Contents:
- Events: MAFC – YL Contest; KM1CC, the Marconi Cape Cod Event; Bouvet Island 2018
- Silent Key; Ja-Well-No-Fine
- SV "Nehaj" in Alaska; The Northwest Passage;
- Susanne Huber-Curphey(MM) and the NWP – Reflections
- Qrz & Calendar
"Mödlinger Amateurfunkclub" (MAFC). Austria
The Northwest Passage - Background
With best wishes for 2018 OE3YTA- Tina MAFC YL Officer.
Invitation to the 8th round of the YL-MAFC event on 13.Jänner 2018 at 19.00 LT
Band: 3740 Khz +- Qrm (80m)
Call: Club callsign MAFC- OE3XMC and OE3YTA, Tina
All YL's, from ADL`s (Austrian District Locator) and other organizations are welcome to join.
Requesting plenty of participation! Best wishes, 73 OE3YTA,Tina
KM1CC, the Marconi Cape Cod Radio Club 2018 January 18th-19th
Celebrates
the 115th anniversary of the first USA to Europe transatlantic message
sent from Marconi's South Wellfleet Station USA to his Poldhue UK
station January 18, 1903.
KM1CC will operate from FN 51 – a rare grid for the International Grid Chase.
KM1CC's
temporary ARS for Jan 18-19, 2018 will be located inside the large
Coast Guard Building, Coast Guard Beach, overlooking the Atlantic
Ocean.
The station was built in 1936
for the US Coast Guard and used for shipwreck rescues. The building was
transferred from the US Coast Guard to the National Park Service in the
early 1950's. It served as the first headquarters for Cape Cod National
Seashore. It is now used as an education center.
Bouvet Island 2018 Dxpedition
Radio
operators are on schedule for a 13 January departure to Bouvet Island,
the World’s most isolated island and the number 2 most wanted DX
entity.
All team members will meet
in Punta Arenas, Chile no later than 10 January 2018 and will board
Chilean vessel M/V Betanzos in the South Shetlands, for a 9-11 day sea
voyage to Bouvet Island.
Information on band plans, frequencies, propagation predictions and QSL procedures are available on the DXpedition website http://www.bouvetdx.or
Silent Key
It is with deep regret that we must announce that the key of Mimi Roach, ZS5YO, went silent on Saturday 25 November 2017.
We
extend our sincere condolences to her daughter Molly, W0MOM (ex ZS5MM
and ZS1KE), son-in-law Gordon, W0RUN (ex ZS1FE and ZS5SL),
grandchildren, family and friends.
SARL weekly news 2017-12-9
Ja-Well-No-Fine
Greetings
and good wishes to you all for 2018. We start 2018 by celebrating the
sailing success of a German yl and her remarkable journey through the
North West Passage. You may remember following Susanne's (KL4MX /N1QFE-
MM). arrival in New Zealand, early 2016 (yl.beam-30-jan-2016). I hope
you will enjoy following her and her Sail Yacht 'Nehaj' during 2017
from Tasmania to Nova Scotia, plus some background info. I realise the
articles are longer than usual but find her achievements inspiring so
hope you do too. 33 & 88 Editor Eda ZS5YH
"Nehaj" in Alaska – preparing for the NWP
Fw
from Brian ZS5AZH (SA MM Net) - She forgot to renew her licence, so
N1QFE is no more !! When she arrived in Nome ,Alaska – northern Bering
Sea - she re-wrote her HAM exam and has been allocated the call-sign
KL4MX.
Below is part of her last mail to me:
“
No promise for regular reports though, as propagation is often poor and
relay stations are rare in these high latitudes. It is my intention to
poke Nehaj's nose through the notorious Bering Strait. Once in the
Arctic Ocean we will decide the further route, which might well be the
scary one. But there's still tons of solid pack ice up North and we have
to wait.
But Nome is a great place to idle some time and to
get body and hull ready. There's many good, honest people here too. I'm
in the 'Small Boat Harbor' where the fishermen are very friendly. Nehaj
fits right in between all of the aluminium work boats, about our size as
well. The lucrative crab season has just started and with 24 hours of
daylight above 64 degrees North, they can set and retrieve their pots at
any time of the day.
