Mingming & the Tonic of Wildness

D. Taylor Roger

Description

In his third book singlehanded sailor Roger D. Taylor ventures to even more remote seas aboard his tiny junk-rigged yacht Mingming. The first voyage, across the North Atlantic to Baffin Island, is curtailed when Taylor is injured in a storm in the Davis Strait. Unwilling to sail on into the ice with a broken rib, he turns round and re-crosses the Atlantic to Plymouth, completing a non-stop voyage of over 4000 miles. The second voyage takes the reader to Jan Mayen, Spitsbergen and on to 80(deg)North, virtually as close as it is possible to sail to the North Pole. During these two voyages Taylor spends well over four months at sea, observing and reflecting on the sea itself, its wildlife, its attraction, and man's uneasy relationship with it.

Sujets

• Sailing

Informations

• Publié par: The FitzRoy Press
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9780955803543
• Langue: English

Extrait

MINGMING
the Tonic of Wildness
BY THE SAME AUTHOR:
Voyages of a Simple Sailor Mingming the Art of Minimal Ocean Sailing
ROGER D. TAYLOR
MINGMING
the Tonic of Wildness
Yet More Voyages of a Simple Sailor
F
THE FITZROY PRESS
Published by The FitzRoy Press 2012.
F
The FitzRoy Press 5 Regent Gate Waltham Cross Herts EN8 7AF
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part (other than for purposes of review), nor may any part of this book be stored in an information retrieval system without written permission from the publisher.
Copyright 2012 Roger D Taylor.
ISBN 978 0955803 536
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Publishing management by Troubador Publishing Ltd, Leicester, UK Printed and bound in the UK by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall
In memory of my father
Angus D. Taylor
(1920 - 2011)
Seaman, raconteur, survivor.
In order to minimise the cost and ecological impact of this book, colour photographs have been omitted. Photographs and video clips linked to this text can be found at www.thesimplesailor.com
Contents
Preface
PART ONE
STORMS
PART TWO
MOUNTAINS
Mingming s Voyages 2010-2011
Preface
We need the tonic of wildness...We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden.
My first book, Voyages of a Simple Sailor , described how I arrived at the notion of simple sailing. The second, Mingming the Art of Minimal Ocean Sailing, attempted to explain both the philosophy and the practice of this kind of pared-down voyaging. This third volume tries, in my usual halting and roundabout way, to explore the much more fundamental question: why go ocean sailing at all? Whilst it is first and foremost a narrative of two long voyages in a tiny yacht, it is also an attempt, therefore, to uncover the deeply-hidden motivations behind such voyages.
I approach this problem somewhat obliquely, and am still not sure whether I know or understand the answers. The underlying theme is not just the attraction of wild places and the life that thrives in those places, but also the growing imbalance between the untainted and the civilised. The fragile purity of the wild places contrasts with the over-stressed agglomerations of human habitation, and only heightens the sense of unease.
Spending long periods at sea can alter one s perception of those two mantles of the earth - the land and the ocean. As land-based and therefore terra-centric creatures we tend to view the sea as a strange and alien adjunct to the rock and soil on which we live. The more time one spends at sea, particularly in the kind of unmediated proximity that only a small and slow-moving cruising yacht can engender, the more one realises that it is the land which is the oddity, the geological aberration; perhaps it should not be there at all. This is a startling thought, and one that invites a total reassessment of our own place in the world.
I try to keep my narratives fast-moving and entertaining, and so my darker ruminations are, I hope, woven only lightly into the warp and weft of the stories. There are many aspects of our relationship with that other world, the timeless world of innocent creatures unburdened by self-awareness and crippling intelligence, which evoke sadness and anger and an overwhelming pessimism. I have tried as much as possible not to let these feelings intrude into the narrative. I hope, nonetheless, that I will be forgiven the occasional moment where I have expressed my thoughts without restraint.
PART ONE
STORMS
1
For nearly a year I struggled. I was supposed to be sailing in the 2010 Jester Challenge from Plymouth to Newport, Rhode Island. This is the hallowed route for all single-handed sailors, second only to a circumnavigation via the great southern Capes. However much I tried I could not raise any enthusiasm for the voyage. I had developed too strong a taste for the wild and the obscure, for the path less trodden. Departure was scheduled for the twenty-third of May. I thought that perhaps, as the day approached, I would find the necessary spark to fire me up, but it refused to appear. This worried me; to take a twenty-one foot yacht across the North Atlantic, against the prevailing winds and currents, requires a cast-iron commitment. I had by now sailed my little yacht Mingming twelve thousand miles or so, mainly in high latitudes. I knew well enough the resolve that is necessary to push on and on through an inhospitable ocean.
