"Adventure is just bad planning"
- Roald Amundsen
Our home for the length of this expedition will be 17.5 feet of beauty. Simple and seaworthy, the Norseboat 17.5 is designed with classic lines. Dual sliding rowing seats and a performance sailing rig enable it to be sailed and rowed equally well.
Custom modifications, thanks to Kevin and the team at Norseboat, mean this boat may put up with the rigors of 2000 miles of Arctic wilderness better than Cam & Matt will.
Navigating safely through the ice pack, Arctic storms and polar bear country are just a few of the other challenges Cam and Matt will have to overcome. Follow our blog to see our planning and preparations for dealing with these and a myriad of other challenges along the way.
The 11th hour
There’s a cadence to all good stories…which unfortunately happens to include massive dramas in the 11th hour. Judging by all the things that have gone wrong for us, and around us, lately we must have entered that magic hour.
It started a week of two back with the owner of our company falling off a mountain in France, whilst skiing some gnarly couloir. That landed him in ICU in a French hospital, where he still sits today on a slow road to recovery. Enter Matt and I to take on his additional workload, just when we wanted to be winding things down and focus on the expedition.
Combine this with some suppliers not fulfilling their promises, plenty of international travel for work, and you’ve got a whole lotta stress. I did a quick ‘to do’ list the other day, and without too much thinking got to 119 jobs that need to be done.
The good news is Matt and I got to spend a few days together this week in Singapore whilst delivering a program for a client…i keep telling him we shouldn’t be speaking to each other anyway, as we need to save up our stories to share when we are out on the water…but keeping Matty’s mouth shut is a more serious challenge than rowing the NW Passage.
Now Matt’s in Japan sipping sake and eating sushi, whilst i’m off to France to fatten up on some fine French cuisine. Bring it on i badly need some blubber on my bones as an insurance policy for up there.
The other good news is the breakup of the ice up north has started, with the latest ice charts showing the pack ice breaking away in a few places.
Go Beyond,
~ Cam
Tuesday July 2nd, 2013
Yesterday we were told the ‘prudent thing’ to do would be to call off the expedition…two days before leaving San Francisco and less than two weeks before launching the boat into the Arctic waters. Why? Well as usual it’s a story of heroes and villains, and Matt and I in the middle.
I have been told all my life i am stubborn…i never really saw it, or maybe didn’t want to see it. But over the past 10 days i have really got a good glimpse at how stubborn i really am, or at least can be when i need to. I have also seen just how stubborn Matt and I will need to be to be successful on this adventure.
We may not have had to opportunity to do the physical training we wanted for the expedition, but we sure have had many opportunities to tone up our mental stubbornness.
Our latest drama has been an egg shell thin hull and leaking boat…kind of a big deal on an ocean adventure like this. The story started a few months back when we last had the boat in the water. Over the course of a 7 hour training voyage we had to bail out the rear storage compartment 4 or 5 times. It was clear we had a decent leak, it just wasn’t clear from where. So we gave the boat, and a long list of modifications, to the hero of this story — Billy @ Maas Rowing Company — to remedy the problem. Unfortunately the problem unravelled, rather than remedied.
Billy found the leaky culprit, a small hole, but then also found we had an egg shell thin hull, as opposed to the extra strengthened one we had ordered. That led to the discovery that our floatation compartments — sections of the boat that are supposed to be filled with foam and sealed so the boat will float even if it is filled with water — had in fact not been sealed at the factory and were full of water. Let’s just say there’s been a few interesting calls to the villains of the day, the company who made the boat.
So right now, two days before we hoped to be starting to head north, the boat has been stripped back bare, again, and we are adding more fiberglass inside the hull, where we can,…and sealing off the floatation compartments, and adding more buoyancy. It’s not an ideal solution to the problem — the hull will still be thin in places and we will still be hitting ice in the water, and dragging the boat up and down rocky beaches almost daily — but it will give us more margin for error in an environment not that forgiving on errors.
There are going to be times when Matt and I want to quit. This is not one of them. Stubbornness has a bad reputation, but at the moment it’s all that’s holding our expedition together…that and our man Billy, the man is a genius.
Go Beyond
~ Cam
Website: http://www.beyondthecircle.com/
WHO ARE THESE ADVENTURERS?
CAMERON WEBB
Cameron is a Lead Facilitator, Executive Coach and Strategic Program Designer with Peak Teams Group.
In this capacity he has partnered with organizations all over the world to deliver high impact customized leadership and team development programs that:
- Drive and lead through change
- Build and maintain high performance cultures
- Attract and retain key talent
- Engage and align teams
Cameron offers a wealth of powerful knowledge and experiences gained from a professional history spanning Consultancy, Marketing and Environmental industries.
As an adventurer Cameron has lead teams to the far reaches of the globe; including Antarctica and the Arctic.
Originally from Australia, since 2009 he has called the San Francisco Bay area home.
In this capacity he has partnered with organizations all over the world to deliver high impact customized leadership and team development programs that:
- Drive and lead through change
- Build and maintain high performance cultures
- Attract and retain key talent
- Engage and align teams
Cameron offers a wealth of powerful knowledge and experiences gained from a professional history spanning Consultancy, Marketing and Environmental industries.
As an adventurer Cameron has lead teams to the far reaches of the globe; including Antarctica and the Arctic.
Originally from Australia, since 2009 he has called the San Francisco Bay area home.
For over a decade Matt has been part of and led expeditions to some of the wildest and most spectacular places on earth.
Along the way he has sailed small yachts to Antarctica and ski expeditions in the High Arctic.
Originally hailing from Sydney, Matt is now based in San Francisco, California, where he works as a keynote speaker and facilitator for Peak Teams Group.
BOTTOM LINE - STOP AND REGROUP FOR NEXT YEAR - YOU, YOUR PARTNER AND YOUR BOAT ARE NOT READY FOR 2013.(period)
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