Ben Edwards, crewmember for all 4 legs. Written between Tromso and Murmansk 10 July
At about nine we left the Tromso and went to the fuel pontoon. As it turned out, John had the card that would allow us to get fuel. John isn’t with us now because we were expecting a group of parts to turn up so that we could fix the generator. They weren’t there. As a result it was decided that one person would stay behind and collect the parts before then catching a flight to Vardo, which is where Hazel is getting off. John volunteered so he left the boat before we went to the pontoon. Just as we were leaving the fuel pontoon the steering jammed. We could turn to port but the rudder and wheel refused to turn to starboard. Because of this we had to return to the Tromso harbour. We got in, unpacked the aft locker and Nikolai went down to see what was wrong. What he found was a large piece of unidentified metal lodged in the drive shaft. Yeah, that would do it. So we repacked the locker and went back to the fuel pontoon. This time we took John so we could get some fuel. So, a little later, fuel was onboard, John had left and we were sailing up the fjords again.We left in the middle of my first watch and the most interesting thing that happened was that we passed what appeared to be a beached accommodation platform. During my downtime I began to feel sick. Twenty odd minutes before my watch I came and threw up my dinner. Macaroni cheese and strawberry yoghurt all mixed together. It was exactly as bad as it sounds. That night the weather was appalling. Rain, wind, roughish sea, the whole lot. I threw up again and so did Hazel when she came to relieve me. Because of the weather Dave and I developed a system of each person does 15 minutes on their own before going down below to keep warm and being replaced. When Annie came up she didn’t want to go down again, so I spent a lot of time keeping warm. This mornings watch was much the same, the important difference being that we passed Nordkapp and the knife shell peninsula. Nordkapp is the tourist’s most northerly point in mainland Europe. I’ve been there on land and it is very dramatic. A massive cliff looking out onto the arctic ocean. Rather sadly the actual most Northerly point in mainland Europe is about five miles down the coast. While beautiful, it isn’t as dramatic or photogenic as Nordkapp so the tourist board never really focused on it. Three years ago I walked from the Nordkapp tourist centre car park along to the Knife Shell Peninsula. Translated into Norwegian it reads Knivshelloden. In some ways Norwegian and English are very similar. During my next watch I plan to finally cable tie the scarf bear to the front of the boat. We should reach Vardo some time tomorrow when I’ll write again, bye.