Conquering the Impossible (47 page)

I got an idea for an alternative route from an old bus driver. Every day this bus driver drove through town in his swaying, wobbling bus. He had to hand-crank the engine to get it started, and it had no doors or windows. The only form of amusement available to the townfolk was to pack into the bus and travel absolutely nowhere. In the rear of the bus, children would jump happily up and down on wooden benches that barely even suggested the form of proper bus seats.

The driver, during a conversation, suggested that I take a small road that, seven and a half miles from town, runs into Lake Totento, the town's reservoir. Running out of the southern end of the lake was a river that would take me to the sea and allow me to bypass the cape where the wind and waves were especially dangerous. According to him, it would take me three days.

The idea struck me as a good one, and I was so anxious to get moving that I didn't hesitate at all. I said my good-byes, once again.

But once I reached the lake, the cold, the snow, and a wind blowing nearly forty miles an hour kept me from going an inch farther. I resigned myself to the situation. The three men who worked at the pumping station offered me a place to stay, and I spent forty-eight hours fishing and contemplating nature.

Once the weather cleared up, I started paddling across Lake Totento, heading for shore. The landscape was all rocks and greenery, magnificent in the bright light. But a straying polar bear reminded me once again of the climate change that was blighting our planet. Global warming had cut this animal off from the ice field, its natural habitat, and had condemned it to try to eke out its survival in the midst of the tundra.

The river that drained the lake was dotted with rapids, and my sea kayak wasn't built to take river rapids. I was frequently forced to portage. Each time I was forced to do so, the process was hellish. I had to strap the kayak to my back with a system of straps and then haul it over the slippery, marshy tundra like a snail transporting its shell and making about the same speed: one mile an hour on average. It was enough to drive anybody insane. On this expedition portaging had only been a last choice, used only when I couldn't avoid it.

At least I no longer had to deal with ocean waves, and I never ran short on freshwater. And when I found myself at the bottom of a steep canyon, heading into churning whitewater, my trip began to take on the feel of a rafting trip on the Colorado River.

Despite the portaging, the three days that I took to reach the sea from Amderma had the feel of a holiday. I was crossing the imaginary line that separates Asia from Europe. As soon as I was in the Barents Sea, I could feel the added warmth of the Gulf Stream waters in my hands, just as I could sense a slightly warmer wind on my face.

At Cape Bolvanskiy Nos, or “White Nose,” named after the color of the cliffs, freighters turn into the channel that runs between the mainland and Vaigach Island. I camped across from the strait and sat down to decide which way to turn next.

I also explored the nearby ruins of a former gulag. The tiny spyholes in the doors and the cells with grates in the ceiling spoke eloquently of the suffering that this place had witnessed and inflicted. It made me stop and think. My suffering meant so much less to me because I had been free to choose it.

*   *   *

Before me lay another choice of routes. This time I had to decide between paddling all the way around the enormous bay that opened out before me, or else attempting the longest crossing I had ever done by kayak. My experience in Baidaratskaya Bay had shaken me deeply and undermined my confidence, but it had also taught me a great deal, and it had made me stretch my limits. By now I felt as if I were capable of managing extreme situations in a kayak. The challenge was tempting. This was a chance to restore my confidence, and it might prove to be the last great challenge of this expedition.

At first, caution won out, and I hugged the coast for a while, which took me eastward, making the crossing even longer. Then, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, I changed course, turning ninety degrees to starboard and heading out into open water. All of a sudden, it seemed like the right thing to do.

The winds out of the west-northwest blew at thirty miles per hour; the currents were eddying around the little islands on the other side of the bay, making my job more complicated. My kayak filled with water. Despite everything, though, I was never overwhelmed by the situation and the crossing was actually less difficult than at Baidaratskaya Bay. Sixteen hours after my change of course, I surfed to a clean landing on the far shore of the bay. I had won another bet and gained three days in the process.

*   *   *

When I tried to set out again toward Dolgy Island, daunting rollers made it impossible to get out to sea. I had to haul my kayak along the beach for seven and a half miles. The wind blew so hard that it covered the kayak in sand while I walked, and in the middle of the night I had to shift the location of my tent.

