Adventurers reach Rockall in bid to live on north Atlantic islet for 60 days

Three adventurers planning to live for up to 60 days on Rockall in the north Atlantic have made camp on the rock after a dramatic ascent in which one of their team was washed off the islet twice by large waves.

The adventurers, led by Cam Cameron, a Scottish teacher who hopes to beat the 45-day record for staying on Rockall, landed on the islet on Tuesday afternoon after a 420-mile (675km) voyage from the mainland.

Their arrival on the barren rock, which is 230 miles (370km) west of North Uist, the nearest permanently inhabited part of the UK, was confirmed by radio enthusiasts who were among the first to hear broadcasts from the team just after midnight.

Cameron and his colleagues Adrian “Nobby” Styles, a radio operator, and Emil Bergmann, a mountaineer, are broadcasting from Rockall for the next week to raise funds for British military charities.

But their ascent up the sheer-sided granite rock was much more hazardous than expected because the waves were far bigger than anticipated, Cameron, 53, told the Guardian.

An expert mountaineer from Bulgaria, Bergmann was the first to land on the rock to fix the lines needed for Cameron and Styles to follow. But the swell was so great that he was twice washed into the sea before he was able to clamber on at the third attempt.

Cameron said their yacht, the Taeping, had made three passes of the 17-metre high rock before they attempted a landing in rigid inflatable boats carried by their vessel. All three men have had training in cold-water survival and rock climbing.

“God it was difficult getting on because of the surf. The weather conditions were just about favourable but [it was] just the surf around the base of the rock,” he said. “We had three attempts and got on on the fourth. It was extremely difficult.”

Once they approached and Bergmann tried to clamber on, “the swell was literally brushing him straight off the rock and he was gone. But he made it third time around.”

It was initially thought the team began broadcasting from Rockall on Tuesday afternoon after a signal claiming to be coming from the islet was heard by other radio hams. But that is now believed to have been a rogue message from someone impersonating the Rockall expedition.

More than 1,000 hams from around the world had made contact with Styles and Bergmann by early Wednesday morning. That will earn each ham a specially designed card – a highly coveted and collectible document known as a QSL card the expedition is selling for charity – which confirms they successfully contacted Rockall.

The expedition set sail from Inverkip, a small port on the Clyde, at the weekend and arrived off Rockall at about 7.30am on Tuesday.

Their voyage began in earnest at 4am on Sunday morning when they passed the island of Arran, before sailing around the Mull of Kintyre and then westwards past the southern Hebrides to Rockall.

Cameron is hoping to beat the 45-day occupation record set nearly 10 years ago by Nick Hancock, a surveyor who lives in Ratho near Edinburgh. Hancock had originally hoped to live there for 60 days but was unable to do so after losing critical supplies in a storm.

He did, however, surpass a record set by three Greenpeace activists in 1997, who lived on Rockall for 42 days to protest against suggestions the surrounding seabed could be drilled for oil. Greenpeace christened Rockall the micronation of Waveland.

The UK annexed Rockall in 1955, laying claim to the rich fishing grounds and mineral rights around it. Ireland disputes the UK’s ownership, as does Iceland, arguing that since Rockall cannot sustain human habitation it cannot under international law be used to take control of surrounding seas.