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 perfect expression of that. “It was mid-May I left Medemblik for Den Ouever and then to Texel.” Sounds quite normal to this point, doesn’t it? “But I didn’t stop there, it was straight on to the Orkneys.” Think on this. Harald, turned-70, single-handing a typically specified 15-metre Steppingstone right up through the North Sea into the high Atlantic, alone. In Harald’s tone there is nothing that suggests this might be a little unusual. “I had wanted to go straight to the Faroe area but there was a storm coming so I put into Kirkwall in the Orkneys, stayed a couple of days, then continued north to the Faroes.”
DOUBLE DISTANCE And then came the jump to Iceland. “It was quite impulsive. When I left Medemblik my plan was just to sail to the Faroes. Those islands always fascinated me: these people living out in the north Atlantic. I wanted to know "what are you doing there, how are you living there?" So, I was interested in having a good look. I hadn’t though planned to sail all the way to Iceland, nor to Norway. They just came on my path.” A path many thousand miles and six months long! Of the motivation, Harald says, “I like the thinking that good navigation requires, and sailing alone I never feel lonely.” Modern systems – electric winches and furlers, for a start – have, of course, much eased short-handing, and aids from multi-function chartplotter, radar and AIS to smart autopilots equally simplify pilotage. But safe watchkeeping is still fundamental to personal safety, and Harald’s career in medicine, with its decades of sleep-depriving duties, serves him well for solo sailing.
“I can sleep on the spot, any moment!” he laughs. “You check the chart, horizon, your AIS, radar. Set the phone alarm. I’m asleep in two minutes! In the beginning I slept just ten minutes, maybe 15, then when remote, longer, perhaps an hour or so.”
TRADITION RULES As Harald’s Norwegian-flagged Steppingstone entered the Orkneys’ Kirkwall harbour, he was keenly eyed by four other visiting Norwegian yachts and quickly enlisted into a grand annual celebration of the Orkneys’ historic relationship with Norway which once ruled these islands. After the whisky and partying 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! Arrival there in Tórshavn again excited an otherwise quiet quayside after Harald’s near midnight call asking if a place might be available. 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 next day.
“It felt a privilege to be here,” says Harald. “People speak of being isolated, but a 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 cruising the Faroes for a while but when the idea of Iceland dawned he needed to crack on; he was set to host an international medical congress in Norway in late summer! He had the necessary pilots, charts and, of course, internet resources and, with Marion’s blessing a few phone calls later, on Harald went, arriving four days later in the busy commercial port of Reykjavik. Then came the next revelation! “Ok, I thought, now I am here, and as I never like to sail the same way back, let’s sail around Iceland! And that's just how it was, but none of the sailors I spoke to there said they’d not choose to do that, it's too wild.”
Clockwise round from Reykjavik it’s a truly harsh and hardly inhabited rugged coast with few pausing points. And so began the almost, well, mythical.
MAMMALS AND MAN After leaving Reykjavik, Harald saw in the distance an unusually prolonged waving back and forth of a big whale tail. Closing, he spotted four porpoises in persistent, ferocious attack on the whale, and after watching a long while, eventually the battered, exhausted whale lost not just the fight but its life. “A fisherman told me this happens: it’s rare, and I was lucky to see this. But it was a drama.” Further on in a beautiful bay on the remote north-west, Harald lay alone at anchor among the many thousand seabirds saturating the skies and seas, and surrounded by mountains lined with snow and sided by silvered waterfalls. All was right with the world. But the next morning he woke unwell. Sick and with body aching, he realised this open anchorage was not a good place to rest.
The closest potentially safe bay was a tough 13 hours away, with Harald for most of this time laid-out flat and unfed, and arriving in the chosen new tiny bay to an unusual reception. “In advance, I had worked the charts well and when about 200 metres from the spot I wanted, suddenly I saw some rumbling in the water. I slammed into reverse, and 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 so special!”
WORSENING CONDITION Such a close encounter made Harald extra cautious in his subsequent anchoring close by the bay’s picturesque tiny lighthouse. But Harald sickened more through the night and woke diagnosing Covid, contracted most likely from a rare café visit in a previous harbour. He knew to move on to get medications but for now couldn’t and lost the day to oblivion, unaware even of five inquisitive fishing boats circling him while he slumbered below.
Harald knew to move on to get medications but for now couldn’t and lost the day to oblivion, unaware even 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 and she called Harald by phone. Despite a bad forecast ahead, Harald needed to find a pharmacy and better berth, and fast, and that made for another gruelling 13-hour sail, exhausted and unsure, to the next safe harbour. “I have to admit this was all a little tricky,” says Harald, “and after a few days and then feeling well enough, I just wanted to go home. No more exploring. I was still in the middle of Iceland’s north coast and decided I’d sail straight to Shetland.” That led to a horribly demanding six-day passage, with persistent fog, no sun but for all of one hour, and into punishing 30-knot headwinds most of the way.
CLEAR JUDGEMENT Approaching Muckle Flugga, Shetland’s northern tip, and thinking to find an anchorage, Harald realised he was too tired and weak to manage resetting the anchor if it didn’t hold, especially with the lee shore.
A dangerous situation leading to eight more hours beating into storm winds before rounding into Lerwick harbour and coming alongside with Harald exhausted, 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 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 getting there. A close shave, indeed! With congress over, then several weeks’ cruising with Marion, plus a stint on duty in Namsos hospital, it was finally back to Medemblik, Harald already thinking of the next voyage. The full Steppingstone story will be featured in the 2024 printed edition of Context magazine.
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