For two days running, the squall was so extreme that I couldn't even walk along the beach. Then conditions improved, and without wasting a second, I leaped into my kayak. Making distances of twenty-five to forty miles a day, I rushed toward Tobseda.

Farther along, the lashing winds and waves pinned me down for another two days. The temperature dropped back to fourteen degrees. The Gulf Stream had broken its promise.

Beyond an expanse of open sea protruded a cape, which stood between me and Chesskaya Bay, where Tobseda was located. I had a choice between making a direct crossing, doubling the cape and then heading down toward Tobseda or else hugging the coast, which would force me to portage again over the last few miles.

The twenty-four hours of good weather that the forecasts called for would be too short to attempt crossing the open seas. I would have to hug the coast, sail up the Pechora River, and portage about nineteen miles overland to Tobseda.

I reached the mouth of the Pechora River, where the huge industrial trawlers based at Murmansk and Naryan-Mar put out to sea. Naryan-Mar is a port located fifty miles upriver. Because dusk had fallen and I was paddling a waterway trafficked by enormous ships, I feared being crushed like a fly under an elephant's foot. I needed to find a place to stop for the night.

On the far bank of the Pechora River, I saw an isolated house. I headed for it, hoping that the inhabitants would take me in for the night. It turned out that the house was occupied by three forest rangers who worked on a nature reserve there. They welcomed me in and were able to instruct me how to navigate to Tobseda by following various waterways.

Their directions were correct, but the trek was tougher than I imagined. I spent the whole next day paddling from point to point, hauling my kayak over hills, swamps, and sandy tundra. It was a veritable decathlon and one of the worst days on land of the whole expedition. I made total progress of only five and a half miles in fifteen hours.

*   *   *

On my satellite phone I contacted Martin, who was on board my Corsair 28 trimaran. I had ordered a thirty-one-footer in the United States, but with delays in the container ships and various customs formalities, I decided to give up. I preferred to rely on the trimaran with which I had already gone around the world and crossed three oceans.

I asked Jean-Philippe and Martin to bring the boat to Kirkenes, Norway, on the Barents Sea near the Russian border. It would be an amusing little sail of 2,500 miles for them. Moreover, they would have to find an extra skipper who could pilot the boat from Kirkenes to Tobseda. When Cathy put out the call, Bernard Stamm was the only one to volunteer, maybe because sailing a twenty-eight-foot boat on the Barents Sea at this time of year wasn't really very tempting. Bernard, however, had successfully sailed around the world solo in a sixty-foot monohull, held the world record for crossing the Atlantic, and had taken part in the Vendée Globe round-the-world yacht race. He had plenty of experience and wasn't easily deterred. His response to Cathy's request was straightforward: he asked where he needed to be, and when.

“Tomorrow, in Kirkenes,” Cathy replied.

“No problem,” Bernard said.

Martin, Jean-Philippe, and Bernard were no more than a day's sail away from Tobseda. Raphaël Blanc and Sebastian Devenish would arrive simultaneously from the opposite direction by helicopter from Naryan-Mar.

The three sailors set out from Kirkenes and decided to dispense with the tiresome formalities of obtaining a Russian entry visa. It wouldn't be quite so simple for them to return; a helicopter would come to pick them up and take them to Naryan-Mar, where they would catch a plane for Moscow. But when the border guards realized that they had no legal entry visa, they were kindly expelled, and their tour was over as quickly as it started.

*   *   *

I was camped on the bay, five and a half miles outside of Tobseda, when my boat arrived, but unfavorable winds and sandbars kept us from hooking up. The next day I hauled my kayak over the tundra—once again—for four miles. Finally, I spotted from a high point the few abandoned houses of an old fishing village. This would be my last stop in Russia before embarking for the finish line. I completed this stage of my journey in my kayak, fighting my way through the waves to cross that last bay—to conquer that last challenge. For seven and a half miles I struggled against a wind that shoved me backward whenever I stopped paddling.

When I finally made it to the far shore, I still couldn't see my crew. I called Martin, and it turned out that he and others were many miles away on the same beach. I finally made out five tiny silhouettes slowly moving toward me.

