Status Updates From The Eight Sailing/Mountain-...

"As my birthday is in February it would be difficult to celebrate my eightieth north of the Arctic Circle...steeply rising costs & waning strength had already inclined me to call a halt, & now with the boat lying at Reykjavik, together with the frightening possibility that one might again be stuck with a similar crew, the decision is no longer in doubt" (947).

"For some odd reason the use of a telephone to obtain information about ice conditions seemed to me a little underhand. The early seamen explorers, whose experience it has always been my aim in a faint and feeble way to recapture, had to go and find out; and in spite of ice reports, which are out of date by the tie one is on the spot, this is what the man in a small boat had nowadays still to do" (932-3).

"Jim...at once protested, calling it an 'undemocratic' decision, & at the sailor's Soviet he presently convened David & I found ourselves in a minority. Had I had any eloquence now was the time for an appeal to their better natures...but I felt mere disgust & no doubt allowed it to show...the voyage had now no aim & I could not feel much regard for those who had so tamely abandoned its objective" (926).

"Enthusiasm was rife as it always is either when fitting out for a long voyage, at the start of a mountaineering expedition, or even at the start of a war. A mountain expedition is usually short enough for enthusiasm to be sustained right up to the end. Wars may last for years but even for voyages that are reckoned in months enthusiasm at the start is not enough. More solid...qualities are needed..." (920).

"For this kind of yachting, where comfort and the care of the stomach have priority over progress, some wag has recently coined the word 'gastronavigation'" (909).

"There is nothing more distressing as running ashore, unless it be a doubt as to which continent the shore belongs" (905).

"Then we had sanitary problems. The outlet pump on the lavatory broke down and, as we soon discovered, Baroque is not well adapted for business over the side. the double guard rails made things difficult except for a contortionist. Working up till midnight Nicholas and Andrew repaired the pump. At Godthaab I bought a galvanised bucket in case it happened again" (896).

"I cannot remember ever making a kindlier start in more benign weather, yet with the needles still in sight astern Alec and Nicholas were communing with the sea over the rail, the latter not sufficiently overcome to forget to tell us in his querulous voice what he wanted for supper" (892).

"Nicholas, our bird-man, had a habit of whistling or breaking into loud song...Like the poet Gray who could stand only the hissing of the tea-kettle, I am averse to noise. It was like living in the monkey-house or an aviary...devoted mainly to the keeping of whooping cranes, whistling ducks, & macaws...we are all as God made us, some of us much worse, & he who will have eggs must bear with cackling" (891).

"Big mountains are seldom climbed at the first attempt which is more often a pioneering effort, breaking the trail for those who follow. Whether successful or not, on these voyages of mine there is a little of the pioneer's reward as well as four months sailing to look back on with pleasure, four months of endeavor to mull over, and that much more experience to store away" (882-3).

"On nearly all coasts nowadays...alterations have been made by man in the shape of bases or weather stations...effectively to curtain off the distant past from the imagination of the present-day visitor...Not so on the north and east coasts of Vestspitzbergen....the coast looked as unknown forlorn, and inhospitable as it had to them" (866).

"With reason, mariners regard the Admiralty Pilots much as one would Holy Writ. Nevertheless, although attempts to bring the Bible up-to-date are to be deplored this should not apply to them" (862).

"As mementoes of Svalbard, for they had started collecting them at Bear Island, bones were highly prized by all the crew, bones of whales, seals, bears, and, of course, reindeer horns. Later on, at more than one anchorage, where there were the graves of old-time whaling men and trappers, I admired their restraint in not digging up a skeleton or two for their collection" (851).

"...the old sperm-whaling ships...in the course of voyages that might last two or three years, seldom called at any port. They avoided ports like the plague. All that they needed to replenish was water and the captain took care to do this at some remote, uninhabited island...where the crew had neither the temptation nor the opportunity to desert. It is an example that I have found it advisable to follow..." (839).

"From my point of view...Greenland is the ideal objective, combining remoteness, difficulty of access, the grandest scenery, an inexhaustible number of mountainous fjords each with its own character, & on the whole a region still sufficiently unfrequented for a man in a small boat to feel very remotely akin to the early seamen-explorers and to their successors the old whaling men from Hull, Leith, Dundee..." (831).

