VESTMANNA, Faroe Islands — The sun has set on Chris Duff’s plans to be the first modern person to row to Iceland this year.
On Sunday, the Port Angeles-based adventurer and author called off the planned six-day, 280-mile crossing in a modified rowboat, the Northern Reach.
Duff, 54, left northwest Scotland on May 23 and made the 205-mile crossing to Suduroy — the southernmost of the Faroe Islands — in five days. He rowed the final 59 miles nonstop to avoid being blown off-course.
Duff has spent the past seven weeks in the Faroe Islands, which are approximately halfway between Scotland and Iceland, waiting for the weather to cooperate.
It refused.
“Today is still Sunday, July 15th — just hours ago I last wrote of my intentions to head off for Iceland tomorrow morning,” Duff wrote on his blog, www.olypen.com/cduff, under the title “The Right Decision.”
Following a Sunday training row, Duff checked the forecast in hopes of catching an elusive southeasterly wind.
After canceling a Scotland-to-Iceland crossing last year, he added a small sail to the 19-foot boat. The sail would have provided an extra knot of propulsion if the winds were blowing from the southeast.
“The southeasterly winds are no longer there . . . in their place are the north and northwesterlies that have plagued the trip for the last three months,” Duff wrote from Vestmanna, a small village in the Faroe Islands.
“With the wind out of the north — even if I could sail off course and then back on course as the winds changed, I could not out race a low-pressure system that is developing over eastern Iceland.”
A 7-foot swell from the north would have further impede his progress, Duff said.
On Friday, Duff wrote that the winds were forecast to shift to southerlies.
Duff’s wife, Lisa Markli of Port Angeles, was not immediately available for comment.
“This roller-coaster ride of emotions and energy is taking its toll on both Lisa and I,” Duff wrote.
“It is time for me to put the boat away and just go home. It is a huge disappointment.”
Duff said he was unable to process the reality of the situation. He said he needed to sleep, and plans to take a ferry to Iceland on Wednesday and fly home.
Last year, Duff was forced to abandoned his bid to row from Scotland to Iceland because of high winds and heavy swells he encountered about 40 miles offshore.
He left earlier in the year, staging in northwest Scotland in March, in the hopes of finding better weather.
Duff’s adventure this year was not without its share of excitement.
Last month, he was followed by a massive shark that came within 3 feet of the rudder. Duff grabbed his camera and snapped some photos for his blog.
“When it turned away, its nose looked sharp like that of a great white — and so of course I think it must certainly have been one,” Duff wrote June 19.
In 1985, Duff became the first person to circumnavigate Great Britain solo.
In 2003, he and a team circumnavigated Iceland and made the trip from Scotland to Iceland via kayak.
No one has rowed the open waters between the Faroes to Iceland alone.
Duff has written two books — On Celtic Tides and Southern Exposure — about his adventures.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5072, or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
