Chris Duff, the Port Angeles adventurer who planned to row a specially designed boat 500 miles from Scotland to Iceland this summer, is back on dry land after turning around because of bad weather.
“The trip is over — at least for this year,” Duff wrote on his blog at www.olypen.com/cduff on Friday.
“I’m really happy to have the boat tied up alongside the sailing club’s rescue boat” in Ullapool, a fishing village in Scotland, Duff said in his blog.
“I think I’ll go and have fish and chips tonight.”
Duff had decided to turn around more than a month ago.
“I have decided to postpone the crossing,” Duff wrote in a July 31 blog entry.
“The winds are too unstable. At times, the winds will change direction within 8 or 10 hours.
“What this does is make the seas very confused so that even if the winds are favorable, the seas can be terribly choppy.”
Efforts to reach Duff were unsuccessful.
Duff departed from Scrabster Harbour near the northern tip of the Scottish mainland June 19 in the Northern Reach, a self-righting modified rowboat with water-tight compartments.
Orkneys to Shetlands
He rowed past the Orkney Islands and arrived in Lerwick, the main port of the Shetland Islands, on July 5.
After waiting for the winds and tides to work in his favor, Duff left the Shetland Islands on July 28 in an attempt to reach the Faroe Islands.
The Faroes would be his last stop before Iceland.
No one has ever attempted to row the 270 miles of open North Atlantic waters between the Faroe Islands to Iceland alone, Duff has said.
Conditions deteriorated when Duff was 40 miles offshore from Shetland.
He set anchor about four miles from an oil rig he was aiming for and spent a seasick night getting rattled by an 8- to 10-foot swell and a 15- to 20-knot wind.
An oil supply ship pulled up to the Northern Reach to check on its lone occupant.
“I’m sure it must have looked rather strange — a tiny orange boat hanging on a sea anchor and getting tossed about,” Duff wrote on his blog.
Duff devised a new plan: row back to where he started on a different route, exploring the cliffs and sea stacks of Scotland.
“My tentative plan is to leave the boat in the Hebrides and come back again next spring and give it another try — possibly with some sort of a sail or perhaps a parasail,” Duff wrote Aug. 13.
Duff discussed the trip at various public speaking engagements on the North Olympic Peninsula over the past year.
The 53-year-old is noted for a 1,600-mile circumnavigation of New Zealand’s South Island that he completed in 1999.
He has paddled more than 18,000 miles since 1983.
Duff works as a contractor when he is not adventuring.
He wrote that he plans to fly home from London’s Heathrow Airport on Thursday.
“There have been so many stories of wind-related mishaps this summer — another reminder that this was not the summer for me to attempt the Faroe crossing,” Duff wrote.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
