Chapter 7
At five o’clock one morning, ignoring the light rain, I went to look at the sea. A southwesterly was blowing, piling the waves on the beach in coils of dirty brown and white. On the horizon, barely discernible to my naked eyes, I thought I could see a ship. Screwing my eyes to slits and refocusing, I looked again. It was a ship, beam-on to Kivalina, facing the direction of Kotzebue. It looked to be stationary. For many minutes I watched, praying silently. It didn’t move. The long-awaited North Star had finally arrived.
About mid-morning, after a few cups of coffee with Chester and a new friend, Jimmy Hawley, I resumed my vigil on the beach. The ship was still out there, but there was no sign of any intent to discharge cargo at Kivalina.
Wrapped up in a thick parka, Chester joined me, his hands pushed deep in his pockets. “North Star,” he said. “Too rough for her to unload yet. They won’t come in today.”
Disappointed yet again, I watched for hours, hoping to see a lighter—a small barge—making its way through the waves. The people of Kivalina are a patient group. They had waited a year for their supply ship to return. Now that she was out there, where they all could see her, waiting another day for her to unload was no hardship for them. It was for me.
To pass the time I persuaded Chester to let me use his washer and dryer. After the gasoline was landed and a reasonable portion had been poured in to replenish my tanks, I planned to leave immediately. It was suddenly important to do my laundry so I could start the next stage with clean dry clothes. While I folded my laundry, Chester told me he had heard me on the radio that morning. Broadcast from KOTZ in Kotzebue, it must have been the show I taped a week or so earlier. He was pleased to hear me relate my adventures over the air because he already knew the stories from our conversations.
The first lighter, a landing barge really, chugged into the lagoon early the next morning. There was no interesting cargo that I could see—just a tractor with a forklift attachment over the front wheels. Behind the tractor lay two large cable drums. In a few minutes the tractor and cable were on shore. The landing craft’s front loading ramp closed and it went back to sea.
“They use that tractor to unload the barge each place they go,” Caleb explained.
For most of the day I watched as successive loads, mostly in wooden crates, piled up on Kivalina’s east side. The fuel, I had been told, was always unloaded last. I stayed nearby in case the fuel came off early this time. I paced back and forth impatiently, like a caged animal in a zoo, watching every item carried to land.
“How many more loads before the gasoline comes in?” I asked a crew member as he stopped work to light a cigarette.
“That’s the last load.” He looked at me in surprise. “There’s no gas on board for Kivalina. We’re finished now.”
Unable to believe my ears, I argued the point. There had to be fuel on board. The whole village was waiting for it.
“We didn’t bring any gasoline,” he said again.
“Isn’t there any gas on board I can buy? What about the tractor’s tanks?” As I asked, I remembered the tractor ran on diesel oil, no good for Audacity’s outboard motor.
Another crew member joined us in time to hear my questions. “No, that’s it,” he said. “We’re done here. Where are you going?”
“All the way to Barrow, and beyond. If I can get some gasoline.”
“Good luck,” he said earnestly, sticking out his hand. “I’m Chris Volkle. You should be able to get gas at Point Hope. It’s much bigger place than this.”
After I related the saga of Point Hope and its fuel, there was nothing much else to say. Chris pulled some papers out of his back pocket and handed them to me. “I can’t help with gas, but I can give you maps of some of the harbours.”
The hand-drawn maps showed the approaches to Point Hope, Point Lay, Wainwright and Barrow. They were based on the previous year’s reports of the sandbars but were a useful addition to my navigation file. Without fuel, however, they were not likely to do me much good. We shook hands again. With that the tractor trundled back on board. The ramp closed, and the vessel I had counted on left Kivalina, leaving me effectively stranded.
Once again I began to feel the approach of failure. We had come so far, against so many odds, only to be stymied by something as simple as an empty fuel tank.
Sylvester and Caleb stood talking to one side of the stack of cargo. I stormed over to them, burning with frustration—anger—resentment.
“There’s no gas for Kivalina they tell me,” I complained. “What happened to it?”
“I guess nobody remembered to order it,” was the startling response.
My mouth dropped open. I looked from one to the other, stunned by the apparent complacency. “You mean no one in Kivalina now has gas until North Star comes back next year?” I addressed Sylvester. “What are you gonna do when you need to use your boat or your snowmobile? You can’t go through a winter without gasoline.”
