Conquering the Impossible (10 page)

More important, this would be my finish line, my final destination. I wanted to be able to visualize it at any moment, even from twelve thousand miles from now, and say to myself, “That's where I'm going.”

*   *   *

I had settled on traveling around the Arctic Circle against the winds and against the ocean currents for one very simple reason: if I had succeeded in the challenge by going in the opposite direction, I would have spent the rest of my life wondering what would have happened had I gone the more difficult way.

There were no ships in sight—nothing but menacing seas and wind. It was sobering to think that the ocean stretching out in front of me was virtually unknown. So few people venture onto these waters that there is practically no information about them at all. Far from frightening me, the idea struck me as exciting. Whatever I was going to run into between here and Greenland, I looked forward to it with impatience, and I felt sure that my experience as a sailor would allow me to deal with it. I was so pumped that I was beginning to look forward to obstacles and difficulties as a bundle of tasty treats.

But the first challenge had a funny flavor. Shortly after my departure I realized that my automatic pilot seemed incapable of holding a course; it was wandering all over the compass. And yet it had a gyrocompass, indicating true north and not magnetic north, something indispensable at these northerly latitudes.

After struggling with the autopilot for ten hours, I phoned the Raytheon representative, who told me that my automatic pilot was the most sophisticated model available on the market. It simply
could not
break down. I replied that it
had
broken down, that I was being forced to adjust my course repeatedly, that I was wasting time … and that I was getting annoyed.

“All right, all right.” The manufacturer said to me, “Head back to Hammerfest. We'll send one of our Norwegian reps to meet you.”

So I turned around and I called Jean-Philippe Patthey, who was getting ready to head back to Switzerland with the truck (everybody else had already taken the plane back), and asked him to wait for me.

Back at Hammerfest, everyone took turns examining my automatic pilot; they disassembled it, reassembled it, tested it, retested it—and finally declared that it was functioning perfectly. I kept on tinkering with it and realized that the fire extinguisher was fastened to the other side of the wall from where my automatic pilot was normally hung—the automatic pilot whose compass had to be kept as far as possible from all metal objects.

I removed the fire extinguisher and went back to sea with Jean-Philippe. We recalibrated the automatic pilot and its compass by slowly sailing in a large perfect circle. Then we tested the recalibrated autopilot. Now it held a course perfectly. It had indeed been the metal fire extinguisher that was causing problems, mixing up the compass and scrambling the automatic pilot! As we were readying the boat neither I nor any one else had noticed how dangerously close the metal fire extinguisher was to the automatic pilot.

The technicians went back home, Jean-Philippe went back to Switzerland, and I departed a second time.

As soon as I left Hammerfest, a perfect wind sprang up to fill my sails and send me straight along my course. Sailing straight as an arrow, I went shooting at ten or twelve knots through the spray that sprang up all around me, a perfectly respectable speed for a single-hull vessel like mine. I was happy as a clam; I was a free man.

A steady wind, a clear horizon, conditions remained ideal day after day. I sailed straight along without varying my course an inch, heading for the Scoresby Sound on the east coast of Greenland, which I hoped to reach in just fifteen days or so.

It wasn't until three days after weighing anchor that I finally got a real night's sleep. The adrenaline was keeping me awake. Now that the tension of logistical preparations and the stress of the actual departure were beginning to wane, my body needed to make up for lost sleep. The rolling of the boat helped me relax, and I slept like a log.

Two days later I sighted the only piece of dry land between North Cape and Greenland, Jan Mayen Island. I made a radio call and a woman's voice replied. The young woman who ran the meteorological station on the island was amazed to learn of my presence in these waters, where a sailing ship had almost never been sighted. In excellent English she forecast relatively stable weather for the rest of my journey. On the other hand, along my course there was a substantial likelihood of encountering a great deal of ice drifting from the north.

