I left Whitehills on the Moray Firth in the early afternoon of July 2nd, with the intention of sailing first to the north-west coast of Spitsbergen. In misty weather, but a beneficent easterly breeze, we made our way up the east coast of the Shetlands and struck out to the north.
Mingming II leaves Whitehills Photo: Bertie Milne The wind soon went round to the south-west and settled there, and so we ran on, day after day, with daily runs of up to nautical miles. As we made our northing the weather grew thicker and foggier. My good intentions for navigating celestially were soon dashed as the sun, moon, stars and anything remotely celestial disappeared behind a solid pall of murky cloud and stayed there for most of the voyage.
I had made my landfall at the same spot in the Corribee Mingming in under a brilliant blue sky with the toothy peaks of Spitsbergen spread right across the north-west horizon. This time there was nothing to see but cloying cloud. We made our way up the coast just a few miles offshore amongst a welter of fin whale spouts and whirring guillemots.
In the early morning of July 22nd I woke to find that the sky had, for the moment, cleared. The crazy, close-packed peaks and glaciers of Albert 1 Land were laid out end to end in perfect clarity. For the first time in the voyage I felt I was truly back in the Arctic. Off the coast of Albert 1 Land A cruise ship purred by a mile or two off, packed to the gunwales with its deep-sleeping and well-fed contingent. I was glad I was not amongst them. By now my chart was little more than an expanse of white, as we were in unsounded waters.
It was a wonderful, heady feeling to plough a wake through almost virgin sea. For a while we were becalmed and three fearless and inquisitive puffins came and examined Mingming II , paddling up close and staring quizzically at this strange and, for them, other-worldly contraption. This is a low doughnut of smooth granite just to the north of the cathedral-like buttresses of Little Table Island. The clear weather held, and in a fresh east-north-easterly and a deep indigo sea, we closed Ross Island and its sisters.
