Our secret weapon

Our secret weapon!

Shimshal has a guardian angel. He sits by his poolside in his rented Mallorcan Finca and taps away at his laptop. By day he is the archetypal Brit abroad building sand castles with the family whilst undoubtedly clad in socks, sandles and trademark red chinos. By night he takes a bottle of red wine from the fridge, pours himself a glass and then goes on line. He trawls the web for satellite imagery of remote, frigid coasts. He runs weather routing scenarios and struggles with Google translate to turn Greenlandic and Danish descriptions into some form of English.

With the crickets ringing in his ears and under a starry Mediterranean sky he distils his researches into a few, data light emails that he pings off to Shimshal as she approaches one of the wildest coasts on earth.

Two thousand and sixty nine miles away from that balmy poolside the Iridium phone on board Shimshal pings a, "you have got mail" message. There then ensues a lengthy battle with a satellite to draw down Richard's Mallorcan musings. It's a worthwhile battle as the result paints a clear picture of what lies over the horizon and where we should and should not go.

Tonight's emailed image showed a huge crescent of ice blocking our approach. Instead, 20 miles further north, we see an ice free fjord with a described anchorage within it. Instead of sailing ourselves into icy trouble we opt for Greydivig and, hopefully, a peaceful night at anchor when we make our Greenlandic landfall tomorrow night.

So Richard, our secret weapon and guardian angel, on board Shimshal tonight, we are drinking a glass of warmed red wine to salute you. Happy holidays and thanks a million.