Conquering the Impossible (49 page)

Eight hours after the beginning of the fierce storms, I called Bernard, who reported that the latest reports said the storm was expected to last eighteen hours, instead of the original twelve! On the other hand, the winds weren't expected to blow any harder than fifty knots. Since I clearly had no choice in the matter, I simply held on, ready to fight as long as necessary. My trimaran shot over the whitecaps and landed with a sharp thud in the black troughs between them. Between one lurch and the next, I spotted the rocky shores of the menacing cape of Kanin Peninsula. To escape its clutches, I took every opportunity to increase my angle from shore and put a little bit more sea between me and the cape. I met with little success in this regard.

The biggest waves I had ever seen in my life were breaking on the peninsula. If one of those behemoths caught the boat, it would be “sayonara” for me. I set a little more sail to scoot out to see a bit more, even though the wind was blowing so hard that it had ripped one of my decals off the sails. The decal was affixed at just one glue point, and it was flapping like a pennant in the gale-force winds.

I nearly scraped the Kanin Peninsula, but I made it through in one piece—just barely. After the weather calmed down just a bit, I was able to set some sail, take advantage of the wind, and set course in the right direction at full speed. I sailed straight across the White Sea to the Kola Peninsula, where I found a small bay relatively sheltered from still-rough weather conditions.

When the time came to take in my jib, I realized that the storm had warped the take-up reel. It was impossible to furl my sail and therefore—in theory, at least—to stop the boat. I “shocked” the sail by paying out the line entirely, so that it would go slack and I could haul it in by hand.

As I sailed into the bay, I noticed that another boat, much larger than mine, had already taken shelter there. I moored my trimaran next to its hull. It was occupied by a group of Russian biologists who were studying crabs on behalf of the fishing industry. They invited me to come aboard, have dinner, and spend the night. I fell asleep without much difficulty. I hadn't shut my eyes in sixty hours!

In the morning the biologists left. I sailed over toward a small abandoned observation post that was clearly a relic of the Cold War. I rummaged through it and found materials that I could use to repair my ship's furling system, which had broken under the strain of the gale.

At six the next morning I set sail again along the Kola Peninsula. Cathy and Bernard had promised bright, clear weather all the way to Murmansk. It was smooth sailing all the way, and at four the following morning, I steered into the mouth of the long inlet that leads to the harbor of Murmansk.

Murmansk serves a number of purposes as a Russian outpost. It is a military base for nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, and icebreakers; an enormous shipyard and port for maritime commerce; and a veritable metropolis by Arctic standards with a population of four hundred thousand. Jean-Philippe reminded me over the satellite phone that it was not a place where I could casually sail in and tie a line to the first dock I saw. It was illegal to enter the harbor without a motor. Jean-Phillippe told me to announce my arrival over channel twelve on the radio and wait for a tugboat to guide me in.

I asked him to repeat that. We normally used channel sixteen for communications at sea. No, Jean-Philippe said, they had been very emphatic on the channel: frequency twelve.

But no matter how many times I called on that frequency (and I called more and more often the closer I got to Murmansk), I continued to get no answer. The closer I got, the narrower the channel became, and the shipping traffic grew more intense. As cruise ships and oil tankers began to appear, I sailed as close as possible to shore, turning on my automatic pilot when it worked while I called repeatedly: “Pilot boat Murmansk, this is sailboat
Arktos.
What is your location? Pilot boat Murmansk…” Still nothing. I was no more than twelve miles from Murmansk.

I tried again on channel sixteen.

Then suddenly a terrifying noise made me start. I was thrown forward as if the boat had just hit a wall. A jet of water sprang from the cabin floor.

My keelboard, which I had lowered to keep the wind from sweeping me sideways, had just ground into a reef! And at that very moment, the tugboat showed up.

“You shouldn't go through there,” the captain of the tug informed me, “the draft is too shallow.”

“Oh, thanks, I had noticed that! If someone had bothered to tell me a little earlier, that might have been useful!”

