Passage Preparations
Aluk Tunordleq, East Coast of Greenland

by Kate and Hamish Laird

• Planned route this summer: Maine, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Greenland, Scotland
• On board: Kate and Hamish Laird, their children, Helen (4) and Anna (3), Jason Fitschen, and up to three guests on each leg of the voyage.

After two months in Greenland, we are starting to prepare for the voyage across to Scotland. It is going to be a shock: we have been motoring around in almost no wind - except for when we're surfing under bare poles with 60-knot winds. That has been our experience with winds in Greenland - all or nothing!

We're sitting snug in an anchorage with three lines ashore, while the beginnings of a gale whistle overhead. We can see the clouds whipping past, but the wind instruments read 8 knots.

First on the job list is preparing Seal for a knockdown:

• Floorboards and bunk locker-lids screwed down.
• Heavy items lashed down in the ski locker, our all-purpose storage shed along the starboard quarter.
• Galley items secured – spice bottles stowed, breakables wrapped in towels and stowed.
• Galley restocked, especially with nightwatch food - instant potatoes, instant porridge, instant coffee.
• Dorades removed and aluminum covers fitted.
• Storm windows on. (These are 1/2" Lexan covers for each of the 10 saloon windows. We decided to use Lexan rather than the cheaper aluminum, figuring we were more likely to use them if they were clear.)
• Boat vacuumed to keep grit and Legos out of the bilge pumps.
• Lash down the spare oil and tool bags in the engine room.

Next on the list is preparing the crew:

• Organizing the game of musical beds – sharing a bunk with someone at sea is no fun, so we split up the double bunks and move the children back to the aft cabin double bunk.
• Dividing up the watch schedule. We will use a rolling watch, where A is on watch with B, and after two hours, A goes to bed, and B is on watch with C, then B to bed, and C goes on with D, etc. This means that there is always someone up who has been awake and alert for two hours, rather than having a full watch change where everyone is tired and groggy at the same time.

Next, check the boat over, especially looking for chafe:

• Someone comes slowly down the rig, checking each pin and fitting and halyards.
• Replace any of the webbing strops (which hold the blocks to the rail) that show any signs of chafe.
• Lifelines are checked.

Clearing the decks:

• The dinghy will be completely broken down, deflated, bagged, and put away in the forepeak.
• The outboards are also stored in the forepeak and clamped to a structural aluminum bar that we built into the boat for this purpose.
• The anchor chain is taken off the anchor and dropped into the chain locker, with a string holding the end above the stack. (The string is attached to the hawsepipe plug.)
• The hawsepipe is plugged with a plastic plug and hose-clamped to the pipe (we put in a remote hawsepipe, rather than one close-coupled to the windlass, to make this easier).
• The CQR is lashed to the bits and the bow roller (we used to put it below, but the bow roller is the best fit for lashing it securely, and it makes it easier to reattach the anchor at the end of the passage, particularly if we are still in a heavy sea before entering a difficult approach).
• The Luke anchor, which we have stored on deck while in Greenland, will be lashed into the lazarette.
• Our four spools of polypropylene line (600 feet each) do stay on deck – they are amidships, and difficult to store below. In addition, it means that should we need to tow warps, we already have 2400 feet on deck ready to run. To secure them, we lash the spools so they can't turn, and put on the Sunbrella covers tightly so the spools can't unravel.

At the moment, we are in an anchorage with three lines ashore, which means using the dinghy to extract ourselves. Closer to departure, we will try to move to an anchorage where we can swing on the anchor. That will make leaving much easier, because we can break down the dinghy at our leisure, rather than needing it for last-minute shorelines.

Safety Gear:

• The Grab Bag is prepared at the beginning of the season and is untouched.
• The Dinghy Emergency Bag - with a handheld VHF, flares, and a small survival pack - is stored next to the main flares box, all within easy reach of the main companionway.
• We have a three-gallon jerry can of water and the "first round" first aid kit stored in the same area.
• The Man Overboard gear is checked, particularly the strobe light.
• Batteries are checked in all flashlights.
• Connections are checked in the 24-volt plug-in search light. (We have two search lights – a rechargeable one for ease of use, and a plug-in one that can plug in at the cockpit or in the forepeak for long-term spotting such as Search and Rescue, or just for spotting bergy bits, or lobster pot buoys on the coast of Maine.)

Navigation:

• We pull the charts for the passage, including possible detours, and all the pilots and cruising guides for the destination.
• We read the pilot charts and the Great Circle Charts, and plot waypoints for the whole route, including the approaches and any possible detours (for example, although we have no plans to go to Iceland on this passage, we will plot Iceland and Shetlands approaches, just in case.)
• We also mark the waypoints on the paper charts.

Weather:

We are planning to leave in about a week, but already we have stepped up our weather gathering. I have picked up a GRIB subscription to cover us all the way to 000 W, and now when I do the daily emailing, I pick up both the 48- and the 96-hour US North Atlantic charts. The British charts are coming in faintly on the weatherfax, and we can pick them up with the Iridium if we miss a critical one. The British ones go farther north and cover Iceland, but the US ones go farther south and include hurricane tracks, which is of key importance on this crossing. We make up a list of weather faxes we hope to receive each day with the times, so that whoever is on watch remembers to baby-sit the weather fax. (Our unit is supposed to start and stop automatically, but we find that when the signal is faint, we can do far better manually). Preprogramming the fax works as well, but few weatherfax providers stick precisely to their schedule, so it is easy to miss a fax if you rely on preprogramming. For some reason, I find using the Iridium and the computer more nauseating than the weatherfax (which we read on the Furuno radar screen), so I try to get as much weather as possible off the weatherfax.

Food:

We precook a bit, making bread, biscuits or brownies, and sometimes a pasta meal for the first night. Some people precook several days' worth of food, but we don't have refrigeration to keep it, and I don't have the ambition to do too much of it.

Personal Equipment:

• Sleeping bags and thermals come out.
• I like to have a full set of dry gear ready to go, and all the layers organized so I can get dressed easily on those first few sickish days.
• Seasickness pills: If we're expecting a rough start, we take a pill the night before departure to saturate ourselves with seasickness prevention before the passage. This really improves the medicine's effectiveness.
• We assign harnesses, so each person has a harness that fits snugly.

Last Minute:

The last thing we do before going offshore is to pin the keel and the rudder. This is done once we are well clear of coastal hazards, because we are then a fixed keel and fixed rudder boat. The keel pin goes in first, so that it can protect the rudder. (We pin the keel quite often, but we only pin the rudder when we are expecting heavy weather.) The keel pin arrangement is quite simple - big acme-thread bolts tighten down a ladder and put the keel under compression. The rudder pin is trickier - we need to have the rudder amidships to reach the pin hole, and we need to thoroughly grease the pin so we can remove it at the end of the passage. The pin will only come into play if the vectran line (which we use to hold down the rudder under normal conditions) breaks. If that happens, it could be quite hard to remove the pin at the other end - but better that than the alternative of having the rudder suddenly flip up while offshore.

You can learn more about the Lairds and SEAL at their website www.expeditionsail.com (including a newly uploaded slideshow of their first two months in Greenland).