I thought of the great Fridtjof Nansen, the first man to explore the polar regions, who sailed from Norway on a trip to Greenland. The accumulation of ice blocked his whaling ship, and he and his men had to launch boats and row, hauling their ships between cliffs and icebergs. That was a century ago, but I was afraid the same thing might happen to me.

In the meantime, the weather suddenly warmed up. I sunned myself like a tourist, wearing shorts and a T-shirt.

But the sun-worshiping interlude was soon over. Five days after setting out, the winds began to quicken angrily, the swells began to rise, and my hull thudded over the choppy surface as if on a poorly paved road. Things started to get serious. Waves crashed over the deck, and the water that soaked the upperworks began to form ice in the chill wind, but it was not yet cold enough for the ice to weigh down the masts sufficiently to capsize the boat. All sails set, I was still sailing at ten or twelve knots before the wind—like a gentleman, as the phrase goes. Or in the words of Mick Jagger, “It's only rock 'n' roll, but I like it.”

I was liking it until a veritable explosion shook my boat from the hold to the topmast. I barely had time to grab a backstay to keep from being tossed overboard. As I turned to look aft, I saw floating away in the gray waters in the evening light an enormous tree trunk, which I had just slammed into at full speed. I hurried down into the cockpit and carefully examined every corner in search of a leak. Nothing. Relieved, I took the helm again. But two or three hours later, it became alarmingly heavy. The boat was no longer responding to the helm, and it was traveling more slowly. I went belowdecks again. Now there was four inches of water in the cockpit, which meant that the hold was full and that there was more than three feet of water in the boat!

The first thing that came into my mind was that I had waited too long before checking the water level a second time, which meant that the situation might now be irreparable. Instinctively, I turned on the bilge pump. The motor that drives the bilge pump was underwater, but it was turning all the same—for now. But that wouldn't prevent the level of water in the cockpit from rising inexorably.

And to top things off, I was just entering the danger zone—less than 185 miles from the Greenland coast—and I was beginning to see my first icebergs. Obviously, I wouldn't be stepping away from the helm again. Hitting an iceberg after hitting a tree trunk would be a little much for just one boat.

Luckily, I also had a hand pump that could be operated from the helm. I worked the pump with one hand and held the rudder with the other hand, while the main pump continued to operate as well.

After a while I could see that the level of water in the cockpit was holding steady, but it wasn't dropping, either. And one thing became horribly clear. With all the determination and energy I could muster, I could certainly continue to man the helm and pump simultaneously for a number of hours—maybe even for a whole day. But I could never hope to do it for five days in a row, which was how long I figured—at my boat's now sluggish rate of progress—it would take to reach Greenland! Sometime or other, I would certainly have to sleep.

I had activated my iceberg-detecting radar. It can warn of icebergs miles away; if we were heading right for one, it would sound an alarm. But it can't pick up growlers, the chunks of floe ice that break off and float along just beneath the surface. Even with an aluminum hull like mine, designed for polar navigation, those huge slabs of ice with sharp angles would have the same general effect that a chainsaw would have on a shoebox.

For the immediate future I could see only one solution—set my course straight for dry land and make it as far as possible. Then, when the boat sank beneath me, I would pile all my polar equipment in the inflatable life raft and do what Nansen did, paddle and hope to make it to the coast.

I made a stab at calling the former owner, but Jean-Yves was not aware of any particular weak points in his boat.

I turned on the automatic pilot, feverishly stacked all my land equipment atop the sled, and then placed the sled on the inflatable life raft. Faced with the imposing mass now piled in the raft, I said to myself that for whatever paddling might accomplish, I would paddle.

I called Cathy to warn her that I was certainly going to have to abandon my boat and reach Greenland by paddling.

Lost amid the icebergs and growlers, exhausted and disappointed, I was filled with rage at the injustice of the situation. I had plowed straight into that goddamned tree trunk, probably the only one for hundreds of miles in all directions. And now it was going to cost me my boat, less than a week after the start of the expedition!