“Some of us will have to go to Kotzebue and bring a few loads back.”
“I suggested that a few days ago. I’ve been waiting here all this time. Just waiting for North Star. You told me there was gasoline on board.”
“They forgot to order it.” The tone was apologetic, defensive.
“What about the guys who went for fuel last week? What happened to that?”
“They’re not back yet, I guess.” Sylvester shrugged.
“Hell. What a mess,” I groaned. Hands in my pockets, shoulders hunched, tears of frustration welling up behind half-closed eyelids, I stamped back to Audacity. With each step I swore, louder than necessary. “Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!”
Chester and Sylvester came to see me as I was packing my few remaining pieces of equipment. They stood watching me in silence while I worked. I ignored them at first, my fury blurring my manners and my better judgement.
“What time is the next plane due in from Kotzebue?” I finally asked. “I’ll have to order gas and have them bring it to me, no matter what it costs.”
“Already been and gone. Next one’s day after tomorrow. In the afternoon, maybe.”
Chester, uncomfortable with my anger, went home. Sylvester, always the cheerful friend, took me by the arm and led me to his house. “Come on, Tony. Let’s go get a coffee.”
Having wasted another five days waiting for nothing, I was not the best of company. We sipped our coffee in silence. I couldn’t stop thinking that, had the fuel at Point Hope not been contaminated, I would now be cruising along a lead between the ice pack and the North Slope somewhere a little east of Barrow. Alice, probably sensing the tension, went out. Sylvester tapped me on the arm, looked me in the eye.
“Maybe we can do something,” he said quietly.
I listened, wondering what was coming. What could anyone possibly do? Either there was gasoline in Kivalina or there wasn’t.
“There is some gas here,” Sylvester said it softly, casually, “but it belongs to some guys.”
“How much and where is it?”
“Other end of town. A few barrels, I think.”
“Well, who owns it and how can I get it?” I stood up, excitement rippling through me. The coffee forgotten. The thought of imminent failure receding once more.
Sylvester took me to the private cache. Half a dozen large drums, all full, had been standing under cover within two hundred metres of Audacity since we arrived. There was enough gas there to take me beyond Alaska to Canada’s Northwest Territories. No one in Kivalina had thought to mention the mystery stock.
“Can I buy some?” I asked Sylvester, ready to put all my powers of persuasion to work at once. “I’ll pay you whatever price you say, and you can pay the owners when you see them.”
At that juncture I was prepared to open one drum and siphon off enough gasoline to fill my tanks and every unused container I could find in Kivalina, with or without Sylvester’s participation. In payment I would leave a letter of thanks and cash with him or with Chester. Sylvester worried about the consequences for a few moments. Perhaps the expression on my face and the proprietary way I kept my hand on the drum convinced him.
“Okay,” he agreed. “We need a big wrench.”
Finding an appropriate tool took half an hour or more. Once back at the cache I had the first drum open in 15 seconds flat using a rusty pipe-wrench. The pungent aroma of escaping gasoline fumes never smelled more like exotic perfume.
Sylvester handed me one end of a long thin plastic tube. The other end he thrust into the open barrel. With a grimace of distaste, I sucked hard on the tube. Raw gasoline spurted into my mouth and I spat it out as I aimed the trickle into my first tank. Gravity took over. The gas flowed from the barrel to my tanks, monitored by Sylvester, as I went to the lagoon to rinse the astringent taste away with salt water. Soon my tanks were full and my wallet was considerably lighter. I had enough fuel to bypass Point Hope and travel far to the north. Now all I needed was a fair wind and considerate seas.
Near midnight we sat in Sylvester’s kitchen, drinking coffee and listening to the weather report. It wasn’t good.
“Maybe it will be calm out there by morning,” Sylvester said hopefully.
It wasn’t calm when I left the Swans’ home in the early hours of the morning. I detoured past the beach, where the sea continued to aggravate the shore. The night was rough. Too rough for a small boat, even one with a full load of fuel on board.
I curled up in my tent for a few hours, listening to the wind and the waves. My resentment of the natural and human forces that had plagued me with their quirky wiles nagged at me constantly. Sleep had become little more than a collection of short naps interspersed with wide-awake frustration. That night was no exception.
The coming day was no exception either. The wind howled through Kivalina. The sea pounded the shoreline. For me, it was another day of pacing the sea front, of drinking coffee, of frustration. I had fuel on board and I was ready to move. The weather once again worked against me.
