Day 20 - New world record

Day 20, 23 June
Position: N 73,37678 , W 47.46996
Wind: 3-12 m/s
Distance covered (day): 518 km - A new world record

Damn, today we covered a long distance!!!

The day started with us still waiting for the wind which should have been here last evening. We had decided to sail as far as possible on 24 hours when the wind conditions and forecasts were good, but because of several days without any wind we had reached our deadline. We now had to sail on whatever wind that came.

The preparation for the night sailing was each of us eating two portions of Real Turmat (dried food) and Hugo telling all of the dirty jokes he had learned in northern Norway.

A few hours into the night the wind came from E/SE, which was the opposite from the forecast. At 03.15 we launched our biggest kites (Libre Speedy II 14 m2 on 60 meter lines). After a short while the wind picked up. When we after a couple of hours had to lay down our kites we measured the wind to more than 10 m/s. On this leg the power in the kites was so formidable that we could not keep our planned course. We were heading in a too much west, a course leading off the glacier to an area with dangerous crevasses.

To kite long distances with a heavy sledge involves having more power in the kite than what one normally is comfortable with. A heavy sledge reduces the speed considerable compared to kiting without a sledge. In order to compensate one have to use bigger kites. The feeling of kiting with so much power can be compared by riding a horse one can not control: You are just not in control of everything. You can partly influence the speed and direction, and you can fight not to fall off. For us this overpowered session gave us a feeling of flying from bump to bump.

The first session was cold. It was minus 20 degrees Celsius in effective temperature (minus 10 in air temperature) and even colder during the kiting. Hugo regretted that he dropped his down jacket during this first leg, but rest assured, the down was like glued on him the rest of the day.

We changed to smaller kites. After 9 hours from start we had covered a distance of 240 km. By now the sun had started to provide a nice warm weather and the dream about breaking the old world record for longest kite distance in 24 hours had started to rise. Our motivation for setting a long record was high.

Because of no available flights from Qaanaaq our end point had to be changed from Qaanaaq to Upernavik. This will reduce the length of our trip by about 800 km. In addition, those last 800 km are expected to be among the areas with the best wind and will under normal conditions provide for sweet and fast kiting. Because of this loss of the “sweet spot” we were especially eager to cover a really long distance in a day within the limited terrain we had available.

The wind dropped in strength and turned into a more southern direction. We could no longer just “park” or kites in the sky and surf on. From now on we had to fly the kites very actively in order to generate more relative wind for the kite. By actively increasing the kite’s speed the kite will pull more and hence generate more power and speed. The down side is that such active flying is more exhausting. We worked in periods of 3 hours with as short breaks in between as possible. Hugo had brought an expensive thermos, but we still had to drink cold coffee and eat cold dried food.

After 12 hours our bodies had started to hurt. Bjørn Einar started to worry about his knees, this despite the fact that he is using knee warmers made by merino wool, neoprene knee support and has fixed cellophane plates on the inside of his trousers in front of his knees. By next break we had to open the medicine cabinet. On a trip like this far away from any medical assistance one have to bring medicines to cover most situations. Bjørn Einar took two painkillers with some more “delicious” ice coffee.

Our cheerful and enthusiastic dreams about world record which had been circulating in our heads just hours earlier was by now reduced to pure and dark will power. We experienced that when our physical excess energy vanished our ability to make positive dreams also disappeared. Our sole focus was now to cover as long distance as possible. As an example of the mental change Bjørn Einar afterwards recalled that he was annoyed about where Hugo flew his kite and where he skied. This despite that it is not exactly lack of space on the ice cap. Besides, Hugo was the one navigating by the GPS and he therefore had to be the one choosing the direction and course ...

After about 16 hours, whereby the last 6-7 hours was very exhausting, the wind dropped even more. We had then covered 380 km. The old 24-hr record was 502 km and 122 km still remained in order to beat it. The wind dropped so much that we feared to loose the record we by then felt we literally had in our pocket. We didn’t mention this to each other, but we both understood that the other was thinking the same. We launched our biggest kites on 60 meter lines and luckily we noticed that there were still wind higher up from the ground. If we didn’t have such long lines we would probably not be able to reach the wind and get going. (A big thank you to Klemet in www.skikite.no for excellent advice on equipment and for special ordering the kites and long lines to us from Germany).

From this moment we had a steady progression until we logged a distance of 518 km. We had then sailed in 22 hours, and we still had two hours left to strengthen our record. Our motivation for sailing the last hours was solely to beat the old world record of 502 km held by Ronny Finsås from his 2008 kite trip on Antarctica from the south pole. When the record was beaten we had no motivation to keep sailing and we gave in for our hurting bodies.

When we put down our kites and knew that the struggle was over relief was the only feeling left in us. But today (the day after) we are back as our old selves bragging and admiring ourselves.

We are now lying on top of our sleeping bags in the tent on 73,4 degrees north. Outside there is a magic midnight sun. The stove is making its calming sound and we have coffee in our cups. Together we are trying to put down yesterdays experience in writing. Now when we recap the whole race it is strange how collective we are in both how we felt during the whole sailing and how big we experience it to be.