"More important, however, is for them to have the right outlook. Activity can be instilled & competence can be acquired, but the right attitude must be ingrained - the cheerful acceptance & endurance of small privations & wearisome duties & the unquestioned belief that the success of the voyage & the care of the ship is what matters most. 'This ship, the ship we serve, is the moral symbol of our life'" (824).

"There is in some instances, too, an attitude new to mountaineering, that of death or glory, which sometimes succeeds and sometimes fails, and which in any case is foolish, because the glory is so transient. A man ought to rate his achievements only by the satisfaction they give him, for they will soon be outdone, outshone, and speedily forgotten by everyone but himself" (813).

"Rather than imperil others as well as ourselves by moving Baroque alongside in the congested harbour we went to a pump at the old harbour across the peninsula and brought back the drum in a taxi...Having rolled the drum into the water at the head of the harbour we left it for John to tow off with the dinghy. Oil drums are not all that towable but a friendly motor launch came to his assistance" (802).

"Bread is no great problem on a Greenland voyage. Bread taken at the start will last nearly ten days before going mouldy and after that we go on to twice-baked, sliced bread re-baked, which if properly done and kept in a plastic sack lasts indefinitely...on arriving in Greenland one has rye-bread which again lasts for months...[and] also has the advantage that the crew find it less palatable and eat less..." (797).

"In spite of [John Barrett's] youth he had done a good deal of sailing &, as we soon found, seldom hesitated to pass on the benefit of his experience to the rest of us. Garrulity is not, as I thought, confined to the old. Talkers...are of two kinds, those who talk because they have something to say, & those who talk because they want to say something. Our Jonno was irrepressible either by me or by the crew. " (790).

"The propeller is so far offset that with the engine in gear and the rudder hard over to the contrary direction the boat can barely be kept straight. Turning to port is out of the question" (788).

"It is time to go below and at the risk of being tedious I ought to describe what I found and my reactions, which were those of a man who has already half made up his mind to commit a folly and is already thinking of ways to mitigate it" (779).

"For the next two or three hours we drifted slowly across the mouth of the fjord until some rock skerries loomed out of the darkness to leeward. In an effort to sail clear we got the stays'l up & we might have succeeded had not a floe got under the lee bow & stopped her. Her heel caught on a ledge & she spun round to be pinned by wind & waves against the rock...I told the crew to take what gear they could..." (772).

"Having sailed through the belt of floes without hitting any of them very hard and having reached open water, I felt satisfied. After more than three weeks at sea it would be pleasant to be at anchor in a Greenland fjord even though it was not in Scoresby Sound" (771).

"He was on his way to Ireland to visit friends. He had no sea experience but was game to try and since so far all coverts had been drawn blank I took him on. 'Mortal men', as Falstaff said in reply to disparaging remarks about his recruits, 'Mortal men, they'll fill a pit as well as better'" (763).

"That the account of this voyage is not as full as it should be is partly owing to the absence of records and partly to that convenient faculty the mind has of forgetting what it does not wish to remember" (757).

"The climbers got back at 7 pm. On the previous day they had camped on a glacier at the foot of their mountain and on the following morning a complete white-out had prevented their doing anything but strike camp and stumble back down the glacier as best they could. Max had no regrets. He has the right idea about mountains - happy to be among them, preferably camping, even if he can't be on top of them" (756).

"Another visitor provided me with some amusement. He was an English tourist off one of the Icelandic steamers that do the round of Iceland starting from Reykjavik. The usual questions were put - how many days from England and where were we bound for - and on being told Greenland he remarked brightly: 'Ah! Following in Tilman's footsteps'" (748).

"While we were handing the sails & wondering where to find a berth we were hailed from the shore and directed to one of the many steamer wharves, at that moment vacant. Usually a yacht is ignored & left to find its own accommodation from whence in short time it will be told to move. This seemed almost too civil & we found it was merely for the benefit of the Custom who wanted to seal our stores and go home" (743).

"One is often asked what is the attraction of Greenland & the reply would be, where else would a man who desires both hills & the sea want to go. Where, within a month's sail from home, he can see mountains that are Alpine both in character & stature & glaciers vastly in excess of Alpine stature...finally, & best of all, the austere beauty of a summer's day off the Greenland coast, sea, snow mountains..." (736).