CCA Essential Passage Guide to The Viking Route

The CCA Essentials Passage Guide to the Viking Route offers mission-critical information in a logical, manageable format.

This has never been a simple route, even from the beginning. Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian explorers achieved unrivaled boat-building, navigational, and seamanship skills, allowing them to travel widely throughout the North Atlantic for over 400 years beginning at the end of the 8th century. Even with the added challenges of the high latitudes, the Vikings made their way to North America 500 years before Columbus arrived in the Caribbean.Sailing through ice requires a skill set very different from even long-distance voyaging in temperate waters. Skipper, vessel, and crew need to be fully prepared and have an understanding of the vagaries and challenges of high-latitude sailing and ice navigation. The CCA Essentials Passage Guide to the Viking Route was created with that in mind: Distill the essential information necessary to passage the Viking Route safely.
A chapter on timing and passage planning begins the guide, allowing a skipper contemplating the voyage to get their arms around potential itineraries. Next comes Weather, describing high latitude weather patterns, how they are different, and how to keep out of trouble. Ice and Arctic Navigation follows, and the subjects continue: Gear and Equipment, Communications, Safety, Skippers, Leadership and a Culture of Safety, and Overwintering. All are written with a focus on transmitting essential knowledge succinctly.
Good passage-making guides for high latitude and Arctic waters already exist, so you might ask – why another? Current treatises can appear as technical, complex, and difficult to assimilate. This guide integrates essential information from pilots and guides, periodicals, and online sources, with added experiences of high-latitude sailors.