It took just one weekend in March to clear up the problem. Brenda showed me a Sunday newspaper colour supplement article about Newport. The glossy photographs depicted paradise on earth. Clapboard houses glistened under fresh paint. Seafood restaurants and ice-cream parlours out-shone each other. Harbours swelled with smart yachts. Well-manicured headlands groaned beneath the weight of nineteenth-century arriviste mansions. Within a few seconds my mind was made up: I would not sail to Newport. Heaven is not my kind of place. I have never understood mankind s preoccupation with attaining to that particular state of grace. All that unrelieved perfection would surely bore a man to death, and then what?
That very same day I was once more perusing my charts and saw the trajectory for an ideal voyage. I would make a high latitude Atlantic crossing, yes, but instead of turning south-west to head over the Grand Banks and on towards the heart of advanced civilisation, I would instead turn right, to the north-west. Here I could make my way up the Davis Strait, the narrowing stretch of water between west Greenland and Labrador. In a moment my pulse was raised. Yes That s where I should go Further north, to the west, lay Baffin Island. Now you re talking My finger moved on, and there it was - the Arctic Circle. Everything fell into place. I could mirror my previous year s voyage into the Arctic Circle to the east of Greenland. There was a pleasing symmetry to this. It felt right. What s more, I could safely make the voyage there and back in one summer. The whole route was well clear of the hurricane zone. Now my mind was buzzing. I peered more closely at the chart. The narrowest section of the Davis Strait lay right on the Arctic Circle. On the western side Baffin Island projected out into the Strait, culminating in a prominent headland, Cape Dyer. I imagined that wind-swept bluff, still locked into the winter ice. No mansions there, my boy My finger traced south, following the tortuous indentations of the Canadian coastline. Here was the history of Arctic exploration writ large: Frobisher Bay, Cumberland Sound, Sunneshine Fiord, Mooneshine Fiord, Queen Elizabeth s Foreland and so on. With spread hand I measured distances. From Plymouth to Cape Dyer was roughly two and a half thousand nautical miles. A quick calculation put it at about forty days sailing. There and back would take eighty days, give or take. Mingming could carry a hundred days worth of food and water. There was not much margin of error, but we could do it.
My excitement was only slightly tempered by the enormity of the challenge. To spend eighty days, or thereabouts, in the northern reaches of the North Atlantic, at any time of year, was asking for a certain amount of trouble. An endless procession of low pressure systems and their accompanying storms wing their way across this patch of ocean. During the summer months they are generally a little less severe and marginally more short-lived. I was under no illusion, though. Four consecutive summer voyages in high latitudes had taught me that the weather is no respecter of seasons. It was inconceivable that Mingming and I would not have to cope with at least one or two severe gales. Our outward route in particular would take us through the most difficult node in the north Atlantic: a large area between north-west Ireland and Greenland where winds and wave heights reach their highest values.
There was too the not inconsiderable question of ice. This would take two forms, each with its own characteristics and dangers. Sea-ice is carried down the east coast of Greenland and around its southern tip, Cape Farvel. In certain conditions this can be pushed far to the south, blocking the path to the west. I had sailed Mingming into the east Greenland sea-ice the previous summer and had seen first-hand and close-up the seductive beauty of the floes, their siren glitter concealing an iron and implacable fist. They can swirl around and trap you in a few seconds. The waters off Cape Farvel are a graveyard for ships and fishing boats and yachts. The nasty storms that are generated at that confluence of warm water and cold water, aided and abetted by lying at the juncture between the Arctic high pressure system and the temperate zone, throw an extra ingredient into the cocktail. I would have to keep well clear of Cape Farvel.
The Davis Strait is a main highway for icebergs. They pour down from the frozen wastes of north-west Greenland, borne on the south-going Labrador Current. One thing would work in my favour: this current flows down the west side of the Strait. Warmer water, the last vestiges of the Gulf Stream, makes its way up the east side. This helps to clear the winter sea-ice from the west coast of Greenland and creates its more benign climate. In summer the icebergs are widely scattered. Given their size they are visible from a good distance. The offspring they spawn, though, the growlers and bergy bits that break off and make their own way in life, are a source of unseen danger, particularly in rough weather. The simple fact was that I had no idea what the concentrations of icebergs and their associated detritus would be like. I had no idea whether or not I would be able to navigate with reasonable safety in the more northerly stretches of the Strait. Well, there was only one way to find out.
Within a few hours I had redis