The boat was riding so low now that the water was coming in through the through-hull fittings, a set of small openings above the flotation line through which I discarded my used water. I closed the through-hulls, returned to the helm, and started pumping again. But the hand pump was just not powerful enough; I had to go back down and start bailing with a bucket, which I would then have to empty into my shower, which drains out by means of the through-hulls, which I had to open again. On my knees on the cockpit floor, I was emptying bucket after bucket of water while the electric pump went on emptying water, doing its part.

And slowly, at long last, the water level began to drop … Once it was below the floor boards I climbed down into the hold and kept on bailing. When finally there was no more than ten inches or so of water at the bottom of the hull, I made a careful examination of the whole interior, inch by inch, in search of the leak.

There was no leak that I could see, but I did notice one important thing. The tree trunk had somehow smashed into the stern and hit the propeller. The propeller shaft is enclosed in an aluminum casing that is equipped with a “stuffing box,” a carbon disk that, through a valve mechanism, prevents water from leaking into the hull around the propeller shaft. It turned out that the motor that was driving the pump was actually spilling water into the boat after the tree trunk split the casing of the propeller shaft.

There was no way that I could repair it, but I did see a way to reduce the flooding considerably. I sliced the inner tube that I always carry with me aboard a boat into strips and stretched these strips of rubber to create a sort of supertight bandage around the aluminum casing. At the same time, I kept on bailing to bring down the water level a little farther, in an attempt to make the work a bit easier. I was crouching in the dark, bent over double, working with my hands plunged into the icy water that kept flooding into the boat. My fingers, barely recovered from the frostbite, partially amputated and practically numb, were making the job especially challenging.

The whole time I was working like this, the icebergs—more and more of them as I neared the coast—were sliding past me in an endless procession. If I hit one of them, the boat would sink for sure. On the other hand, if I did nothing to stop the water from pouring into my boat, the end result would be no different. I knew that if I could only stop the leak before I hit something, there was at least a fifty-fifty chance of making it to dry land. In any case, sitting there at the helm of a sinking ship, with no idea where the water was pouring in from and without doing anything to try to stop it, was more than I could stand.

So I kept stretching my strips of inner tube, which I forced into place with pliers and wire. When I was done, the water pressure from outside was still too great for there to be a perfect seal, but it was pretty close. Now, the hand pump and electric pump combined ought to be sufficient. I went back to my place at the rudder, content and relieved. I'd made my bet and I had won. I had made it through the icebergs and the growlers; my boat was sailing serenely over the gray swells. I had saved the boat and my expedition, too.

Next, I called Jean-Philippe to alert him that I was going to need a new aluminium casing for my propeller shaft. Was there, by any chance, anywhere around Scoresby Sound a boat repair shop or even a garage—anyplace at all where I might be able to leave my boat for repairs while I trekked across the country?

“Absolutely nothing,” came the answer, two hours later. “Moreover, there isn't even an airport, however small. There is no way to meet up with you there. You are going to have to sail directly to Angmagssalik.”

This tiny port village, with a population of three hundred, was located just below the Arctic Circle. It was no better equipped, but at least it had an airfield so that my team could meet up with me, bringing the necessary spare parts.

I set my course southward, sailing along the coast.

Not everybody has friends in Angmagssalik, but I do. My friend Robert Peroni lives there. I had asked him to procure the permits necessary for crossing Greenland. Unfortunately, Robert had informed me by radio a few days ago that things were becoming more complicated than he expected and that I was going to have to wait there for a month before I could hope to have the necessary permit. I was furious, but I wasn't about to turn back a second time. I decided to go on.

With the background noise of the constant chugging of the engine running constantly to operate the electric pump, I discovered the savage beauty of the immense cliffs of Greenland, those gloomy walls of rock topped with snow. My readings of Nansen's memoirs resurfaced in my mind, stimulating my imagination, and I felt as if I could see the great explorer paddling across these same roaring waters, he and his men dreaming that they would be the first to cross this wild land.