Ella Hibbert is running through the to-do list to ready her Bruce Roberts 38, Yeva, for the season. There’s a new stern gland and propeller shaft to fit. The running and standing rigging needs to be replaced and the steel hull requires shot-blasting and anti-fouling. All that before we get to the interior.  As a new boating season begins, I expect many of us have similar lists. There’s a major difference, however. Yeva’s refit took place in January. While we were daydreaming about summer cruising, 27-year-old Ella was bashing into a frigid Solent alone. Notching up sea miles before an April shakedown cruise, chasing storms “to make sure anything we haven’t thought about, that’s not quite right, gets tweaked and sorted”. At the time of writing, if all has gone well Ella will slip lines at Haslar Marina, Gosport, in mid-to-late June and sail to Norway. Then she will attempt the first solo circumnavigation of the Arctic Circle.  Two world-firsts – going around non-stop and going around single-handed – weren’t her original plan. In fact, you can describe this as a Northwest Passage cruise that got out of hand. Ella explains: “The more I looked into the ice-routing and weather-routing, I realised the decline of the ice meant it would be feasible to do an entire circumnavigation. I started to think, ‘Why stop there?’. A circumnav’ of the Arctic by myself non-stop is a testament to how rapidly the climate is changing. That’s what we’re going to prove.” This, then, isn’t a record attempt. It’s a wake-up call.  To end up as a climate campaigner is quite a journey for someone who worked as deckhand on motor superyachts. No fan of the lifestyle, Ella returned to sailing after four years. As a child, she sailed Optimist dinghies on a Suffolk reservoir and aboard her father’s Moody in the Mediterranean. She qualified as an RYA Cruising Instructor before becoming the second-youngest female Yachtmaster Instructor, aged 25. Her Arctic expedition represents a sabbatical from her day job freelancing at sailing schools.  The Yachtmaster mindset Navigational savvy instilled by her RYA training will be “fundamental to making it safely around the Arctic”, she says. There’s more to the qualification than that, though: “I haven’t got masses of offshore miles by myself yet, but my skill set from being an RYA Yachtmaster Instructor has given me the confidence to know I can look after myself out there.”    She’ll need to. Even with a steel ketch (chosen and bought by Ella for its go-anywhere hull and a flexible sat plan which is manageable alone), despite new foam insulation and “at least two or three of almost everything – sails and spares”, Ella has a lot to contend with.   Apart from stops roughly every fortnight (without disembarking) to resupply food and fuel, she’ll be on her own. Solar and wind power will top up batteries alongside the engine. No marina mechanic will make repairs. Not that being alone unduly concerns her.   “Probably the top two challenges will be the weather – storms, fog, lack of wind – and fatigue”   “As well as ice, areas like the north coast of Alaska are renowned for high seas and storms of up to 40-50 knots while the Northwest Passage is known for being foggy and having no wind,” she says. “Also, I’m not going to be able to sleep for six to eight hours a day.” On the plus side, constant daylight in an Arctic summer will ease watch-keeping.   The Arctic experience  Vaughan Marsh, RYA Chief Instructor for sail and motor cruising, notes how the Arctic places unique demands on sailor and boat alike. “There is that need to be absolutely self-sufficient,” he says. Before joining the RYA, he led expedition sail-training for the Armed Forces at the Joint Services Sail Training Centre, including trips from Iceland to Arctic Greenland.   There, he ran onboard heating near-continuously aboard a Challenge 67 yacht. With the watermaker working harder in cold water, he discovered there were greater demands on power. Alongside upcoming weather, passage plans were made after studying years of ice charts: “The Denmark Meteorology Institute provide a really good resource, with percentages of water to ice (actual and historic) by area.” 

Source: Survival Of The Arctic