Owner's Story: A Northern Odyssey

A Northern Odyssey

Away to the North once again single-handing Contest 50CS Steppingstone, Harald Hart took even himself by surprise on a trip to the Faroes and back by stretching the voyage to a rounding of Iceland in what became a solo six-month adventure.

In conversation, Harald is a modest, mild- mannered man and to hear him outlining his 2022 cruise is the perfect expression of that. “It was mid-May that I left Medemblik for Den Oever and then to Texel.” Sounds quite normal to this point, doesn’t it? “But I didn’t stop, I went straight on to the Orkneys.”

Think on this. Harald, turned-70, single-handing just a typically specified 15-metre Steppingstone right up through the North Sea and beyond into the high Atlantic, alone.

In Harald’s tone there is no exclamation, nothing that suggests this might perhaps be a little unusual. “I had wanted to go straight to the Faroe area but there was a storm coming up between the Faroes and Orkneys, so instead I sailed into Kirkwall in the Orkneys, stayed a couple of days and after continued north to the Faroes.”

Blue hulled sailing yacht tied up to an isolated dock

Double Distance

Then the unanticipated jump to Iceland. “It was quite impulsive because when I left Medemblik my plan was to sail only to the Faroes which have always fascinated me, with these people living out in the North Atlantic.

I wanted to know: what are you doing there, how are you living? So, I was interested in that, to have a look. It hadn’t been my plan to sail all the way to Iceland, or then onto Norway either. It all just came on my path.”

Arriving in Iceland’s capital Reykjavik, Harald also hadn’t at first intended to round the vast land mass of Iceland itself, either. But things change! “I just didn’t want to go back the same way,” he calmly explains in a hint as to the evolution of his extended, eventual October return to his home port of Medemblik having taken in, after Iceland, Lerwick in the Shetland Isles, Stavanger, Bergen and Namsos of Norway! Six months and many thousand miles with, for just a few midsummer weeks in Norway, the company of his long-time, co-boat-owning and very understanding wife for a period of gentle, more relaxed coastal cruising around Bergen.

“You can only have this freedom and this kind of remote support if you have the right home situation,” Harald says. And as might be said in Icelandic: algjörlega … absolutely!

Landscape scene of a rocky outcrop looking over a calm deserted stretch of water

Home From Home

Home for Harald and Marion is first in the Netherlands, with a second in Norway, so this passing between nations is well practised, and regular readers of Context magazine might recall how on a previous return trip from Bergen to Medemblik, Harald, again single-handing, turned right instead of left for a west-about circumnavigation of the UK mainland before docking back in the Netherlands. Never the simpleast route for Harald! “I like the thinking that good navigation requires,” he says, “and sailing alone I never feel lonely.”

A 50-footer can be thought a fair-sized vessel to handle alone on long, challenging passages but, of course, modern systems, electric winches and furlers for a start have much eased short-handing, and aids from multi-function chartplotter, radar and AIS to smart autopilots equally simplify pilotage. But safe watchkeeping too holds top priority in personal protection.

To that end, Harald’s career in medicine with decades of sleep-depriving duties has trained him well for solo sailing. “I can sleep on the spot, any moment!” he laughs. “You check the chart, horizon, your AIS, radar, then set the phone alarm, and I’ll be asleep in two minutes! In the beginning, I slept just ten minutes, maybe 15, and when more remote longer, perhaps an hour or so.”

Sleep for Harald, though, is in the saloon, not in Steppingtone’s sumptuous master suite aft. “I’m more comfortable quickly getting up those steps to the cockpit to check things, and particularly if sensing a change in sailing.” It helps psychologically as well as with practicalities, he says.

Two sailing yachts tied up to a quayside in front of multi-coloured housing

Tradition Rules

The way north was sailed in mostly fair conditions, and as Harald entered the Orkneys’ Kirkwall harbour aboard his Norwegian-flagged Steppingstone, he was keenly eyed by four other visiting Norwegian yachts. When conversation opened, he found himself quickly enlisted into a grand annual procession and party celebrating the Orkneys’ historic relationship with Norway which once ruled these islands. After the whisky slowed, Dutchman Harald, first described by his new friends, which included Kirkwall’s dignitaries, as half Norseman was now proclaimed total Norseman and released to sail on to the Faroes, three days away!

Harald’s arrival in Tórshavn excited the otherwise quiet quayside following his near midnight call asking if a place might be available. Despite the hour, in immediate attendance came two policemen, a US sailor and another helping hand all inquisitive about Harald, admiring his yacht and arranging to visit for a tour and whisky (again!) when off-duty the next day.

From the harbour Harald was off on his folding Brompton cycle exploring the small city, its architecture, mostly now concrete but with scattered remaining ancient grass-roofed wooden homes, the island’s famed ruined Magnus cathedral, and hiking, stopping to talk and learn of this place.

“It felt a privilege to be here,” says Harald. “People spoke of being isolated but happiness with that, feeling safe and pleased not to be involved in all the problems we have in Europe. There’s little eagerness to leave for the mainland. Young people do travel out, and maybe study, but they come back.”

