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Midnight Summer 2000 (A 21-part series) Part 19

By Dave and Jaja Martin

Staying the night at the dock in Barentsberg was not a viable option because the fjord on which the town sat was wide open and exposed. Anyway, we wanted to get further southward, down the coast toward Bellsund, where we knew we would find genuine Svalbard solitude - not to mention good protection from the gale force, southerly quadrant winds that were predicted to hit the area in the coming days.

At three p.m. we motored out of the calm fjord, onto the main arm of Isfjord and headed for the open sea on Svalbard's west coast. The sky had been hazing over all afternoon, a sure indication of rain, and the barometer was doing its customary plunge. We motor-sailed on a lumpy sea for thirty-four miles reaching Lagneset Point near the mouth of Bellsund Fjord at nine p.m. Along the way we tidied the cabin and fed the kids, promising them that we would be anchored by eleven-thirty. We had twelve miles to go to reach Fridtjovhamna Bay.

To the north, behind us, the sky was still hazy blue. But to the south the sky had become black as coal dust. Ominous. As we rounded the point, the scant wind increased ever so slightly, dead on the nose, but that was to be expected: the fjords in Svalbard were magic wind tunnels that only seemed able to produce wind from the wrong direction.

Without warning, the black sky, which had been giving me an ulcer for several hours, pounced on us, unfairly bringing with it twenty-five knot winds. I tied a reef in our eight ounce working jib, double reefed our main, then went below to study the chart while Jaja steered us to windward. The immediate shoreline was strewn with hidden rocks, up to a mile offshore, so I determined that we could take the inshore tack as far in as the sixty foot curve before we had to tack out again. I looked around the cabin. The kids were having a ball, jumping across the inverted settees, listening to our "Doobie Brothers' Greatest Hits" CD full volume on the stereo. Rock and Roll.

The wind soon increased to thirty knots. The low swell that was coming up from the south was colliding with the increasing chop, creating a wildly confused sea state. Luckily, Akseloya Island sat in the middle of the fjord keeping the fetch down to under ten miles. We tacked in toward shore, tacked out, tacked in, but our progress to windward remained scant. Driver pitched uncontrollably (the fate of a small steel boat) but the real culprit to our progress was the two knot, wind driven current surging out of the fjord. At eleven p.m., when we should have been nearing the anchorage, we still had eight miles to go.

The first wave of rain washed the salt spray from our faces. Off Cape Martin we ran headlong into a brutal tide rip causing Driver to stand still as her bow plunged under the seas. Heavy water streamed back to the cockpit, our speed sank to two knots, and the GPS indicated our Velocity Made Good in negative proportions. We had reached a stalemate, getting thrashed like a stone on a beach.

I went back into the cabin to reexamine the chart for options. The kids, I noticed, had played themselves out and they were laying behind the settee leecloths with marble-like faces: A bad sign to be sure. I studied the chart, willing it to provide easy answers. I had concluded before going below there was no way we were going to make it to the anchorage at Fridtjovhamna. We had already spent two hours going four miles and as we neared the anchorage we would have to pass between Akseloya and the mainland, a narrow, quarter mile wide cut where the current whizzed at four knots even on calm days. I checked the tide tables, and determined that by the time we got there (assuming we could) the current would be against us. Add to it the wind driven influences and the flow could be up to six or seven knots. Forget it.

(To find out what happened, check back next week.)