Right boat for the job

Grahame Sisson, who designed and built my Arctic Raider kayak, recently sent me a couple of photos of Paul Caffyn and Conrad Edwards during their 2007, 691 mile (1,112 km) Greenland paddle from Isortoq down the SE coast of Grønland, to Prins Christian Sund, then westwards to Narsaq.

Grahame’s Nordkapp, a remodified version of Frank Goodman’s original Nordkapp (eg. pod seat, cockpit foredeck higher and a rudder), was used by Paul on his 1982 circumnavigation of Australia, and another around japan in 1985. It’s become Paul’s boat of choice, refined after every adventure.

What’s great about the two Nordkapps Paul and Conrad used in Greenland, is that these boats snap-in-half with twelve bolts keeping them together. Only then could Paul and Conrad fly the boats to their put in.

Grahame wrote me, “Just as well I increased the keel rovings three times normal—they were ramming the ice flows at sprint speed to come ashore for a wee wee!!!!”

Paul’s written a bit about the trip in the August-September 2007 KASK journal (pp16-17), with a couple of great cover photos.

Weekend reading

Just finished reading Bruce Henderson's 2005 book, True North: Peary, Cook, and the Race to the Pole. While more of an Antarctica nut (the Southern Hemisphere thing), I'll still read anything to do with snowy, cold, arduous, polar adventure. And this tale is no exception.

Must admit, I was completely ignorant of the race for the North Pole, or the "Big Nail" as it was named by the Eskimo tribes of Greenland. And this is a sadder race than most, with what appears to be a rewrite of history that seems fairly widely accepted now, that Dr. Frederick A. Cook did reach the North Pole first, and that Robert Peary may not even have done so at all.

On his return, Cook was asked, if deep down in his heart did he believe he had made his goal, and whether he had indeed set his foot right on the North Pole. His response made me smile: "Oh, I couldn't say that. I got to where there wasn't any latitude."

The saddest part of the entire tale is not only the behaviour of Peary during and after his last attempt for what he considered was rightfully only his to attain, but the despicable behaviour of his financial backers, his sponsors, who we know so well nowadays as pretty well integral to any modern expedition. Nothing was different even in the early twentieth century. Those businessmen belonging to the Peary Arctic Club and National Geographic, among others, destroyed the reputation of a seemingly honest man, even to the point of refuting Cook's earlier claim to being the first to summit Mt. McKinley. At least National Geographic later apologized for its actions, in 1988.

(Then again, what may really be the most saddest part of the book, is the warning that with the Arctic ice cap's current melting rate of 9% per decade as the world's climate grows warmer, that ice cap will disappear before the end of this century.)

But the tale of true adventure and hardship shines through for both Cook and Peary - nothing can detract from that. "Lost in a landless, spiritless world, in which the sky, the weather, the sun and all was a mystery," wrote Cook of his fears as he made his way.

And I also appreciate that the tale is yet not completely resolved, and may never be. Ah, the stuff of true adventure and hardship.