The other floating dock is reserved for
the gold diggers who have about the wildest floating constructions.
Apparently the 'Golden Beaches of Nome' are still productive, they just
have to dig a bit offshore now. Tough divers guide the suction hoses and
the whole lot of those adventurers is a crazy bunch. But it's said that
some of them are doing very well, others lose their last pennies in
their gold fever. So really, not too much has changed since the first
gold rush into Nome 116 years ago. And there's still surprisingly many
pubs where umpteen of those shiny nuggets stay in town after all.
I
was fascinated by the traditional and extremely skilled carvings of
Alaska Natives. They use walrus ivory, whale bone and even mammoth or
mastodon. Most of them originate in St. Laurence Island, only 40 miles
off Siberia. It seems that I was drawn to the carvings called 'Spirit of
the Driftwood' in a strange way. Maybe those two small discs of walrus
tusk on the bulkhead of Nehaj will have an eye on us during our future
driftwood journeys?
Tomorrow is Independence Day in the USA.
After Charleston (SC), Block Island (CT) and Kodiak (AK) I will find out
how Nome is celebrating her 4th of July.”
An
historical sea passage of the North American continent, it represents
centuries of effort to find a route westward from the Atlantic Ocean to
the Pacific Ocean through the Arctic Archipelago of Canada. The route
is located 500 miles (800 km) north of the Arctic Circle and less than
1,200 miles (1,930 km) from the North Pole. It consists of a series of
deep channels through Canada’s Arctic Archipelago, extending about 900
miles (1,450 km) from east to west, from north of Baffin Island to the
Beaufort Sea, above the U.S. state of Alaska.
Reaching
the Northwest Passage from the Atlantic requires a hazardous voyage
through a stream of tens of thousands of giant icebergs, which could
rise up to 300 feet (90 metres) in height, constantly drifting south
between Greenland and Baffin Island. The exit to the Pacific is equally
formidable, because the polar ice cap presses down on Alaska’s shallow
north coast much of the year and funnels masses of ice into the Bering
Strait, between Alaska and Siberia.
In
the past, the Northwest Passage has been virtually impassable because
it was covered by thick, year-round sea ice. However, in the past few
years, climate change is allowing commercial traffic to pass through the
Arctic Ocean via this once-impossible route.
Norwegian
explorer Roald Amundsen and his crew were the first to cross the
Northwest Passage entirely by sea in 1906. It took three years. The
first single-season trip through the passage was by Henry Larsen and
crew in 1944. In 1957, three United States Coast Guard Cutters became
the first ships to cross the Northwest Passage along a deep draft route.
They covered the 4,500 miles of semi-charted water in 64 days.
Susanne Huber-Curphey and the NWP KL4MX (N1QFE) MM aboard SY 'Nehaj'
From
January 31st 2017 until October 22nd Nehaj sailed the distance of
16240 Nautical Miles, 115 days at sea; across the Pacific ocean,
through the Arctic into the Atlantic. From a temperate summer at the
Antipodes (48° South) across the Tropics to a chilly summer in the
Northwest Passage (74° North).
The journey started from
Tasmania to the Marquesas Islands in the Southern Ocean. I stayed only
three days in Fatu Hiva and crossed the equator on March 21st en route
to Hawaii.
By the middle of May we sailed from Hawaii to the
Aleutian Islands in the latitudes of the changeable winds. Each day the
water temperature dropped exactly one degree Celsius. Then from Dutch
Harbor into the Bering Sea, which in June presented herself as a shallow
'Bering pond' despite the reputation of generally foul weather.
In the little Alaskan town of Nome, full of legends about gold digging which continues to this day,
I wrote a new US Amateur Radio exam. I had forgotten to renew my call sign of 23 years, so now I'm KL4MX.
Nome
is the east-bound starting point of the legendary NORDWEST PASSAGE! In
my exciting route the distance north of the Arctic circle turned out to
be 3.683 nautical miles long. After leaving Nome I visited 14 anchorages
in Alaska and Arctic Canada and had the possibility of buying food and
diesel in the villages of Cambridge Bay, Gjoa Haven and Arctic Bay. Some
patience combined with good weather planning (many thanks to Victor
Wejer, Peter Semotiuk and Ham Jerry KL4EDK) made it possible to sail a
remarkable 75% of the distance and the Dickinson diesel heater was
burning about 60% of the time.
