Marlinspike Seamanship in the Arctic

I was crewing aboard a boat named Breskell, a 51ft cutter-rigged, cold-molded, mahogany sloop. We were voyaging from St. John’s, Newfoundland, to Port Townsend, Washington, via the Northwest Passage. A few days before setting sail, the captain, Olivier Huin, asked me to secure everything on deck—everything being propane tanks, water jugs, gasoline and diesel cans, fuel bladders, the outboard engine, the dinghy and, later, the bowsprit. He pointed to a bucket of short, frayed, “end of life” line and a lumber pile over by the boatyard garbage bin. He looked me in the eye and said in his thick French accent, “It needs to survive a knockdown, but not necessarily a capsize. Thank you so much.”

I swallowed hard and contemplated the task before me. Whatever I came up with would need to hold for