“I’m leaving tomorrow no matter what the weather brings,” I told Sylvester over a late-night coffee.
He nodded thoughtfully. “I think it will be better in the morning,” he announced.
Before the village woke up, Audacity was loaded and ready to go. Sitting lower than usual on the lagoon due to the additional burden of gasoline, she tugged lightly at her mooring, obeying the early morning wind. Shielded by the houses to an extent, the lagoon was reasonably calm. Still, the wind pushed Audacity around and teased the lagoon into choppy waves. I felt no concern. I had my fuel, and that was all that mattered. We carried in excess of 180 litres, enough to take me 20 hours onward without a stop. If the weather behaved for a change, Point Lay was well within my reach.
Sylvester came out of his house zipping up his parka. “Good morning, Tony,” he called. “Weather’s not so good yet.”
Side by side we crossed the village to look at the sea. Once clear of the buildings, we braced ourselves against the onshore wind. The sea was white with spray; breaking waves were higher than my shoulders.
“That’s still too rough. We wouldn’t go out in that. Too dangerous for us,” he cautioned.
The Arctic insists on considerable respect from those who live within its boundaries, and much more from those who only cross its threshold for a limited time. For the most part, the Inupiat bow to its demands. Sylvester reminded me to be respectful and to wait until the sea was ready for me. Chester joined us. He and Sylvester traded a few sentences in rapid Inupiaq. The topic was obviously me, and the weather. Deliberately I walked away, following the shore, gauging the breaking waves, wondering if I could get out of the lagoon safely and motor to sea, where the violence would be less. The need to get moving, to reach the ice before it too ground into the coast, worried at my soul. My friends caught up with me, their rubber boots crunching on the hard gravel as they approached. Sylvester touched my arm.
“It’s too dangerous, Tony,” he warned again. “Wait for a few hours.”
“I know,” I answered with a flash of temper, “never go out on tahik [the sea] when angnik [a storm] is raging.”
Chester flinched and took a step backwards. Sylvester held his ground. He looked me in the eyes with sadness written on his face.
“I’m sorry,” I said, instantly regretting my outburst, “I’m just so damned frustrated with everything that’s happened so far.”
Why was I so impatient to get to the ice? It was a death trap. Huge expeditions had foundered in the Arctic, some lost without trace. The ice was dangerous. After all the problems created by successive coastal storms and the lack of gasoline, I didn’t need the additional aggravation of being trapped by the ice of approaching winter. So why was I being so stubborn? Why did I insist on looking for trouble? Would I never learn?
Once in Afghanistan, while travelling alone in my Land Rover, I attempted to drive deep into the Hindu Kush along a barely marked camel trail. It was a magnificent experience in that I met a camel caravan of traders and was in the midst of primitive rough-hewn beauty. The downside was that I shredded two expensive tires on sharp rocks and lost a few days to repairs and extricating myself from a canyon that narrowed to a defile no wider than a loaded dromedary.
On the Alaskan coast, I was just about as far from Afghanistan as I could get and was on a cold sea instead of in hot, mountainous terrain, but the dangers were just as real. For hundreds of years the west and north coasts of Alaska have watched scattered flotillas of vessels pass, en route to and from the ice. From wooden sailing ships to powerful modern icebreakers, all have, at one time or another, been beset by ice. I later learned that while I was stamping up and down a western Alaska beach in abject frustration, a fleet of ships within easy reach of the polar pack was trapped in harbours farther north. Tugs and barges, exploration vessels, dredges, dry docks, supply ships and a host of others crowded the waterfronts from Prudhoe Bay and Barrow to Tuktoyaktuk. After an exceptionally harsh winter, the cold abated for only a short time, allowing a hint of summer to brighten the Northwest Passage. However, the ice continued to lie close in through August. Only ice-strengthened vessels could move freely. The conditions were identical to those reported by Roald Amundsen in 1906 and similar to those that trapped the whaling ships in 1897. Bad!
While I prepared to leave Kivalina, new ice, or first-year ice, was already forming along leads of open water on the north coast. Impatient to possess the land and sea once more, winter pushed summer south, tightening its own grip on the north. The coastal storms were becoming more frequent, more violent. They would be followed by the relentless polar ice pack until the Arctic Ocean, Chukchi Sea and Bering Strait were solid once more.