The pilot told me that I wasn't allowed entry to the port of Murmansk until my passport had been stamped by the border guards, and the border guard station was behind me. The tugboat hauled me back up the channel while I bailed by hand the water that collected in the boat up to the flotation line, in spite of my electric pump chugging away.

I eventually found myself tied up at a dock across from an official building, under the baleful glare of guards who were aiming their Kalashnikovs at me. On the satellite phone Jean-Philippe confirmed that I was not allowed to move until the Russian Coast Guard got there.

Unfortunately, they arrived sixteen hours later! For my part, that was sixteen hours of bailing out my boat without being able to set foot on the dock. All that, just so that the Coast Guard could confirm that Naryan-Mar had notified them of my arrival, stamp my passport, and announce that I was not authorized to dock in Murmansk. I waited another six hours for a tugboat to take me in to port, so I could repair my boat yet again.

Not far away, a boat was moored that I had seen somewhere before. It turned out to be Henk de Velde's—the explorer whom I had first met in Tiksi, where he was waiting for the ice to break up and free his boat. Apparently the ice wound up crushing his hull, and an icebreaker had conveyed him and his boat to Murmansk where he could have repairs done. He still planned to reach North Cape, but it looked like I would get there before he did. While we waited, he generously offered to put me up on his boat as long as I was in Murmansk.

*   *   *

I had arrived at two in the morning, exhausted and soaked after three days without sleep, having spent most of that time bailing. I was stuck in my current predicament and could not leave unless assisted by a tugboat. The harbor cranes weren't operating this early, so I would have to keep on bailing until morning. Fatigue took its toll, and I didn't feel strong enough to go four days without sleeping.

A dock worker offered to install a pump in my boat that was usually used for fuel, assuring me that it would drain my trimaran in two minutes. And he would drain the boat whenever necessary so that I could get some sleep until the drydock cranes began to operate at nine in the morning. He offered his services for the moderate fee of one hundred Euros per hour. Here we go again …

I had no alternative. And after all, it wouldn't be for more than a few hours. However, later that day, at four in the afternoon, the gantry cranes still weren't working. The pump wound up costing me two thousand Euros. With the Euro equal to about one U.S. dollar, this was not pocket change.

The crane operator who finally showed up asked to see plans of my boat; he said that he needed to study the shape of the hull so that he could lift it and set it down without damaging it. I called Cathy and asked her to fax the plans.

First, the crane operator said, the boat would need to be hauled onto a floating crane—six hundred Euros an hour—which would take it to the hoist, which would in turn put it in the dry dock—for four hundred Euros more.

Of course, all of this work was connected. It was impossible to say yes to one piece and no to the others. The harbor mafia of Murmansk had me in its talons. It knew that I couldn't afford to lose the boat or the gear inside it.

To prevent my temper from causing an unpleasant incident, I decided to bow out of the negotiations entirely and to delegate matters to Jean-Philippe. After all, he was in charge of logistics for the expedition. Jean-Philippe hired an interpreter who showed up and performed miracles of diplomacy.

All the while, I granted interview requests from journalists in town who had learned of my presence and my unusual expedition.

*   *   *

The interpreter was skillful in his negotiations, but we still wound up having to pay. But faced with the growing and endless demands of the Murmansk crowd, I decided to put off fully repairing the boat until I reached Kirkenes, Norway, which was about 185 miles from Murmansk and reachable by a paved highway. I needed only to pack the boat up on a boat trailer and catch up with it after two days of bicycling. Once the repairs to the trimaran were made in Kirkenes, all that would remain was a short sail to North Cape.

I had a boat trailer waiting for me in Kirkenes. However, a Norwegian freight company, Nord Cargo, wanted two thousand Euros to drive the trailer to Murmansk, put the trimaran aboard, and haul everything back to Kirkenes. I told them to take a hike and contacted a shipper in Murmansk, who took a look at the trimaran and said it would cost seven hundred Euros. Much better.