From the Pacific towards the
Atlantic I would be following the route of Roald Amundsen! Purely for
the reason of a challenge, an adventure only for Nehaj and myself.
Naturally I would sail this route solo. But my confidence was very thin
and I knew that it was a reckless plan, so I kept quiet about it.
The first contact with Victor Wejer in Toronto was absolutely positive.
Canadian
Victor Wejer, provides Artic sailors with free weather and ice
information, guiding them through the critical sections; author of the
area’s main cruising guide. In 2016, Wejer was awarded the „Award of
Merit” by the British Blue Water Association Ocean Cruising Club for his
services
Victor sent me his latest list of
detailed descriptions of anchorages as well as charts. I studied the
daily ice charts on the internet and the local weather station. East of
Point Barrow thick winter ice reached right to the shore (called 'Fast
Ice') and the eastern Arctic was still completely closed. I was way too
early in the season.
Finally, July 15th was the start! The
peak of summer brought quiet weather with 24 hours of daylight. Three
tugs with huge barges also used the settled conditions for their single
annual supply trip to a few small settlements along the coast of Alaska.
Despite the fog we saw each other on the
AIS (Automatic Identification System) many miles ahead and chatted on the VHF radio.
With
southerly winds force 2 - 5 Nehaj happily whizzed past the Diomede
Islands and through the Bering Strait, she left the International Date
Line and all of Siberia ten miles to the west and sailed gently across
the Arctic circle.
We were sailing quietly through a gentle
wet curtain, when suddenly my AIS alarm went off, caused by an unnamed
ship only 1.9 miles away, but in the fog I could not see them! Finally
we had contact on the radio and managed to clear the situation. After 4
½ days I dropped the anchor in a depth of only 2.50m in the shallow
Elson Lagoon near Point Barrow. Only two weeks ago this huge bay was
covered in ice but for my 3 AM arrival all was quiet.A good time to hit
the pillow and catch up on sleep.
On the evening I left I
talked on the VHF radio to a seasoned tug boat captain of 12 Arctic years
just outside Elson Lagoon. He was adamant about not carrying on towards
Prudhoe Bay in the still very tight ice conditions with a following
gale. He had no information about the offshore ice situation, which was
where I was going!
Between Point Barrow and Herschel Island
(440 NM in 4 days) Nehaj had a very impressive and unusual first
escapade in the ice, one hundred miles offshore. On the ice charts
Victor Wejer had observed a narrow gap surrounded by dense ice.; it
spared me a 3-day-trip on a dangerous and strenuous route close to the
coast in shallow water. I never saw them offshore, but during that time
friends were visited by a dozen polar bears at the anchorage of Cross
Island.
The weather stayed unsettled and we often had strong
winds and for weeks there were very few calms. Apparently that was why
the ice-way to the East was melting very hesitantly. However, it gave
Nehaj the chance to sail long distances in completely ice free waters in
24 hours of daylight. On July 29th was the first sunset due North,
which created a spectacle for hours with Arctic mirages on this rare
clear day.
I found good anchorages in Summers Island, Point
Pearce and in Cambridge Bay. At Hat Island I explored uncharted waters
to find an anchorage close to the wreck of HMS Erebus of the legendary
Franklin Expedition. In Simpson Strait we had the first real calms for
days and snow geese with their clumsy youngsters were about to head
South already! After leaving the small settlement of Gjoa Haven we still
had an ice free passage through James Ross Strait and around Cape
Victoria.
That’s where I spotted big ice floes ahead. After
one night at the cape we kept next to the coastline. The massive ice of
Larsen Sound stayed to the left, while we found open water along the
Boothia Peninsula. Next day (August 22nd) dense ice reached all the way
to the coast at Cape Andreasen. 200 metres to the West was the white
wall of solid pack ice, 200 metres to the East the barren shore. We had
only 50cm of water under the keel and off the bow lay a closed barrier!
