Kayakers honour Resistance with Shetland Bus trip

Senior features writer

Friday 3 June 2011

A pair of sea kayakers are to battle 16ft waves recreating the journey of Resistance fighters who crossed the North Sea between Shetland and German-occupied Norway during the Second World War.

LONG PADDLE: Patrick Winterton, left, and Mick Berwick will take three days to reach Norway in their kayaks.

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EXCLUSIVE rebecca mcquillan

Adventure sportsmen Patrick Winterton, 49, and Mick Berwick, 52, will make the 72-hour journey in July without a support vessel and will rest for only two to three hours a night. They are also preparing for constant sea sickness during the 240-mile crossing, which they estimate will be done at a speed of 3mph.

They are marking the 70th anniversary of the so-called Shetland Bus, a clandestine organisation formed by British and Norwegian military intelligence, which used fishing boats and later small submarine chasers to transfer secret agents into Norway and refugees out again.A third potential member of the team, Olly Hicks, 30, who in 2005 became the youngest person to row solo from America to Britain, is currently in training and may join the expedition.The men are hoping to set off next month from Lerwick, kayaking first to Lunna Voe in eastern Shetland for an overnight stay in Lunna House, former headquarters of the Shetland Bus, before leaving for Norway on July 17, stopping briefly at the tiny archipelago of Out Skerries.They intend to race each other for the last 44 nautical miles; each mile represents a person who was killed taking part in the Shetland Bus operation.Mr Winterton, a former Royal Marine and Olympic cross-country skier who lives in Stirling, spent three weeks in Shetland in May making preparations.He said commemorating those who died added “an emotional touch”, but explained: “We’re not so much celebrating war heroes as their ability to cope with the sea. Even the German bomber planes were no threat compared to the sea, so we’re really celebrating their seamanship and guts going out in all weathers, as well as trying to raise as much money as possible for the Royal National Lifeboat Institute (RNLI).”The Shetland Bus journeys were made without lights, under cover of winter darkness, when the weather was at its worst. By the end of the Nazi occupation of Norway, the operatives had taken 192 agents and 383 tonnes of weapons and supplies to Norway and brought out 73 agents and 373 refugees.This will be the second long-distance sea kayak voyage the pair have undertaken. In 2009, they followed the route of a 6th-century saint, St Brendan, going from the Butt of Lewis to the Faroe Islands, a distance of 186 miles, in 73 hours. They took rest breaks together and awoke one night to find a fishing boat just 200 yards away after it failed to spot them on its radar.On the final day of that journey, they started hallucinating, seeing vivid cliffs long before land actually came into view. Dehydration contributed to their hallucinations, which they hope to avoid this time by taking more drinking water.The main risks they face are severe sea sickness and capsizing. They must be able to roll in their kayaks without coming out of the boat.They will have a satellite phone and satellite spot trackers on their boats, which will allow people to follow their progress on the expedition website -- www.kayaksonshetlandbus.com -- as well as providing a location for coastguard services.Although a date for departure has been pencilled in, it will be dictated by the weather. Mr Winterton said: “We’re looking for a three-day window with nothing more than a force five or six wind. Direction of wind is important. In practice recently it took me three hours to go five miles against the wind and 26 minutes to get back again.”The kayakers are raising money for the RNLI through sponsorship via their website.

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Kayakers honour Resistance with Shetland Bus trip

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