Northwest Passage

pmagowan

pmagowan

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Anyone attempted this in a sailing vessel from the UK or even as far as Greenland or Iceland? It has always interested me and I was hoping to take a sabatical when I build my new boat and give it a go, perhaps even carry on round. The risk of ice etc may have some design implications for the boat and I would be interested in any experiences people have had. I know traditionally steel boats have been prefered but I was wondering if kevlar or similar reinforcing of a cold moulded wood/glass fibre contruction would be sufficient. Alternatively steel could be added as a temporary protective layer on the bow. I have knowledge of a couple of wooden boats that went through and without significant damage but they may have been lucky.
 
I think you need to do some background reading. In the last few years the ice amounts have lessened to a remarkable amount and many boats have made it through. The amount of ice does vary and this year was more difficult than other recent years. East to west is always more difficult as the ice bottleneck is towards the eastern end, so when that clears you still have a long way to go and then emerge into the Barents Sea at the start of autumn.

No yacht is capable of being an icebreaker so hull material is pretty immaterial. Regular GRP yachts including an Albin Vega and small Westerly have been as successful as any. Most important is a sufficient strong crew, good enough communication gear to receive all the available met and ice information, a good enough sailing ability to get to the start point (up wind N Atlantic), and a high degree of self sufficiency including the ability to possibly overwinter if you do get iced in.
 
Bob Shepton, an Anglican vicar well over 70yrs old, has done it both ways, in his 33' Westerly.
He has just published a book, Rocks and Hard Places or some such title..cheers Jerry
 
hmmm . . . . I have been up there, but not thru.

Pretty much any boat can, and has done it. There's been a fiberglass/wood/metal, big/small, good build and poor build. A strong motor and lots of fuel is nice but not absolutely necessary. Well protected watch keeping station is nice but not essential. Very stable autopilot compass is nice (because you go right by the magnetic north pole) is nice but not essential (but you might be doing a bunch of hand steering if you use a big standard fluxgate compass). Good heating is nice but not essential.

The ice the past two years has been thick (but ultimately passable if you got your timing exactly right). I was up in greenland this last summer and it was the most ice since 2003. And it did not all melt in the passage, which means it will also likely be thick next summer with rock hard 2nd year ice. We need a really good warm summer up there to clean it out and make it as ice free as it was 2010, 2011, 2012 - where you could mostly just sail thru with only 'scenic ice'.

The ice opening date is much later than most people expect - the choke points tend to first open around August 20th, and this year were then only open for 3 days. In 2010-2012 they were open for about 2 months. As mentionned in a post above, that late opening date then makes your arrival around Alaska in the fall when the storm frequency is pretty high, the hours of sunlight dropping rapidly along with the average temps.
 
Bob Shepton is currently doing the rounds talking about his double transit in 2012 - 2013. He's very approachable so why not drop him an email to find out if he's giving a talk near you. He's got his own website. I saw him at the Cruising Association 2 weeks ago. He's a lovely natural unassuming speaker, very easy to listen to.
His boat Dodo's Delight is an unmodified Westerly Discuss 33' 30 odd years old, and he said that the hull was untroubled scraping through ice flows.
Mike

Editted bit, the Irish boat mentioned earlir went all the way round hence doing both the NE passage and the NW passage. The log of the journey makes very interesting reading and is on their website. IIRC their boat was a bilge keel so they could run aground to escape the ice. They also had a bit of help from a Russian Icebreaker at one point.

'Nother editted bit. There's an exhibition of the exploration of the NW Passage running at the moment in the foyer area of the British Library until Christmas. Original drawings maps recordings etc. Well worth the effort if you're in London.
 
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Wow, thanks for all the replies.

To put things in context I am in the design stage of creating a new boat which then has to be built so I am in very early stages of planning. Really what I am thinking about is if there are any things which I need to consider that would make the boat more suitable for this kind of cruising. To be honest what you have said confirms my suspicions that any hull material could do it as long as the boat is good. The plan, of course, is to avoid hitting ice at cruising speed although I think I can design a more suitable boat for doing so than some made nearby!

Thanks all for pointing me in the direction of more information. I will get stuck in to more research. I have already read quite widely but you never get as good info as you can get first-hand. I have had a couple of PM's and thanks for those too. I realise that this is one of those weather dependent things and it might be masses of planing just to be foiled by the conditions but there is still joy in the effort.

Unfortunately the only ice I have had experience of was during that cold winter when the harbour froze. I may be able to get more experience in my current boat while the new one is being built.
 
Vegable said:
His boat Dodo's Delight is an unmodified Westerly Discuss 33' 30 odd years old, and he said that the hull was untroubled scraping through ice flows.
Mike

Editted bit, the Irish boat mentioned earlir went all the way round hence doing both the NE passage and the NW passage. The log of the journey makes very interesting reading and is on their website. IIRC their boat was a bilge keel so they could run aground to escape the ice. They also had a bit of help from a Russian Icebreaker at one point.

'Nother editted bit. There's an exhibition of the exploration of the NW Passage running at the moment in the foyer area of the British Library until Christmas. Original drawings maps recordings etc. Well worth the effort if you're in London.
Click to expand...

Northabout is currently ashore here in our marina/boatyard, she is aluminium as mentioned with a lifting keel,keel cooled engine, internal ballast as per a giant Superseal 26 and has an "icebreaker" bow. Anyone considering going onto the ice should see the dings and dents caused by the ice before considering fiberglass. As mentioned above, Dodos Delight and other GRP boats have done it, but in light ice seasons . I know which construction I'd prefer!
 