Just a bit further ahead, the open water lay enticing. Only eight hours
earlier two Kiwi yachts had passed here without this newly formed
obstruction. We managed to turn around and get away only seconds before
big floes drifting towards us from astern, could trap us down this dead
end. I spent a restless night anchored somewhere along this coast,
sheltered from drifting floes behind a huge grounded ice-mushroom in
less than 3 meters of depth. The next day in thick fog I found a way
back into Pasley Bay.
Unfortunately
this was the end of the calm days and the North wind started to push
even more ice down Peel Sound and M'Clintock Channel. For nine days
Nehaj was stuck 34 miles further on in Weld Harbour; ice blocked the
way ahead to Bellot Strait, as well as back to Gjoa Haven. With each
wind shift I had to re-anchor so ice would not push Nehaj onto the
shore. During a short spell of South wind I left and tried to find a
way, but after 14 strenuous hours in the ice we limped back to the
anchorage.
From emails and the SSB radio daily reports, I
listened to the heavy activity in Franklin Strait, just a few miles
away. The Canadian ice breakers were on full operation alert to free the
small German cruise ship Hanseatic (probably a first in her 11
transits) and a French yacht on an opposite course. The officials in
Pond Inlet had stopped yachts from continuing West due to the intense
ice situation, sending them back to Greenland - a first ever.
Nehaj
was not alone in Weld Harbour. The experienced Dutchman Bert on his
yacht and the Mini-Cat of Yvan Bourgnon, were also stranded in this bay.
With freezing air temperatures and after several reckless attempts in
the ice, Yvan had excelled his sailing wisdom. His boat was fine and
there was no emergency of any kind, but he requested a tow through the
ice from our two alloy boats – we were supposed to rescue not him, but
his crazy record.....
Yvan found shelter on 'Nehaj' for one
afternoon, then he exploited the generous hospitality of the Dutch. He
left his Cat alone for six days and stayed in warmth and good food. I
had given him anchor chain, Bert supplied clothes and a superb
extreme-temperature sleeping bag, as well as food from us both. On top
of everything, Yvan was illegally in the country as he had never
bothered about the entry formalities into Canada.
After one
week (I never went ashore) without any change we started to joke on the
radio about wintering for eleven months in the wilderness of Weld
Harbour. We still had three weeks before the 'freeze-up-date'. Our
friend Victor and the professional ice pilot on the yacht Abel Tasman
(they were still south of us and the last this season) were convinced
that the ice would open one more time.....
And indeed, on
September 2nd conditions were perfect! Only light winds and the huge
ice-floes had opened up. Our little caravan started in first day light.
Yvans little Catamaran was towed by the Dutch yacht all day and the gaps
in the ice were just wide enough. We took turns in leading the way.
Nehaj didn't even touch the ice and never had to push her path free with
force. We managed all the distance to Bellot Strait and slipped
through with the last favourable tidal stream. It was exactly those
critical 90.4 miles missing for a successful passage into the Atlantic!
But it was lousy cold, with snow flurries and watering eyes while
searching for the gaps in the ice. Because of the extreme magnetic
errors, the auto-pilot had been useless since Cambridge Bay and being
alone on board I naturally had to hand steer all the time. I was dressed
in my thickest clothes but every five hours I let Nehaj drift and went
below for a short break.
This one day of 'buddy-boating' in
many years was more than enough for me. On this day we were not the only
convoy in Franklin Strait. On the horizon I saw the smoky exhaust of
the two ice breakers punching a path for the mega cruise-liner 'Crystal
Cerenity' with 1.500 passengers. Along the shore of Prince of Wales
Island the two last eastbound yachts made a huge effort, in company with
a tug leading the way to get through. The tug was towing the precious
freight of the Maud, only recently salvaged in Cambridge Bay. She was
specially designed by R. Amundsen to manage his first transit of the
North-East Passage, but that’s another story....
During the
tow Yvan rested and in order to stay 'incognito' switched off his
satellite tracker. Finally at the anchorage of Fort Ross I was truly
exhausted, but Yvan headed into the night on his toy boat. But not
before demanding from Dutchman Bert and myself, that we keep the tow of
his boat secret– what a brazen Thank-you for all the generous help he
had received.
