dry. I'm currently wearing 5 thermal layers on top under my jacket; a t-shirt, 2 longsleeves, a midweight quarter zip top and a heavyweight fleece quarter zip top and I'm wearing fleece pants under my spray pants. No sense in being cold right? The thick insulated lobstering gloves I bought have also been fantastic and keep my hands warm and dry. The depressing and slightly discouraging thing we all realized yesterday though is that we're only at latitude 55 and we are headed up into the 70s...if its this cold now, it's only going to get worse, but hopefully the rain stops. I hate rain. We have a little over 500 miles to go from hear to Nuuk, which is the capital of Greenland. Nuuk has a whopping population of 15,000 which hopefully means that they have some semblance of a supermarket. Everything is going well onboard as we are finally settling into a steady watch system. Our watches are 4 hours each from 8am to 8pm and then three hours each during the night from 8pm to 8am. Night however is getting shorter and shorter, it's light until after 10pm and by 4am it's completely light out. Like I said, we're headed North and we're all doing our best to stay warm as we do. I haven't had to resort to my sleeping bag yet, but I think that's the next step either today or tomorrow. I've been good so far with just a sheet, a fleece blanket and a wool blanket on top. Off to bed in a half hour, hopefully I'll still be cozy and warm. Cheers, Andrew

Sailing and Ice

Today was a great day! We left Port Saunders and as we motored out of the bay we went up with full sails, well the main with 3 reefs but with all our sails. As soon as we turned out of the little bay we hit 30 kts and pounding rain and really got put through our paces making sure everything was tied down. It was great! We were able to fly along under nothing but sail until around 4 o'clock when the wind died, but we had 20-25kts almost all day. I drove for 3 or 4 hours too which was great, it finally felt like a sailing trip. Alex and I are on watch right now from 11pm-2am and just after we came on watch our first iceberg showed up on the radar! We found in on the thermal imaging/night vision camera that was installed on the boat too and it was soooooo COOL. It was also over a mile away, don't worry. Our current plan is to work up the Labrador coast and wait for clear weather to cross to Greenland. Be sure to follow along on the "Nordwind Tracker" on the left hand side of the page!

Straight of Belle Isle

Helllooooo There. We're picking our way up the Newfoundland coast right now. We stopped in Port Saunders Yesterday morning and spent the whole day doing boat work and other prep work. We filled up all our diesel tanks including the 500L reserve bladder that we have sitting on stern. We filled up our water tanks, and did a final grocery shopping. We also got some fresh cod and halibut from a very friendly fisherman who came and chatted with us for the better part of the day! It's 8:30 Tuesday morning right now and we're just about to cast off from the docks and start our way up to Belle Isle Straight. Unfortunately, our plan of kick'n the tires and light'n the fires and making straight for Greenland has been a bit postponed because of what looks to be some very bad weather coming down and turning into a 40-50kt gale off of the coast of Greenland. We are going to sail 60-70 miles today, find a place to anchor up for the night right near the straight and then come sunrise (which is around 3:30 am!!!) we're going to go through the straight so that we can avoid the 7 supposed icebergs that are cruising around in there. Once we're through we are going to go to Battle Harbor which is just north of the straight on the Labrador coast and anchor up for tomorrow night. That leaves us with a Canadian departure date of 7/26 and should put us behind this nasty weather system while hopefully holding onto some southerlyish breeze to make for a relatively easy passage to Greenland. On another note I made enchiladas for the boat a few nights ago and they were a monstrous success. So much so that Alex and Laura cleaned the tiny little grocery store in Port Saunders out of tortillas and taco sauce so that I could make them a few more times. That being said, they also cleaned the store out of pretty much everything else including apples, eggs, potatoes, cookies, granola bars and quite a few other things. Anyway, here's to hoping for no ice in the straight and a safe passage to Greenland! Cheers, Andrew

Does Anyone Love Olives?

Today Franco and I were highly criticized for turning down the olives on our salads with lunch. We are anchored in Louisburg, NS on the east side of Cape Breton Island right now and will be spending the night here. Tomorrow we begin some real sailing. We are leaving in the morning to make the sail to Newfoundland. With forecasted winds strong from the southwest we should arrive in Port Saunders, on the west coast of the island, sometime on the 23rd. We had 20-25kts from the west/southwest today for our sail up here from St. Peter's which was really nice. I'm still trying to get used to the whole cruising mentality thing, for instance, we haven't had the full main up once so far, and I don't think it's likely that we ever will. The first day we had it up with 3 reefs in, and today we just flew the yankee, the stay sail and the mizzen with the mizzen stay sail for a short while. The main is just a lot of work apparently. We also do our best to not have to sail upwind...if we can avoid it with when we time our sailing we do, and if we can't then we motor. It's a very strange concept to get used to. As it has worked out I've been left with heaps of free time and have become fully engrossed in the Game of Thrones novels. I practically walk around with my kindle in hand all day. I've spent the better part of today lounging in the cockpit on top of the mizzen staysail, when it wasn't up, reading. It's been bright and sunny aside from a few rain squalls this morning so we're all trying to soak in the warmth on deck while we can. Oh and during our sail today we saw a massive leatherback turtle surface alongside the boat. They are amazing turtles and SO HUGE. When we make it to Port Saunders on the 23rd the plan is to do a fire drill of a refuel and grocery shopping and be on our way to Greenland on the morning of the 24th so as to make the best of the southwest breeze as long as we can. Cheers for now, Andrew and Captain Alex in Boston on July 14th

