It seems only a little while ago that this Blog was a going concern. It was updated as often as possible and usually, the content was timely and roughly in sync with my life.
Then along came the North West Passage attempt on my old friend Michael Thurston's beautiful alloy ketch Drina. At first, it seemed that the attempt would be a wonderful bonus providing exciting experiences over the northern summer of 2014 to blog about. A change from the more mundane southern hemisphere regattas and the occasional canal or river trip in Europe.
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| Beset in the pack August 24,2014 |
At first, things went swimmingly and words flowed fast and furious as I posted our progress from Newport RI along the coasts of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine then to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. There in St. John's we paused to take stock and hide from the tail of Hurricane Arthur which was now only a post-tropical depression with lots of wind and rain forecast.
I began numbering posts to make it easier to keep track of the narrative and our progress. So the last blog posted from Newfoundland was the number
(14) "St. John's 2/07 to 8/07". After this things went rapidly downhill. At sea, we simply didn't have the technology to post more than the briefest details of our progress and for the next 10 days, we were at sea. On arrival in Greenland, we had our first taste of how difficult it was going to be to post updates and photos. From now on it was to prove either technically impossible to blog or so expensive as to amount to the same thing .
Greenland simply hasn't the infrastructure to support large data transfers over the internet so it was that my last posts
(15) "St.John's to Greenland" and
(16) "Nuuk Greenland, new friends and a Big Gun" were the last published.
I continued to write my journal and keep a log of our adventures with the aim of posting the most interesting pieces whenever we found connectivity again.
As it turned out the next time I had an internet connection was Anchorage airport some 140 days later. I had a long wait here for my connecting flight on my way home at the end of our by now, a successful transit of the NWP and our
entry into the record book.
Access to the internet at last... So much to catch up on, emails unread, bills unpaid, correspondence unanswered blogs to post. Compared to the excitement and tension of the past four months on Drina it all began to seem less important and urgent than I'd imagined. During the transit, the thing I missed most, apart from the lack of Jameson, was not being able to post my blog and keep all those that had supported and were following our NWP attempt in the loop. Now it all seemed less urgent and a bit like yesterday's news. So I foud a vacant bench, stretched out and went to sleep.
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| Commodore John Brooks |
Since that day I've not spent much time reliving our NWP adventure with the exception of time spent with those close to the attempt,
Commodore John Brooks CYCA, Commodore Malcolm Levy RSYS, Gwenyth Taylor, Donny Finch, Peter Semotiuk, Douglas Phol and our technical team in London, Warren and Stuart Kerrigan and last but by no means least my old friend Bruce Gould or as he's know
universally "Gouldie" for his unstinting support of our attempt.
Without the support of these friends, it would have been impossible for us on Drina
to have succeeded. John and Malcolm gave many hours of their time each and every day of the attempt analysing weather reports plotting pack ice movements and supplying us with a nearly continuous stream of advice, analysis and information. Their efforts were such that despite our comparable lack of technology we were hands down the best-informed boat with the possible exception of Steven Brown and his boys on Novara and she was not part of our northern group in any case. Peter and Douglas were ever at the ready to answer our questions and supply advice based on their vast and encyclopedic local knowledge that helped us avoid many a miss step. And Warren and Stuart were always ready to fix our technology and communications problems any time of the day or night. Then there was the Canadian Coast Guard and in particular the captain and crew of the CCGS Pierre Radisson. This little piece would not be complete without mention of our wonderful Norwegian friends on Tandberg Polar (Refloat Maud Expedition), without whose very generous help with our diesel supply we would have had to abandon the attempt and winter over in Cambridge Bay.
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| Gwenyth |
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| Donny |
So now it's November 2016 and I find myself with some time on my hands as a result of an operation to correct a little problem with my right eye. So by way of thanking those mentioned above I've decided to complete the narrative of Drina's transit across the top of the world. Enough with the excuses, I've decided to begin blogging again and so I first must finish the NWP story as it happened.
PK
Sydney Nov 2016