In Prince Regent Inlet my attention slipped
after not spotting any ice for twelve hours. I was given due punishment
when Nehaj slammed into a big ice floe under full sail with a speed of 6
knots, while I was sitting below drinking coffee. But she did not ride
up onto the ice or slip off sideways, instead she rammed against the 2m
vertical concrete wall of ice and came to a full stop! The solidly built
hull and rig were trembling. Seconds later she tumbled along the edge
like nothing had happened, picked up speed and was already steering
towards the next solid obstacle of ice. No time to lower the sails,
start the engine or to grab my gloves and jacket. For the next half hour
we were sailing zig-zag in a maze of ice-floes through a nearly dark
night. Miraculously gaps opened up, only just visible ahead - it was a
spooky ride. Finally there was open water ahead, my fingers were frozen
and I was still in shock. I let the auto-pilot carry on and rushed below
to check the bilges – bone dry!
While it was an easy start in Nome, conditions got a lot more demanding during the second half.
In
Lancaster Sound spray was freezing into icicles on the railing and
transformed the deck into a skating platform during sail changes. Then
the first autumn storm blew with >50kn. Fortunately I found shelter
up a 60 mile deep fjord at the village of Arctic Bay. We had 10cm of new
snow and I could trample Nehaj's name into the white carpet.
In
my opinion Baffin Bay and Davis Strait were very dangerous in
September. During the daytime ice bergs, 'medium' (<45m height and
<120m length) and 'small' (<15m height) from upper Greenland were
no big threat, but during the hours of darkness they turned into
massive, invisible barriers and due to rough sea my radar could not spot
them. Bergy Bits (<5m height) and Growlers (<1m height) are less
spectacular but nearly as dangerous. Hardly anybody talks about this,
either because they had calm weather or because they sailed on the
opposite course during the endless daylight of summer. I hove too at
night and tried to drift at the speed of the ice bergs.=
After
exactly one thousand nerve-wracking miles out of Arctic Bay, I was
rewarded with the enormous spectacle of Polar Lights during my last
night at sea. Gigantic shimmering curtains were waving right above us
from one horizon to the other. They nearly touched the top of the mast
and seemed to stretch into outer space. I felt really small, a bit
spooked and most of all very thankful that Nehaj had brought me safely
from the Pacific into the Atlantic ocean.
I seriously
considered wintering in Greenland at 64°N but then decided to keep on
sailing South - that’s part of a single-handers freedom. With stops in
Labrador (Sept 30th) and Breton Island, Nehaj arrived happily in the
historic town of Lunenburg in Nova Scotia, on a latitude of only 44° N.
It's incredible, there are real trees, lots of maritime activity and especially good people.
Reflections
Global
Warming made it possible to transit of the Nordwest Passage in only one
season. But as 2017 showed that is no guarantee for the 'open' waters
of recent years. This year every commercial ship needed help from ice
breakers in Victoria Strait and all yachts had a difficult time.
Nehaj
made the 12th single-handed transit of the Northwest Passage. After the
ten thousand mile long journey from Tasmania Nehaj travelled the NWP
without drama or head lines – unsponsered and without damage. She is the
smallest German yacht so far and the first eastbound solo sailing boat
in one season.
In general women are less likely to take risks,
they are sensible and have a pragmatic sense of reality – no wonder
there were eight male single-handers before me.
QRZ CONTACTS:
Facebook ‘HAM Yl’ (YLs only); SARLNUUS met Anette Jacobs ZR6D zr6d@ymail.com
yl.beam newsletters zs6ye.yl@gmail.com Archived @
WEST RAND ARC wrarc-anode.blogspot.com
also Italian Radio Amateurs Union: QTC U.R.I. – La rivista della Unione Radioamatori Italiani
January 2018
1 CQ Marathon and ARRL Grid Chase
6 Kid's Day Contest, ARRL 18:00 - 23:59 UTC
13 MAFC – YL Contest (Austria)
13-14 Hunting Lions in the Air
13- 14 Summer 2018 VHF UHF Field Day. WIA (Wireless Institute Australia)
18-19 Marconi Celebration event - Cape Cod Radio Club (USA)
19-21 PEARS VHF/UHF Contest (S Africa)
20 SDR Workshop at the NARC (Johannesburg)
27 SARL Summer QRP Sprint
