IT'S NOT FOR EVERYONE
I’ve been fortunate in my choice of shipmates. It’s not always easy to find crew, both male and female, who combine a taste for adventure with self-reliance and compatibility. But, so far none have jumped ship and most have come back with stories to tell about wild and wonderful places, the challenges and the cold. Even so, there have been times when we all sat and stared openmouthed at a glacier collapsing or tried to block out the awful graunching of pack-ice when the boat was beset, waiting for a lead to open. Lying to anchor with a soughing wind that just keeps on rising until the rigging begins to wail is unsettling enough in familiar waters but it is different in the loneliness of an Arctic fjord where high and hostile mountains frame the horizon emphasising your utter insignificance in the vast emptiness of uncharted waters and massive wilderness. It is stunningly beautiful but just as the cold, the fear and the sense of remoteness are part of the thrill, they can also test resolve. How can you explain this to someone ‘signing on’? Perhaps you can’t; in my experience, it’s the daily run of 100 miles northward that helps to make the adjustment from the familiar to the frightening so by the time boat and crew have reached the high latitudes most people have become conditioned. A pal who has shared many Arctic adventures with me, Eric Degerland, is a keen photographer. After a trip, especially in the dead of winter, beside a crackling log fire, he digs out some of those images and just sits there dreaming of the next time. One of my own pictures hangs in the hall at home and when people come to call and ask about the Arctic I just point at it and say, ‘That’s what it’s all about!’