IN THE WAKE OF VIKINGS

A NORTHERN TRACK ACROSS THE ATLANTIC ELICITS PARALLELS TO THE ADVENTURES OF EARLY VOYAGERS.

- JOHN KRETSCHMER

Quetzal had recently glided into Lunenburg Harbour under spinnaker, five days outbound from Bermuda. It was great to be back in one of my favorite Nova Scotia haunts, and time to get serious. ¶ Polar Sun, my friend Mark Synnott’s Stevens 47 cutter, was also in Lunenburg. Mark is a climber, professional adventurer and bestselling author. We had most recently sailed together in Grenada, and now he was also bound north, leading a National Geographic expedition through the Northwest Passage, hoping to find new evidence about the fate of British explorer Sir John Franklin. We gathered in Quetzal’s salon and chatted long into the night, discussing our preparations and aspirations for our upcoming voyages.

On June 15, Quetzal slipped her mooring and steamed into the fog. It was reassuring to have Alan, a dear friend from Lunenburg, back aboard. Ron, a Quetzal glutton who has crossed the Atlantic with me twice before, and Mark, a terrific shipmate from Montana, completed the crew. Our job was to sail to Newfoundland, where our Viking voyage would commence. However, our first landfall was fabled Sable Island, a crescent of shifting sands 90 miles south of eastern Nova Scotia. It's notorious as the "graveyard of the Atlantic," and more than 350 wrecks form a necklace of tragedy. It's also home to an unlikely herd of 500 wild horses. It's also not easy to visit, so when Alan arranged a coveted landing permit, we had to stop.