Just over two hundred years earlier, Captain James Cook had experienced impassable ice conditions off the northwest coast of Alaska. Cook, in command of the sloops Resolution and Discovery, had sailed out of Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island in the spring of 1778. His commission was to search for a western entrance to the Northwest Passage. Among his officers was the redoubtable William Bligh, later to be forever tainted by the Bounty mutiny. Cook made Bligh master of the Resolution. Also on board Resolution was a young midshipman named George Vancouver.
Cook’s two ships followed much the same course as I did, 206 years later, from the vicinity of Nome to the Bering Strait. I left Nome on August 1. Cook’s ships were a short distance south on August 4. Our courses paralleled each other, both keeping within sight of land, to the cape that Cook named for the Prince of Wales. The Resolution and Discovery didn’t reach the cape until August 9. Charting the coast as they went, the two ships travelled considerably more slowly than I did in Audacity. Neither Cook, nor any member of his crews, landed at Wales. Instead poor weather drove them across the strait to the Siberian mainland. En route they passed close to the Diomede Islands, also without attempting a landing. Cook went ashore at St. Lawrence Bay for one day. It was the only time he set foot on Asian soil.
On August 11 the two ships crossed the strait again, north of the Diomede Islands this time, and anchored off the Alaskan coast west of Sarichef Island, site of present-day Shishmaref. Convinced he was at last into the Northwest Passage, with Baffin Bay but a few weeks sailing to the east, Cook tacked north into the Chukchi Sea. The ships fought gales every length of the way. Though it rained without let-up, one consolation was the absence of snow. On August 15 the sun finally shone long enough for the officers to take a sighting and calculate their latitude. They determined they were at 68° 18' N—roughly due west of present-day Point Hope. Two days later they reached 70° 33' N, 197° 41' E. Shortly after noon that day, off Icy Cape—which he named—Cook and his men saw the ice blinking at them through the mist, as the southern ice had done on earlier voyages to Antarctica.
The sight of the advancing polar pack must have been a bitter disappointment. In mid-afternoon the ships were confronted by a wall of solid white and blue ice towering three to four metres high. Dominating the horizon ahead, it stretched equal distances to port and starboard. There was no way two wooden vessels could force their way through such an impenetrable barrier.
Only Cook’s superb seamanship averted disaster. With the awesome crushing power of the ice bearing down on them and the deadly rocks of Blossom Shoals much too close, Cook manoeuvred his ships to open water. Then, inexplicably, northwest of Icy Cape, he decided to take a closer look at the ice, risking his ships once again. He found the pack had drifted some 15 nautical miles (28 kilometres) farther south in just 10 hours.
Unlike the land, which had shown no sign of life, the ice was covered by a vast congregation of walruses. Though Cook’s crews shot many, as a food supply they were not popular with the sailors. The fatty oils upset stomachs and the taste revolted almost all, no matter what tricks the “culinary experts” on board tried. And they reportedly tried everything from boiling to stewing the unpalatable meat.
With no hope of continuing north, Cook sailed his ships west to Siberia to attempt a voyage through the Northeast Passage. Once again he was stopped. That route was also choked with ice. The Resolution and Discovery retreated through the Bering Strait and into Norton Sound before sailing farther south for warmer latitudes. A few months later, in February 1779, Captain James Cook, perhaps the greatest navigator the world has ever known, was murdered by Natives in the Sandwich Islands.
The Northwest Passage is definitely trouble. If the coastal storms and the winds and waves don’t combine to defeat an intruder, the ice is always there as a last line of defence. The storms, the winds and the waves had challenged me with their havoc. So far I had not done too badly. Wary of letting hubris dictate my actions, I accepted that there could be worse gales on the way. Beyond them, the ice waited. Although the pack ice represented a new set of dangers and more potential trouble for Audacity, I was convinced I could get there to confront it within a few days. In spite of the obstacles, I was eager to move and, I believed, was ready for anything.
Captain Cook encountered the polar ice near Icy Cape on August 17, 1778. On that date more than two centuries later, the Kotzebue marine forecast predicted the power of the winds would abate. The seas were expected to subside to a relative calm by mid-afternoon. It was a reasonably favourable report, I felt, in spite of what Sylvester had warned. Rather than wait any longer, I chose to leave immediately, while I had the opportunity.