Their presence meant that all the pieces of the puzzle were in place, that my boat was ready for me, that there was nothing that could stop me now. This time, the finish line was staring me right in the face.

It was a real delight to meet up with Jean-Philippe, Sebastian, and Raphaël, whom I hadn't seen since Norilsk; Martin, whom I had last seen a year and a half before; and Bernard, whom I hadn't seen for ten years. We fell into one another's arms, and we walked along the beach, unable to release our iron-tight grip on each other's shoulders. We talked, laughed, and poured forth our most gripping and hilarious stories. Martin hauled my kayak over the sand like a little boy pulling an inner tube. We reveled in the joy of being reunited.

That evening, in the abandoned weather station where they had set up camp, we enjoyed a small banquet of steaks, sausage, and fondue, carried all the way from Switzerland by Jean-Philippe, a gift from the restaurateur of the Six Communes. Not to mention various bottles of fine wine and a bottle of Val de Travers absinthe. There was plenty of food and drink to feast on for a number of days, which was just as well because my own food supplies were completely gone.

*   *   *

For forty-eight hours we worked to take as broad a range of photographs and video footage as possible for the book and movie about the expedition. I nursed my calf, which had been badly scalded a short distance outside of Amderma, when a fierce gust of wind had overturned a potful of boiling water onto it. (At least the cold had prevented any infection.)

The helicopter from Naryan-Mar, which we had chartered to bring Raphaël and Sebastian, came back to pick up the whole team. There were no sad good-byes. We would meet again soon.

*   *   *

When he got back home, Bernard Stamm stayed in touch with me and worked as a marine dispatcher to guide me toward the North Cape. Cathy, on her part, kept one eye on the weather and waited to inform me of the ideal window of opportunity. I couldn't expect a smooth ride, though. It was already September 18, and the low pressure systems spinning out of the North Atlantic would soon stir the Barents Sea and the White Sea up into a frenzy.

Jean-Philippe's departure was the most adventurous of the bunch. He took a domestic Russian flight from Naryan-Mar to Murmansk and intended to return again to Kirkenes to wait for me there. Unfortunately, when he landed, the police noticed that his papers were not in order, arrested him, and threw him into jail. When they questioned him, he admitted that he had arrived by boat, and that the boat was in Tobseda, where nobody could be reached to confirm the information.

Of course nobody could be reached … all that remained of Tobseda was a few old houses that the salty sea winds were progressively eroding. No one lived there anymore. There were no police, no border guards, no nothing. That was the very reason why I had chosen the place as a delivery point for my boat. Otherwise it would have been confiscated and declared contraband by the local authorities. At Tobseda, at least, no such danger.

This is the basic rule to follow with the Russian authorities: if you can keep them from knowing that you exist, they will sleep better and so will you. Otherwise you will just complicate their lives, and they will complicate yours a hundredfold.

*   *   *

It turned out that my assumptions about Tobseda were not exactly correct. There was no one left in town except for one person, Vasya.

He was an old man, exiled at the ends of the earth, penniless, without any resources or a goal in life. He merely awaited the end of his life like a sacrificial lamb of the former Soviet system. When the village had been evacuated after the fall of Communism or during perestroika—he couldn't really remember which—there hadn't been enough room for him in the last helicopter. So they left him behind.

He caught fish for sustenance, kept warm by burning driftwood that washed up on the beach, and treated his depression with vodka—although he drank less than he used to, he claimed. All this while waiting for his failing heart to stop beating once and for all.

His three dogs kept him company and chased away bears. From time to time, a haunch of reindeer meat, a gift from the Nenets, spiced up his diet.

Amazingly, he seemed content with his fate.

*   *   *

On board my boat, anchored in Chesskaya Bay, I was doing a little maintenance work when a storm blew up. Bernard had warned me that a nasty weather system was heading my way. Since I was in a relatively sheltered bay, I stayed calm and decided to ride out the storm where I was, waiting for the bad weather to pass. But it didn't pass quickly, and my anchor cable broke in the worsening seas. I dropped my backup anchor, but it dragged along the seabed, pulled by my boat toward the shore by the powerful waves and then sucked back out to sea with the undertow that followed, only to be hurled back toward the coast by the next wave.