Time: 14:21 CEST
Pos: Fjärdhundra, Sweden
59º North is like a miniature airline, with our small fleet of boats sailing tens of thousands of miles per year on a tight schedule. We regularly break the 1st Rule of Cruising by sailing to a schedule. And thus far, knock on wood, COVID aside, we’ve had a remarkable track record. How do we do it? One word:
Maintenance.
One thing that became increasingly apparent when we added ICEBEAR to the program was the need to have consistency in management between both boats. Previously I had done everything myself on ISBJORN with regards to maintaining the ship for service, but suddenly I couldn’t be in two places at once. When we added FALKEN to the fleet, we realized early on in the refit that having a single person who’s only job is the maintenance of the boats was not a luxury but a necessity. Enter our Chief Bosun Adam Browne.
Adam will be writing about a couple specific maintenance challenges he has on a daily basis in the next edition of the Logbook next month. For now, I’ll outline how the chain of command looks behind the scenes.
59º NORTH SAILING PROGRAM (BIG PICTURE)
Andy: Ultimately responsible for the big-picture scheduling, staffing and safe running of both boats and all sailing programs at 59º North. The buck stops with me.
Mia: Ultimately responsible for all crew comms prior to setting sail (aka Crew Happiness Director). Also Mate onboard FALKEN at sea. Head of provisioning and the cookbook onboard!
ISBJORN (~6,000 miles per year)
August: Primary responsibility for the ship’s maintenance, care, staffing & scheduling. Works with Andy to coordinate staffing and scheduling with FALKEN. Also primary skipper.
Jon Amtrup: Primary Relief Skipper
Knut Weberg: Secondary Relief Skipper
Erik Nordborg: Relief Skipper
Adam Browne: On-the-ground maintenance and refit manager. Takes August’s big-picture plans and executes them with the help from skippers, mates and apprentices.
FALKEN (~15,000 miles per year)
Andy: Primary responsibility for the ship’s maintenance, care, staffing & scheduling.
Chris Kobusch: Primary Skipper. Leads most of FALKEN’s trips through a season and assists in on-the-ground maintenance
Alex Laline: Chief Mate & Relief Skipper. Onboard for perhaps the most miles of anyone, assists in on-the-ground maintenance and liases with new staff for training.
Nikki Henderson: Racing & Relief Skipper & stand-in for Andy in the big picture when Andy is away.
Erik Nordborg: Relief Skipper
Mia: Mate
Adam Browne: On-the-ground maintenance and refit manager. Takes big-picture plans and executes them with the help from skippers, mates and apprentices.
As you can see, there is a lot of moving parts and moving people, and keeping the boats moving and on-time is a group effort. Worklists are always prioritized on a spectrum from safety-comfort, and there have been a handful of occasions where we'd have been forced to ground one of the boats should a safety item not get resolved in time (in fact this happened, once, on ICEBEAR in Antigua when we could not get a replacement fuel injection pump in time to make our schedule, having to cancel a trip. While not a safety item at first glance, we could not justify departing on a passage without a working engine, as that in itself was a safety hazard).
Adam will report back next month on some of the specific challenges he’s been facing over a busy couple of weeks with both boat’s actively at-sea at the same time! Until then…
HOLD FAST!
// Andy