Quickly I said my farewells to the friends who had made Kivalina such a memorable place for me. I placed no blame on them for the fuel problems. Without exception they had made me welcome. Without reservation they had taken me into their homes and into their hearts. I knew I would miss their smiling faces and laconic speech. The warmth of their friendship, however, would go with me. They, in their turn, were reluctant to see me leave.
I left Kivalina for the second time at 9:33 AM with full tanks, determined to travel as far as possible while the calmer weather approached and, if the prognosis was correct, held for a while. By then I considered myself an expert at navigating the sandbars on leaving the lagoon. Keeping close to shore, following the only deep channel, I avoided the white water. With a final wave to my worried friends Chester and Sylvester, the only ones braving the weather to stand at the shoreline and watch my departure, I called out, “Tayku Kivalina meet” (Thank you, people of Kivalina) as I passed. The wind stole my words and swept them to sea. I opened the throttle wide and Audacity responded. Within minutes Kivalina’s buildings faded to ghostly outlines. Seconds later they were lost in the mist behind me.
The seas continued to be heavy, with rolling swells about one and a half metres high. A light rain fell. Winds were also lessening, blowing from the southeast. Breathing a sigh of relief, happy to be back on the sea and driving for the north with full tanks, I settled down for a long day, a long journey that, if all went well, would take me past Cape Lisburne to a safe landfall somewhere along Ledyard Bay in the evening. If, for a change, all went well, I would spend roughly 16 to 20 hours at sea and cover up to 300 nautical miles (550 kilometres). Considering my daily runs to date, it was an ambitious expectation. My mind, however, was clouded by desperation. I had forgotten, momentarily, that everything, as always in Alaska, depended on the weather.
Though the seas were difficult to handle, I pushed Audacity forward as hard as I could. Cruising at speed, with the occasional leap off building waves, we were able to keep upright and make headway without too many frights.
The gusting wind, which varied from a breeze to a hard blow, veered lazily from a southeasterly direction and began to hit us from the southwest. Abandoning its occasional lethargy, and completely ignoring the meteorologists’ predictions, it stiffened, its speed increasing noticeably. The swells got bigger. Seas began to climb. Whitecaps rose to glisten under the morbid grey sky.
Audacity found it heavy going. Our speed, which varied in direct proportion to the weather conditions, quickly dropped from nearly 15 knots, to 10, then lower still. The Arctic Ocean was determined to disrupt my voyage at every opportunity. Equally resolute, I fought back, refusing to be intimidated by wind or waves. I scanned the coast every few minutes, hoping the bears might oblige by appearing on a beach or a headland. They remained hidden.
I have come to believe that the sea and the land are constantly at odds. While the land does its best to rebuff the fury its neighbour regularly bestows on it, the sea continues its attacks. The oceans of the world remorselessly leave their marks on the land, as they have done since time began. Along Alaska’s coasts, where the sea is ever angry and the land is strong and resilient, the waters attempting to whittle at the shore have, so far, managed to carve little more than their initials.
Scanning the land and the sea alternately, I was aware that the threat of failure still haunted me. My initial goal had always been to get far beyond Barrow, preferably to Tuktoyaktuk, before I was stopped for the season. Already the summer was advanced. Constant storms and fuel delays had slowed my passage to a crawl. And the pack ice was preparing to invade Barrow.
“Just one day at a time.” I persuaded myself not to think too far ahead, knowing I was unlikely to get beyond Point Barrow that summer.
With Cape Thompson in sight, I switched to a smaller auxiliary tank, simply because it was closer to my seat. It would give me enough fuel to pass well beyond Point Hope. Off the cape the seas lumped together, reaching two and a half to three metres in height. The puffins and gulls skimmed the waves, riding the wind, playing chicken with the cliffs and with Audacity. The delightful murres scuttled over the surface, inverting themselves to inelegantly show their bottoms as we passed. My hands and arms began to ache from the thumping as they strained to keep Audacity on an even keel. The thought of another 10 hours or more at sea in those conditions filled me with dread. Not for the first time, I cursed the meteorologists’ inexact science as it applies to Alaska’s Arctic waters.
