Steve Edwards, crew NW passage, leg 1 and Greenland. N61d 37. W049d 47 27th Sept
It is 00:30 and I am awake. A few weeks of 24 hour passages has changed my sleep patterns so that I wake up after a few hours sleep but need to sleep during the day to catch up. At least this is useful tonight as we are on our first overnight sail of this part of the journey and I am on watch at 02:00 for 2 hours taking over from Mike, so, what to do?
Kettle on to make hot water for a Ribena and to fill the two thermos flasks so we can all have hot water for quick drinks later. Something to eat before watch starts and a blog. There is always a need to do a blog and I am very bad at meeting this need when others have been so diligent, but for tonight here goes…
We are now on the final part of the journey, from Nuuk in Greenland to Bristol and after the excitement and stress of North West Passage and a wonderful week coming down Greenland from Upernavik to Nuuk I was expecting this to be a bit less fun than the previous few weeks. I was quite wrong. Mike, the new skipper, has very sensibly decided to take it easy for the first few days as the new crew get to know each other and the boat so we have stopped overnight in some remarkably beautiful places and had time to go ashore to take pictures and get the feel of some even more remote communities than Upernavik, communities which are accessible only by boat or helicopter. The new crew are a great bunch and it is a real pleasure to sail with them and the weather, which had been determined to give us one last beating on the way across Baffin Bay, has been really very kind to us since we left Nuuk. Today in particular has been clear with blue sky and a gradually increasing wind from behind the boat.
The boat is, to my great relief, working pretty well. We cleared out the lazarette in Nuuk and checked the auto-helm repair and that is fine, replaced a blocked gas regulator and cut away a chunk of blue fishing net that had got caught around the propellor. We are also now out of the area of magnetic anomalies so all the compasses, electronic and otherwise, are useful again. The only significant problem still to investigate is that the batteries, which we increased before the expedition to 400AH for the domestic plus another 100AH for the engine and another 100AH in the forepeak to support the windlass, seems to be discharging a bit more quickly than I would expect so we are being careful not to use too much power when the engine is not running.
Having lots of high power 240v equipment such as a breadmaker, toaster and microwave doesn’t help with this and we have a basic drain of about 10 amps on 12v equipment such as the chart plotter (to check we are not drifting at anchor), internal and external lights and USB chargers for iPads etc. Even taking all this into account it is hard to explain how fast the batteries discharge. Out with the multimeter later today…
And, I am now thinking about leaving the boat to return to the real world. We should reach Qaqortoq in the next 36 hours, much sooner if we push on, and that is the end of my journey on Northabout. What to pack, what to leave, how much can I carry, what photography and video tasks to ask Benji to pick up and lots more practical issues are going round in my head. And in the background is the knowledge that, for all its hardships, the sleeplessness, seasickness, noise and cold, there have been many pleasures on Northabout and I will miss it.