Fruit and fiberglass

Sorry to cut short last time, I was coming off watch and I had to get out of the way. We are in St. Petersburg, NS right now on the south side of Cape Breton Island. Our plan was to cut through the Bras d'Or Lake but unfortunately there is some discrepancy about the height of a power cable over the canal and we're not sure if we will fit so we're not risking it. So we are spending the night anchored here, and moving up around the coast tomorrow. We are expecting favourable winds from the SW beginning on the 22nd so we are planning to wait until then to cross to New Foundland. Up until now we've kind of just been poking our way along waiting for the right weather. We've also been eating a lot of fruit and vegetables while we still can. I think we've had multiple servings of vegetables with every meal so far and fruit for snacks and desert. Yesterday was a bit of a work day and I was tasked with the job of wrapping one of our heater stovepipes with fiberglass cloth to insulate it, which left one of my pairs of sailing gloves covered in fiber...no fun. Today was our first real day sailing and it was so nice to have 20 kts off the stern and cruising along. ANDDDDDD during my morning watch we saw 3 humpback whales breach off our port side! We saw one the first time around 6:00 and then two more at 8:00 all less than 50 yds away, IT WAS SO COOL. I'll do my best to get some pictures up at the next town we stop in!

The First Stretch

We are finally really on our way! We left Halifax this evening around 5pm local time (6pm ET) and we are headed north! Well, east at the moment, but eventually north. We are going up the coast of Nova Scotia and tomorrow we are cutting through Brass Lake?? (I think that´s what it is called) It´s the really big lake at the very tip top of Nova Scotia and you go in and out of it through locks, which will be a first for me. Anyway, I´m sure it will be gorgeous. Everywhere so far has been really pretty, although I think 1 day was enough for all of us in Halifax since no one came on this trip with the intention of being in a big city. We are on our way up to the west coast of Newfoundland, a trip which in total should take us about 5 days I think. I´m still trying to get a handle on distances and times up here so don´t quote me on that. Now that we´re finally on our way I can take a few minutes to catch up and fill everyone in on some details that not everyone is familiar with. We´ll start with the basics and go from there. I´m sailing through the Northwest Passage on Nordwind. She´s an 86´ yawl built in 1939. For more info on the boat the best thing to do is to visit transatlanticrace2011.com and visit the boat´s page on their site. There are 6 crew on board for this trip, as opposed to the 12 we sailed with in the Transatlantic race. They are: Alex the boat captain, Xurxo (pronounced Surso) who is the captain of a maxi yacht in Antigua and used to skipper Han´s, the owner, other boat Veronique, Franco who also sailed the Transatlantic last year who is a naval architect from Argentina, Laura who is a career classic yacht crew primarily in the Mediteranean but who has sailed all around the world, Robert who is a 20 year old scottish kid who is taking a year off from University to travel and sail, and myself.

Halifax

We made it to Halifax this afternoon, after a 7 1/2 hour motor from Lunenburg this morning. We were up at 4:30am and out of the harbor around 5:45am. there was no wind and pea soup fog that kept coming and going with bumpy seas so we motored along at around 6 kts all the way up. We were able to berth at the public dock in downtown Halifax and spent the day walking around the city. Robert (the scottish kid) and I cruised around by ourselves and made the most of the coupons on the side of our city map which got us 1 1/2 lbs of mussels for 2.99 and 2 for 1 nachos which we used during happy hour. I´m now back on the boat and we´re about to go out into the harbor and anchor for the night. I believe the plan is to head to the west coast of New Foundland tomorrow. Until then, Cheers, Andrew

Lunenburg

Hey everyone! I arrived safely at the boat late last night in Lunenburg, which is just south of Halifax. The drive up here was quite an adventure in and of itself. My mom and brother Nolan dropped me off just south of Boston around 8:30 Saturday night where I met up with the boat captain Alex. The two of us then headed to Logan airport where we picked up Xurxo (Surso). By the time we got Xurxo in the car it was 10:20 thanks to plane delays and customs. We then headed north with the plan of making it as far into Maine as we could before finding a place to stay. Around 1am we pulled into a hotel to get a room, everything was full. We got the exact same story at the next 5 hotels we stopped at until we made it to Augusta around 2:30 in the morning and found 1 room available. We then woke up at 7, had a hearty complimentary breakfast of microwavable Jimmy Dean egg sandwiches and the standard hotel waffles and hit the road. We made it to the Canadian border around 11:15 and that's where the fun started. We stopped at the US side first so that I could declare my rifle before I left the country. While in US customs they decided to give Canada a call to make sure I wouldn't have any problems bringing it in to the country...Canada said "nope he can't bring it in." So US customs said leave the gun here, you guys go over and talk to Canada and then come back and either bring it back into Canada with your or figure something out here. Apparently if we had just driven straight in with it and they had decided that we couldn't bring it, they could have confiscated the gun, arrested me and denied all three of us entry to Canada...So anyways we go and talk to Canadian customs, and after 3 hours...yes 3 hours of explaining what we were doing, where we were going, why we needed a rifle, that it is not uncommon for boats to have guns on board, that we weren't going into any national parks, and that we weren't going to try to kill any polar bears without good reason, they finally agreed to let us in. One thing we learned was how subjective customs is, there a clause that basically says everything is up to the discretion of the officer, so if they don't like you they can say no and that's that. After 3 hours of going back and forth we then went back to the United States, got the rifle, came back to Canada, filled out all the paperwork and went on our merry way. We then had another 8 hours of driving to make it to Lunenburg. We finally made it at 10:30 last night, making it a full 24 hours of travel from Boston, and a full 48 straight hours of travel for Xurxo who flew from Spain on Saturday. Anyways, we're in Lunenburg right now, which is just south of Halifax. We're here until tomorrow morning and then are headed up to Halifax for a day and then up to Newfoundland. The boat is in great shape and it's great to be here!

The Route

Here is a rough idea of what our route will be for the trip through the Northwest Passage!
View Northwest Passage in a larger map