Audacity came abeam of the south side of Point Hope at 3:00 PM It had taken me five and a half gruelling hours—the longest run between the two villages so far. A rising wind blew gustily onshore. Whitecaps raced to destruction on the steeply sloping wall of rounded pebbles where I had hauled out. A supply barge was tucked tightly, stern first, up against the land. About a hundred metres out, its attendant tug stood bow-on to the waves, facing the coming storm. Dark clouds turned daylight to twilight, menacing the land and encouraging the sea. Chris Volkle’s hand-drawn chart was of little use to me that day. It only gave the bearings of the old village and the new one as they related to a shipwreck some distance offshore.
Common sense dictated that continuing under those appalling conditions was out of the question, tantamount to suicide. I had to find shelter somewhere. But, once again, there was no way I could get Audacity to safety without help. For a moment I considered attempting a leap ashore with the painter. I could tie it off to the barge and sit the storm out while my boat battered itself to shreds. Without taking the thought too far, I rejected it as inherently dangerous. My chances of getting to dry land without being washed off by the next wave were not great.
Turning Audacity in her own length, I ran back along the coast toward Cape Thompson. Keeping as close to land as possible, I searched for any potential beaching spot. There was nothing. My futile attempt had only wasted more time. The one route open to me was to round the point and follow the coast for a few kilometres until I reached the river mouth. From there, with a little luck, it should be an easy run through the lagoon. Surely I would find a suitable mound there to use as a windbreak for my camp until the storm blew itself out. Once again we turned to the west. Keeping the speed down, I held Audacity on course past the barge.
I always knew the voyage would be tough. Arctic waters in any season are no place for complacency. Expecting a rough time, I was prepared for it. I had anticipated constant anxious moments once we found ourselves in the midst of the ice as the wind batted the floes from one direction to another. I just hadn’t expected to have so much trouble with storms during the first couple of weeks. The sea is neither friend nor foe. Though it is most assuredly alive, it has no capacity for expressing feelings either way. It simply does what the wind wants it to do. The weather isn’t really an enemy either, although I looked upon it as such from day one. It’s more of an inconsiderate adversary at times, forcing its will on the wind. Playful one minute, gone the next and then roaring back, bent on wreaking havoc wherever it blows, the wind’s lack of consistency gave me a hard time, day after day.
The wind and driving rain reduced visibility. It looked as if the sea off the point was flowing south, driven by a strong wind from the polar ice cap. But that couldn’t be, unless the wind was blowing in more than one direction at the same time. From where I sat, low down in Audacity, it seemed the wind was blowing from the southwest toward the northeast. Which is exactly what I wanted, although 15 or 20 knots less would have been preferable.
Remembering the extended sandbar from my previous visit, I slowed the motor until it was just ticking over. Easing out to sea a ways, I assessed my chances. Slim, I accepted, but with Audacity under me and experience behind, we should be able to make it. With the utmost concentration, keeping my eyes on the surf breaking on the bar, I steered due west, aiming initially at Siberia.
The sea was really confused, swirling in all directions at once, white with its own spray. I added more power. The wind appeared to be blowing in circles, like a miniature tropical storm, an embryonic Arctic hurricane. I didn’t like the look of it at all. I began to feel trapped. Indecisive. Scared.
“Let’s go back,” I told myself, turning Audacity’s wheel as I made the decision. Somewhere, I hoped, there was a place to land, a place I had missed. I followed the shore past the barge. The tug was steady at sea, rising and falling with the incoming swells. Once again I thought about tying up to the barge, but a close look revealed there was nothing to tie to. My loud shouts bounced off the thick steel hull. There was no one on board. I thought about pulling alongside the tug and asking for help. I did neither. The combination of wind, sea and ship would only damage Audacity, perhaps irrevocably.
“This is my problem,” I reminded myself. “Now let’s see it through the way I started. The way it was planned.”
I was well aware that, with this expedition, I had probably bitten off more than I could chew. Having done so, I had no choice but to swallow and go on. While Audacity rolled with the unstoppable motion, I tied the tarpaulin tightly over the space between the back of my seat and the motor. A check on my lifeline showed it was attached and in good condition. The cord for the kill switch stretched from my ankle to the ignition. My personal gear was stowed mostly under the foredeck. One kit bag was tied to the seat beside me. Underneath, wrapped securely in plastic, my camera equipment and films were out of harm’s way. My two wooden paddles were stationed to left and right. Each tucked down beside the seat against the two main pontoons. Easily accessible if needed, they were well out of the way when not in use.
