High Latitude Sailing

Sailing in cold waters (and that includes the UK and US in winter!) is challenging, but hugely rewarding. And when you venture into the high latitudes you find yourself in some of the world’s last real wilderness. Climate change has made these latitudes more accessible to small boats, and every year more sailors venture into areas like the North West Passage aboard their own yacht.

Many sailors, armchair and active, are intrigued about this newly ‘accessible’ region, where you can push your boundaries and find real adventure, and the lessons learned from sailing in more extreme conditions are invaluable to all – a lot of this advice is ‘gold dust’ to all sailors who keep their boat in the water for the quieter, often more beautiful winter season when more care has to be paid to the basics, and different measures taken to ensure safe sailing.

A mix of practical advice and narrative, this book offers hard-won wisdom on all aspects of sailing in colder waters and out of season:

- preparing yourself: establishing good routines, assessing risk, crew preparation
- preparing your boat: boat design, heating, engine, steering, anchors, electrics, clothes, weather
- sailing in ice: instrumentation, charts, useful extra gear, what to do when you get stuck
- safety: briefing checklists, MOB, polar bears, glaciers, dinghy safety
- communication: VHF, satellite, SSB
- weather: best websites, companies, interpreting GRIB files, reading ice charts, predicting fog
- anchoring and mooring: type and number of anchors, type and lengths of mooring line
- clothes: hiking and skiwear, the three-layer principle
- areas: Svalbard, Cape Horn, Antarctica, Ross Sea, South Georgia, Patagonia, Canada, Greenland, Iceland, as well as Ireland, Scotland etc
- North West Passage: account by Trond Aasvoll, with lessons learned
- North East Passage: account by Elena Solovyeva, with lessons learned

This book is an essential reference for any sailor considering venturing into the high latitudes, but also for all sailors using their boat in winter: the advice and tips here will help everyone prepare for the weather, and ensure skippers and crew have an enjoyable and rewarding experience.