On my way out, I still had to deal with the exit formalities and harbor taxes. The officer in charge told me with a straight face that I owed three thousand Euros! I called Sergei in Moscow, and he told me that the normal fee would be two hundred Euros. I stopped the official, who had already begun to fill out the documents. I told him that there would be no need to check another box. Starting now, I would take care of everything—filling out forms, hiring transporters, and so forth.

But I had overlooked one vital detail: like everyone else here, the man had ties to the local mafia. Two hours later my transporter informed me that, for personal reasons, he had decided not to take my boat. It was clear that it was a courtesy even to tell me that. If he wanted to stay healthy, he needed to forget he had ever met me.

If that was how things stood, I announced that I would be doing my own repairs on the spot, and that I would then set sail under my own power. With the help of a local mechanic, I repaired the handle of my centerboard. Then I made preparations to weigh anchor.

Once they understood that I was about to slip through their fingers, the harbor union mafia began to relent. Once I was in a position of strength, I made them an offer. They would let me use my Russian shipper, and I would pay them two hundred Euros, in addition to what I had already paid for the pump and so forth. They were happy to make some money off me and accepted the deal.

What they didn't know—and I had just learned—was that there was at least four days of bad weather ahead, which would have kept me from going to sea anyway.

*   *   *

I left Murmansk on a Saturday on a bicycle I purchased in town. My high-end Trek mountain bike that had been specially designed for my needs was in Kirkenes, and according to Jean-Philippe, the bureaucratic obstacles to getting the bike across the Russian border were insurmountable.

The blacktop road to Norway ran down along a river, then crossed it and climbed back up on the opposite side. It climbed and dropped relentlessly, winding through a landscape of steep tundra, hills, and lakes. Unfortunately, the road was in terrible shape, pocked with potholes and covered with ice, not to mention the sleety mix of snow and rain that was falling from the sky. I took some spectacular spills as a result.

Winter had returned. My water bottle froze. To keep from meeting the same fate myself, I pedaled along without a break.

Midway between Murmansk and Kirkenes, I happened upon a checkpoint station where, once again, guards examined my papers and asked me the usual questions. My one-year Russian visa was still valid. I spent the night at a nearby sort of hostel that offered rooms for thirty rubles, about a dollar a night.

The next morning Jean-Philippe confirmed that my boat would arrive in Kirkenes the following day. I got back on my bike. A few hours later I arrived at the first Russian border post. Between it and the second border post were twelve miles of road, accessible only to closed vehicles. However, Sergei smoothed out all obstacles in my way. Not only did he obtain a special permit for me, but the guards welcomed me with happy cries. This was a nice change from the usual routine. They even waved me through with a smile.

I crossed the no-man's-land between the two Russian border posts. When I reached the second one, the guards signaled to me to hurry up. They resolved all the formalities in a hurry—a nice change, as well—and ushered me ahead of the crowd of Russians who had climbed out of their buses, suitcases in hand, and were preparing to spend endless hours in line before they could enter Norway. In short, I got VIP treatment.

The Russians must have been delighted finally to be rid of me. I couldn't help thinking that if they had been this enthusiastic from the beginning, they would have been rid of me a long, long time ago. Everyone's lives would have been much simpler.

*   *   *

A hundred yards farther on stood the Norwegian border guard station, which meant that I had done it. I had made it across Russia in approximately eleven months, just as I had predicted. Now there was nothing that could keep me from succeeding. My trimaran would be in Kirkenes any minute now. In the worst case scenario, I could still bicycle on to North Cape.

But I wanted to arrive the same way I had left: by boat. I wanted to see the same cliffs I had been imagining for more than two years now.

*   *   *

To my great surprise, the Norwegian border guard was much less friendly than his Russian colleagues. He looked at me with an air of disgust, clearly seeing me as a hippie cyclist, bearded and filthy, who was trying to get into his squeaky clean country. Luckily all my documents were in order. He examined them carefully and asked me, “How long do you plan to work in Norway?”

Once I got over my astonishment, I explained that I was coming to Norway only to complete my expedition. Afterward, I planned to go home. I swear!