Mike Mate

Our transit from Sweden to Finland was Heaven sent – a break from four weeks of underwater documentation – numbers on board reduced from 32 to 15 crew. Winds were against us to start and by the time we reached Gotland – on the East coast of Sweden – had died away. We anchored off Gotska Sandon, an island with sandy beaches north of Gotland, for one night – waiting for the right wind, which was forecast. I watched an hour or more of slow green sunset, not a breath of wind, half-a-mile off the beach. That evening, in the mess-room at dinner time, we lingered our conversations in the peace. The next morning it came from the South-West, fresh. We sailed off the anchor and the spinnaker filled with a following breeze. We have reached Finland where a company ‘Neste Oil’ is increasing its production of refined Palm Oil – proclaiming it as sustainable, the renewable solution. Palm Oil comes at the price of old-forest and the price of blue-sky. In preparation to grow palms, farmers burn the peat-land (up to 15 meters deep) and it takes a monsoon to put out the fire – making Indonesia the third largest emitter of CO2 in the world. Thirty-five miles east of Helsinki is the refinery – I could see the chimneys from ten miles away – as Rainbow Warrior steamed closer she was joined by three Navy War Ships (there to protect the interests of government). There was also a coast-guard vessel in the north anchorage of the refinery and many zodiacs with uniforms in the water, and so, unable to reach the anchorage, I anchored directly in front of the refinery. Helsinki Traffic was all right about this, after I had informed them. There is a wonderful traffic management service through the archipelago – and it has been a joy to navigate between the thousands of Finnish islands without pilot. All we have done is hold a press conference, and we have left Rainbow Warrior to cast the spell. It is the first time that this boat has visited Finland.

Just north of Anholt, a small Danish island in the Kattegat Sea, lies an area marked on the chart as ‘Sanden’. On the Swedish side of Sanden lie two banks, Fladen and Lille Middelgrund, those have been our camera focus for the past week. At times we have drifted across with only four meters of water beneath the keel. We found kelp forests, merle beds, bubble reefs and large swathes of sand where the sea-pens and dead-mans-fingers have been trawled away. The snag happened on the Danish side of Sanden in a ‘Nature 2000 Designated Area’ – an area of important ecological value that needs to be protected. Nearing midnight at the end of a dramatic sweep, the camera flying just a couple of meters above the sea-bed – due to poor visibility – we got caught. In less than an hour we had documented four spookey-nets (ghost nets, lost trawls that fish for eternity). The fifth ghost-net popped into view, up camera, up, up, up. Winch lever on full reverse. The net settled over the lens. Camera tore at it, tried to get away, took a tumble, ploughed into the sandy bottom, bounced. A mean rope then passed across the screen and stayed there, the camera stopped. Winch lever flipped to full forward, paying out cable as the Rainbow Warrior drifted away from the snagged camera. Engine came on in less than two minutes, but as I came astern the wind called and guided the Rainbow Warrior over the top of the cable. I clutched-out, to avoid fouling the propeller, and ran to the bow to release the anchor. We came to a swinging stop 470 meters away from the camera – only 30 meters of cable left on the winch-drum. In the morning divers traced the cable to the camera, snagged in 20 meters of water. they cut away at the ghost net and brought the camera to the surface. Contacts cleaned, lights checked, camera rolling. Back into the water.

Easter Sunday sun has risen, I sip from a cup of coffee. Thom is running down the quay. He has the long boat hook in his hands. Floating away off the stern is the wooden model of Rainbow Warrior (used for sail training). She is over on her side, bobbing in the still water, like some lost child’s toy. How? Out of reach of the boat hook, I throw the heaving line and on my second attempt I catch her by the rudder. Pull her back to safety. She has lost a couple of sails and the blue spinnaker, but is resurrected from the deep. We have a choice: We can find out why, how. Or, we can be thankful for her return on an auspicious day. It is great mystery.

