Conquering the Impossible by Mike Horn

explosion shook my boat from the hold to the topmast. I barely had time to grab a backstay to keep from being tossed overboard. As I turned to look aft, I saw floating away in the gray waters in the evening light an enormous tree trunk, which I had just slammed into at full speed. I hurried down into the cockpit and carefully examined every corner in search of a leak. Nothing. Relieved, I took the helm again. But two or three hours later, it became alarmingly heavy. The boat was no longer responding to the helm, and it was traveling more slowly. I went belowdecks again. Now there was four inches of water in the cockpit, which meant that the hold was full and that there was more than three feet of water in the boat!
    The first thing that came into my mind was that I had waited too long before checking the water level a second time, which meant that the situation might now be irreparable. Instinctively, I turned on the bilge pump. The motor that drives the bilge pump was underwater, but it was turning all the same—for now. But that wouldn’t prevent the level of water in the cockpit from rising inexorably.
    And to top things off, I was just entering the danger zone—less than 185 miles from the Greenland coast—and I was beginning to see my first icebergs. Obviously, I wouldn’t be stepping away from the helm again. Hitting an iceberg after hitting a tree trunk would be a little much for just one boat.
    Luckily, I also had a hand pump that could be operated from the helm. I worked the pump with one hand and held the rudder with the other hand, while the main pump continued to operate as well.
    After a while I could see that the level of water in the cockpit was holding steady, but it wasn’t dropping, either. And one thing became horribly clear. With all the determination and energy I could muster, I could certainly continue to man the helm and pump simultaneously for a number of hours—maybe even for a whole day. But I could never hope to do it for five days in a row, which was how long I figured—at my boat’s now sluggish rate of progress—it would take to reach Greenland! Sometime or other, I would certainly have to sleep.
    I had activated my iceberg-detecting radar. It can warn of icebergs miles away; if we were heading right for one, it would sound an alarm. But it can’t pick up growlers, the chunks of floe ice that break off and float along just beneath the surface. Even with an aluminum hull like mine, designed for polar navigation, those huge slabs of ice with sharp angles would have the same general effect that a chainsaw would have on a shoebox.
    For the immediate future I could see only one solution—set my course straight for dry land and make it as far as possible. Then, when the boat sank beneath me, I would pile all my polar equipment in the inflatable life raft and do what Nansen did, paddle and hope to make it to the coast.
    I made a stab at calling the former owner, but Jean-Yves was not aware of any particular weak points in his boat.
    I turned on the automatic pilot, feverishly stacked all my land equipment atop the sled, and then placed the sled on the inflatable life raft. Faced with the imposing mass now piled in the raft, I said to myself that for whatever paddling might accomplish, I would paddle.
    I called Cathy to warn her that I was certainly going to have to abandon my boat and reach Greenland by paddling.
    Lost amid the icebergs and growlers, exhausted and disappointed, I was filled with rage at the injustice of the situation. I had plowed straight into that goddamned tree trunk, probably the only one for hundreds of miles in all directions. And now it was going to cost me my boat, less than a week after the start of the expedition!
    The boat was riding so low now that the water was coming in through the through-hull fittings, a set of small openings above the flotation line through which I discarded my used water. I closed the through-hulls,