Roundabout Thinking

Harald had intended sailing around the Faroes more than his eventual few days permitted, but when the idea of Iceland dawned he realised he needed to crack on. His thinking was directed by a big international medical congress in Norway he was set to host in the summer.

“How much time do I have, I thought. I wasn’t first sure how much Iceland and back would add, and I needed to think of my wife Marion and family.” On board, Harald had the necessary pilots, charts and, of course, internet resources. A few calls later and given blessings as unstoppable, on Harald went, arriving in the busy commercial port of Reykjavik four days later.

And then came the next ‘revelation’. “Ok, I thought, now I am here let’s sail around Iceland because I never like to sail the same way back. That’s just how it was, but none of the sailors I spoke to there said they’d want to do that.”

Why so? It’s a truly harsh and hardly inhabited rugged coast with few pausing points clockwise beyond the west of Iceland.

Large sailing yacht tied up to a dock with a grey warship in the back ground

Mammals and Man

 And so began new experiences. Leaving Reykjavik in the wake of two whale-watching tourist boats which turned back with no sightings, Harald soon after saw in the distance unusual, prolonged waving back and forth of a big whale’s tail. Closing distance with this, he spotted four porpoises in perpetual attack on the whale, crashing into the larger mammal’s ribs, forcing restricted breathing and continual re-surfacing until eventually, slowed and weakened the battered, exhausted whale lost its life.

“I later talked to a fisherman on the west coast telling him what I saw. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It happens. That is how it is. You were lucky to see it.’ But it was a sad drama.”

Whales assumed increasing significance as the voyage continued. Halting in a beautiful bay in fabulous weather on the remote north-west coast, Harald lay at lonesome anchor among the many thousands of seabirds saturating the skies and seas, surrounded by mountains lined with snow and ice sided by silvered waterfalls. All was right with the world. But the next morning he woke feeling unwell. Sick and with aching muscles, he realised that with this anchorage so open to the sea this was no place to rest.

The closest potentially safe spot to stop was a tough 13-hour passage away with Harald laid flat and unfed for most of those miles and arriving in the chosen new tiny bay to an unusual reception. “I had worked the charts in advance well but when about 200 metres from the spot I wanted, suddenly I saw some rumbling in the water and thought ‘oh, oh, rocks’, and fast engaged reverse. Then looking up, there, just 20 metres in front, oh my god, was a very big orca rising high up out of the water, then down, gone, not seen again! That was very special!”

Worsening Condition

It was, though, a close encounter and just a little intimidating, making Harald extra cautious with his subsequent anchoring close by the bay’s picturesque little lighthouse.

But sickening more, Harald slept all night and awoke worse, self-diagnosing Covid contracted most likely from a rare café visit in a previous harbour. This was not a safe place for best welfare and he knew to move but for now couldn’t and lost the day to oblivion, quite unaware of five inquisitive fishing boats circling him while he slumbered below. This irregular behaviour, though, was spotted by Harald’s wife, Marion, monitoring on AIS from home in the Netherlands. She called, roused Harald, and they discussed what had to be done.

Harald needed to find a pharmacy and better berth fast, despite a bad forecast ahead, and that made for another gruelling 13-hour sail, exhausted and unsure, to the next safe harbour.

Blue sailing yacht tied up to a pontoon in quiet harbour at dusk

“I have to admit this was all a little tricky,” says Harald, “and after staying a few days and then feeling well enough, I just wanted to go home. No more exploring. No more stops. I was still in the middle of Iceland’s north coast, and decided to sail straight, non-stop to Shetland.”

That led to a horribly demanding 6-day passage with persistent fog, no sun but for all of one hour, and into punishing 30-knot headwinds most of the way. “In such conditions, you can see nothing, you have only to trust your instruments, radar, and AIS. It is exhausting.”

Clear Judgement

Approaching Muckle Flugga at the tip of Shetland, Harald told himself, “Ok, now I am tired, really tired, and if I try to anchor and it doesn’t hold, do I have the strength to lift and drop again? And with a lee shore, there’s no time. This is a dangerous situation.”

And with this, Harald’s decisive ‘no’ meant yet another eight hours beating into storm winds before finally entering Lerwick harbour and coming alongside with Harald exhausted and talking a reportedly unintelligible blend of Norwegian, Dutch and English to a quizzical helper sent to take his lines.

Just a couple of days later, a refreshed, healthier Harald headed for Norway four days away, arriving in Stavanger just the one night before that important congress, bemusing friends and colleagues by the extreme means of his getting there. A close shave, indeed!

Congress over, the mentioned cruising with Marion followed, and then a month working in a hospital in Namsos, a tucked away coastal town not far from the Arctic circle that Harald had come to know so well, and where he stayed living aboard Steppingstone rather than take accommodation ashore, again to the bemusement of colleagues! Then in October the final push back to Medemblik, single- handing again through horrid, storm-strength headwinds.

By this stage, home comforts beckoned, yes, but what a time had been had, and themvoyaging was far from over. “From Medemblik to Medemblik my radar was always on,” says Harald, and true to say it was soon back on again. But that’s another story!

Sailing yacht at sunset on a very calm sea

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