In the doubtful shelter of the barge’s port side, I switched fuel tanks again. There was no sign of any improvement in the weather. With no guarantee that the river and the lagoon would be accessible, I needed the biggest tank with the most fuel in case I had to fight my way north. Ready for the worst the sea could throw at me, I restarted the motor.
For a few seconds Audacity wallowed in the swells beside the barge, waiting for her reluctant captain to commit himself to serious action. My raw nerves began to complain loudly again. To drown the internal screaming, my hand opened the throttle and Audacity responded immediately, infinitely more willing than I.
We turned again, back to the point and the open sea. The tug and barge fell rapidly away behind. The land flattened and the sea took advantage, bombarding it furiously. Knowing my choices were limited, I went hard for the point.
West of the elongated sandbar, the sea settled into great brown and grey combers, and they were definitely running south. The wind, which had been blowing onshore south of Point Hope, still circled. Once well clear of the maelstrom on the sandbar, I turned north and steered into the approaching waves. Howling abuse at me, the wind blew straight in my face, out of the north again.
There’s nothing to slow or stop the wind and its companion waves north of Point Hope. Stuck out there, nearly 165° west of Greenwich, a straight line leads north to just one place: the spot on Earth where everything is south—the North Pole. In between there’s only the Arctic Ocean, of which the Chukchi Sea is but a part. That August day, while the increasingly malevolent north wind blew the sea before it, the polar ice sat tight against the coast two days’ run ahead. Already the pack was thickening, advancing south, following the storms, eager to join the fray. The sea, which never gets warm in those high latitudes, was cooling to the point where it would soon become slush, the natural forerunner of solid ice.
Crossing the southbound swells and turning into the wind was a bit like joining a roller coaster at speed. It was at once nerve-wracking and supremely exhilarating. Unlike a roller coaster, though, it was a ride I couldn’t get off and one that would not stop.
The troughs between the giant waves were long, almost gentle, at first. Once I was safely over the first summit, I settled into a rhythm. Coast down the back of one. Cruise sedately north for a few minutes, begin the rise—feeling the power as the wave lifted me on high—race to the next peak before the wave broke and start all over again.
In the simplest terms, a wave at sea is a natural pattern of wind-controlled behaviour flowing across water. It is not a high point of water travelling across the sea until it breaks on a shore. The water we see foaming, rolling, plunging onto a beach does not arrive with a wave. All that excited water is already there, stationed at the shore since the last tide. The breaking waves arrive independently.
I watched each successive wave approach, unable to define much difference—if any—between them. They all spelled danger to me. Each one reared up in front of Audacity, picked us up, held us in its embrace for as long as it needed, let us slide down its back. Intimidating though they were, as long as they behaved in a uniform manner, with no surprises, I knew I could stay afloat.
To starboard, the land was just visible, falling off, receding behind the rain. We were beyond the point. I began my turn. The only way to safety was diagonally across the incoming seas. My course would, inevitably, take me farther and farther from shore until I was in line with the river mouth. From that position I would have to surf all the way in on the back of a wave. Slowly we made our way along the north shore behind Point Hope. The seas marched south, huge and threatening under a sombre sky.
The waves, as always, were breaking closer in. They were steeper, more concave, more menacing. I kept angling away, keeping clear of the worst of the turbulence, rising and falling with the never-ending motion. On top of each wave I was exposed to the full force of the wind and the rain. The light, which had been feeble for a couple of hours, began to fail as the afternoon prepared to change into sober evening garb. The clouds darkened, thickened. Occasionally I stood up to get my bearings, searching for any sign of the river mouth that leads to Marryat Lagoon. At such times I had to hold the steering wheel with one hand and brace the other on the dashboard for stability.
Although I couldn’t see the lagoon entrance, I estimated I was approximately due north of it and about one nautical mile (nearly two kilometres) from shore. To the east, a span of high granite cliffs, topped by barren rounded hills, ranged north to Cape Dyer and Cape Lisburne. They are, effectively, part of the final northerly reach of the great Rocky Mountains.
Coming off the top of one large roller, half drowned in the agitated foam at the crest, I saw the monster. For a second I couldn’t believe my eyes. I couldn’t believe my ears. Like an express locomotive at full speed, the rogue wave roared toward me. My horizons filled with water. The wave dominated my sight. The noise jamming my ears threatened to split my skull. In a welter of freezing foam, with absolute terror not a second away, we powered through the tumult toward the summit. Gleaming like polished steel, the wave threw its redoubtable bulk at us.