I have a day-off and share it with Maite and Lisa in Gotteberg – cobbled streets, fashioned brass street-lamps, large buildings with small bricks, a terrace – cappuccino and pastry. Slowly we walk through a park – red squirrels – to reach the Botanical Gardens. Life forms rise out of the naked earth – shy buds on bare branches and the first brave colourful blooms. I take time and spend it gazing into blues, reds, yellows, primary colours. I don’t ask why, but I trust that there is communication beyond my intellect. The solutions to the problems facing us today may only be solved if we allow ourselves to evolve to a different level of consciousness to that we were at when we pioneered those problems.

I see a vessel with striped funnels moving behind an island – ferry. A quick assessment leaves no room for her and Rainbow Warrior to pass between the rocks leading to Stromberg on the west coast of Sweden. Full astern! I pull out of our approach and give way – barely enough sea room to do this in and a gale force seven helping us towards those rocks. I think of the two-day fog we’ve just had whilst documenting corals on Oslo Fjord, ‘couldn’t do this in that’. Then, following a slalom course between red and green buoys to the small yacht harbour, there is a damn fishing boat on our allocated berth. Force seven, no harbour-master answering on VHF 16. A red rescue boat hears me calling and investigates on my behalf. I pull out of the approach, swing hard-to-starboard – barely room enough to swing a cat, let alone Rainbow Warrior. Back out through the slalom we go, waiting for the fishing boat to move. ‘It has to come in sets of three’, I am aware of my thoughts, and indeed it does.

With the fishing boat out the way there still isn’t enough room for the Rainbow Warrior. ‘Only 50 meters,’ calls out Amrit, who has landed to take the lines. ‘The turn is too tight’, Fernando advises – he’s driving the zodiac and has gone ahead to look. It’s a force seven from the south-west, the Swedish flag tears away from the halyard. I re-measure the scale on the chart and realise that what I’ve been taking for one-cable in distance, is only half. But I’ve got the old girl into some tight spots before – I’m confident and put the throttle ahead. Pep primes the crew – ‘there is no room for erorrr’ – everyone to mooring stations.

Number three comes – entering the marina – there is less room then the chart depicts, half of it has been developed into a board-walk – with little flashy white yachts catching the evening sunshine. How to turn a bath-tub inside a bath of water? We did, with the help of both main engines and our 200hp tug. I did this with a crew that did it with me. And what an incredible feeling it was to get it right, what a feeling it was to work together.

Ropes cast off in calm water, crew wave farewell to Campaign left behind on Alesunde dock, we leave harbour. Up ahead there are dark clouds and soon, as crew go about the deck stowing mooring lines for sea, the first flakes of snow fall. Pilot disembarks and I increase pitch on the engine to full speed, it gets darker, and then it goes white. Flurries of snow spin about the mast, sticking to the deck, piling up on bridge windows sills. Windscreen-wipers and clear-view-screens are battling to beat it away. Into the Norwegian sea and into the wind, some hail. Keep clear of the coast – there are ‘Dangerous Waves’, they’re marked on the sea-chart. Something about the oceanography, the way Norway seems surrounded by a deep moat and then rises out of the sea sharply. Rainbow Warrior is not just rolling, pitching, heaving, she is being slapped about. There are crashes and bangs, waves broke on top of her – we head further off the coast so that the mountains become small in the distance, then turn, set the sails and finish with the engine, it is Saturday.
On Sunday we motor through a calm while Gale Force Eight head winds (a Southerly), close in behind us. They eventually catch up as we round the South West tip of Norway, off Stavanger, its midnight. The course alteration, 60 degrees, leaves us a gale 50 degrees on the starboard bow – this is as close up to the wind as an old fishing boat can tack. Facing a lee shore, I am concerned, but it works, we stop engines and never start them again until just over two days later – before picking up the pilot in Oslo.
The Gale Eight was so strong that we had to take turns out of the boat to slow down – on Tuesday we tacked four times and jibbed eight in the Skagerak Sea. All told engine hours 29, distance 240 miles. Sailing hours 63, distance 300 miles – from Alesunde to Oslo.