Check out a series of videos by 'Yacht Teleport' on the 'tube. IIRC she was strip moulded construction (and junk rigged)
 
The usual wisdom about hull materials is because you WILL encounter copious small pieces of "brash" ice; these have a cumulative abrasive effect and can't be avoided. On steel or aluminium hulls, that just means that you'll need to do some painting afterwards; the hull material won't be abraded. Wood can easily be protected with sacrificial planking along the waterline. The reason GRP is deprecated is because the gel-coat could get abraded off at the bow, and it isn't all that easy to protect it. It isn't the reinforcing material that gets abraded, it's the gel-coat and/or the resin, which are softer than ice, so I doubt if kevlar would actually help all that much.

If you're building a wood/epoxy hull (which I think I recall is your plan) and are serious about high latitudes, I'd suggest incorporating some steel plates at the bow, at least.

I'm talking here about smallish bits of ice - pieces a few inches to a foot or so across. There are, of course, larger bits around, and no yacht can hit those with impunity. Good, all-round visibility from the steering position is an excellent thing. And, although you can manage without an enclosed steering position, it would make for a more comfortable life to have it!
 
AntarcticPilot said:
The usual wisdom about hull materials is because you WILL encounter copious small pieces of "brash" ice; these have a cumulative abrasive effect and can't be avoided. On steel or aluminium hulls, that just means that you'll need to do some painting afterwards; the hull material won't be abraded. Wood can easily be protected with sacrificial planking along the waterline. The reason GRP is deprecated is because the gel-coat could get abraded off at the bow, and it isn't all that easy to protect it. It isn't the reinforcing material that gets abraded, it's the gel-coat and/or the resin, which are softer than ice, so I doubt if kevlar would actually help all that much.

If you're building a wood/epoxy hull (which I think I recall is your plan) and are serious about high latitudes, I'd suggest incorporating some steel plates at the bow, at least.

I'm talking here about smallish bits of ice - pieces a few inches to a foot or so across. There are, of course, larger bits around, and no yacht can hit those with impunity. Good, all-round visibility from the steering position is an excellent thing. And, although you can manage without an enclosed steering position, it would make for a more comfortable life to have it!
Click to expand...

Thanks. I don't want to incorporate permanent steel but I had thought about some temporary cladding. To be honest, from what I have seen, it might simply be an issue of letting the hull take a pounding and then repair it. I won't have a gel coat as I am positive moulding rather than the production female moulds that make gel coating a straight forward process. It might be that the paint does the work or even a small amount of the layup. I am not precious about my boats. I try to make them look as perfect as possible but they serve a purpose and that includes ramming things from time to time.

I might test methods for incorporating steel plate onto the bow in such a way as to protect it yet be removable in future. Alternatively wood or a glass fibre/composite 'sleeve' may be possible.
 
If you are building a new generally 'blue water' boat, I think the four specific things to incorporate are:

1. Extra insulation. here are two sorts of insulation you want to consider (a) is general hull and deck insulation. 25mm is the standard foam core and it is really not enough. I would try to incorporate 50 or 75mm - we have 75mm and it is terrific in both cold and hot weather. (b) is "double pane's" over all hatches and ports and anything else with exposed metal - these will condense water and drip like mad if left open/exposed to the interior. There are several ways to make interior panes to create a heat gap to stop this condensation and they are well worth doing.

2. Heat. You want a 'bus heater', which runs off the engine cooling loop - it is free dry heat (when the engine is on) and they are cheap and reliable. You want a hurricane lamp - nice light and a surprising amount of heat when it is 'not so cold'. The you want a serious heater - there are various options that have been discussed at length elsewhere - basically three schools of thought simple (reflek), elegant (diesel boiler with hot water loop and radiators), middle ground (diesel boiler with hot air blowers).

3. Radar. You want the best highest power radar you can install. There are a lot of low visibility conditions (fog, rain, etc) and it is nice to see as much of the ice as you can, and to have a reliable guard zone feature. Edit: also useful is an esay way to get someone 10m aloft to look at the ice. This is also useful in the tropics.

4. Autopilot compass. You want the best most stable compass you can get/install. There are a couple 'GPS compasses' that are perfect, but require pretty large antenna. If you can't/don't want to do that, one of the '9 axis' flux-gates is acceptable but you may have to hand steer a bit at you CPA to the magnetic north pole.

Otherwise you just want a good reliable blue water boat. I would not worry about the bow strength too much. No-one I know has had any serious bow damage - just routine paint scraping (edit - actually I know two singlehanders who hit bergs dead-on at 7kts and both did have bow/forestay problems but these were already strong steel boats, so the message is to try not to hit big bergs head on :), nominal strengthen will not help if you do hit one dead on at 7kts )
 
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Thanks for the info;

1). On insulation the cold moulded wood composite structure gives a significant insulation head start when compared to GRP or steel. I have recently super insulated my house so I am aware of the benefit so will look at this closely. I wonder about potential issues with insulation and condensation. In house construction you would put in a vapour barrier.

2). Heat I have been wondering about. I like efficiency and self sufficiency. I would like to avoid engine heat waste through a hot water calorifier and have also been looking at some diesel powered 'hydronic' boost heating. It gets a little complicated for my liking particularly if you add in hot air matrices. Another option is a solid fuel stove but I don't know how practical these are on a boat. I will carefully study all the design options.

3). Radar is obviously essential so I will get the best available for the job.

4). Compass, I take your point and I watched someone online have to calculate for deviations of 60 degrees with careful calibration. I guess it is a case of getting the best practical, affordable option available. By the time I go GPS solutions may be improved by the European Gallileo satellites.

I have become a great fan of the cold moulded wood/epoxy composite construction technique as the more I study it the better it seems able to perform. I believe it can outcompete almost any other construction for versatility. The monocoque result means that the final structure is remarkably strong with better fatigue resistance than almost any other material. Other properties can be added through adjusting the composite fibres in the layup.

I will ill get the pilot guide as it will make good bedtime reading.
 
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