All waves grow higher as they get close to shallow water. They get higher and then they break. Rogue waves (my terminology) are large swells created by faraway disturbances, such as storms. They can travel vast distances in a relatively short period of time. When they reach shallow water, usually close to land, they, like other waves, get bigger and bigger.
This giant attacked. Picking us up, it shook Audacity violently. Buffeted by wind and breaking crests, I gave her full throttle and streaked diagonally skywards. We acquitted ourselves well. Audacity broke through the snowy white disturbance and screamed into the temporary haven of the following trough. Foiled by the unexpected bravado of an insignificant man and a miniature boat, the disgruntled wave raced south to vent its fury on the Alaskan shore. I wondered how many crushing tonnes of water had just passed under us, separated from me by only the thickness of Audacity’s skin and my seat. One after another the army of huge waves took its place, each bent on destruction. Audacity valiantly fought them off.
The storm’s intensity shook me to my core. Waves fought waves. The sea fought the wind. The wind retaliated. I was caught in the middle and everything attacked me. Knowing that the storm was wild enough to easily wreck small ships, I was terrified. The physical strain of keeping Audacity going was taking its toll. My strength was deteriorating by the minute. The mental effort needed to overcome each obstacle sapped my rapidly decreasing morale. Constantly thrown from side to side, I was battered and bruised from contact with the dashboard and the wheel. My hands and arms threatened to seize up as overworked muscles voted to go on strike. Survival was the only thought in my mind. That and the need to control the fear building inside me. Mastering my fear was the first step in the process of staying alive.
“Surely it can’t get any worse than this,” I told myself as we were bucked off another foaming peak. “We’ll make it. The river can’t be much farther now.”
The outboard motor’s brittle voice was all but lost in the shrieking wind. I cut back on the power as we surfed down the wave’s back. The trough gave me a few seconds to catch my breath. Another monster approached, lazily, as if it had all the time in the world. My hand pushed the throttle all the way forward, and Audacity kicked into action without hesitation. Again we attacked. Swallowing hard, with lips pressed tightly together, knuckles white under my gauntlets, I raced to meet the latest adversary.
At first we did well. Audacity took the initiative at a perfect angle. The wave was gigantic and moving at high speed. It carried us along, a speck of flotsam to be played with. The motor spun the propeller at full speed. Triple blades dug into the water as I held the throttle open. We almost made it to the top. Within reach of the sky, we got hit hard.
When thousands of tonnes of fast-moving water hit more heavy, fast-moving water, the force of the impact is cataclysmic. With a clap like thunder, the breaker slammed into a wave rebounding off the invisible cliffs, creating a diabolical confusion of breaking waves and spindrift.
Swamped by seas and cross-seas attacking from all angles, blasted by yet another giant wave, Audacity began to slew sideways, to slide, to roll. With the steering wheel and throttle, I fought to correct the disastrous motion. It was impossible. The elements had taken complete charge. Audacity was out of control.
The virulent wave, which itself had only minutes left to live before demolishing its bulk on Alaskan soil, flexed its enormous wind-honed muscles. Heaving, rolling, blustering, it curled over us, sucking us up into its creamy peak. Hissing venomously and roaring with arrogance, it spat us out.
“Oh no, she’s going over.” The silent words, shouted in mental anguish yet unspoken, set my nerves screaming anew. Before I could take any form of evasive action, Audacity capsized.
The already deafening noise increased as we tumbled with the breaking wave. Audacity and I were separated, except for a short umbilical cord, as the wave hurled me into the deathly cold waters of the Arctic Ocean. The kill-switch worked perfectly. As Audacity turned over and I was cast out, the line tightened, broke the connection. The engine stopped. Severe injury from a spinning propeller was averted, as planned.
I hit the water hard, from a great height, going deep, head first. Audacity hit a fraction of a second later.
My lifeline held this time. It kept me tethered to the boat and prevented my being swept away. I pulled myself up its length to surface inside Audacity’s hull. Anticipating air—there’s usually air trapped in pockets in an upturned boat—I literally kissed the floorboards. No air. Not a breath. There was just icy salt water below a tight umbrella of yellow. I was trapped underneath and I knew that this time I would drown in the Arctic. I was back in that nightmare.