With dolphins round our bows and a whale on our portside, the Sea Stallion is doing a 7 knot gallop down across the Celtic Sea between Ireland and south-western England this Monday morning. In a couple of hours, the ship will have been at sea for 24 hours on the way from Wicklow, south of Dublin, heading for Lands End in England – a total distance of 200 nautical miles, 82 of which have been covered.
The 60-strong crew of the world’s biggest Viking ship reconstruction will now be put to the first serious endurance test of body and spirit on the summer’s return journey to Roskilde. If the ship and crew are up to it, the plan is to continue non-stop to Portsmouth – in all 400 nautical miles.
With wind speeds of up to 14 metres/sec. from the north-west, we had to take two reefs in the sail, and the heavy swell lifts the ship’s stern high out of the water. Yet the 30-metre-long construction remains straight upright in the water and manages brilliantly.
“We have waves at least one and a half metres high,” says skipper Carsten Hvid, “and right now I can see a whale on the portside. But the fresh weather also means we have four seasick crew members at the moment. If the wind maintains its strength and direction, the Sea Stallion will round Lands End this evening at 19.30 local time”.