Where does the fabled Northwest Passage—that ­tenuous, long-sought sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans—­properly begin?  

For the keepers of official records, jealously counting how many of each sort of boat makes the transit each year, the answer is the Arctic Circle, at 66°30′ N. It begins when you cross into the Arctic going northward, and it ends when you cross out of it again southbound, 100 degrees of longitude away.

Others—often those attempting to kayak, paddleboard, kitesurf or dinghy across—count it from Pond Inlet at northern Baffin Island to the hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk, which is nearly on the US-Canada border. That’s a far shorter distance, and it cuts out nearly 1,000 miles of the difficult coast of Alaska, not to mention about 500 miles on the Atlantic side. 

Surely, we can forgive those with the audacity to try it in any sort of open craft. With our Stevens 47, Polar Sun, however, although we had crossed the Arctic Circle halfway through a cruise of Greenland’s coast from Nuuk to Ilulissat, we didn’t feel like our bid for the passage had properly begun until we wriggled out of the untidy raft-up of sailboats at the fish wharf in the inner harbor at Ilulissat. It was midafternoon and raining lightly as we dodged past icebergs at the harbor mouth, but neither time nor atmospheric moisture matters a whole lot in a place where the sun doesn’t set and you’re bundled head to toe against the cold anyway.

Having been going hard for weeks on end, with uncertainty and ice and everlasting cold, it was the longest sailing leg of my life.

We were bound across Baffin Bay for Pond Inlet, a four-day leg that took us closer to seven, and taught us that just because we’d gotten to Ilulissat ahead of schedule didn’t mean we were always going to get easy sailing.

We were used to icebergs by then. They’re mostly huge and visible. They’re easy to sail around, and their dangers are predictable and avoidable. But halfway across Baffin Bay, we encountered pack ice for the first time. We found it a far more chilling prospect. Being mostly flat and close to the surface, it doesn’t show up well on radar or forward-looking sonar, and it tends to hang tight. If you see one floe, there’s probably a whole bunch of them nearby, drifting amiably around together.

By the time we beat our way against a 20-knot breeze close to the craggy Baffin Island shore, we were hardly surprised to find icebergs drifting amid the barrier of pack ice that blocked the shore. Who says you can’t have it all?

When we had finally worked our way through the ice and up along the coast for another day, we were in for several surprises. The first was that a brand-new harbor with breakwalls and docks had just been built at Pond Inlet, so we didn’t have to anchor in a rolly roadstead like we had expected. The second was that although the town there was relatively close to Greenland, it couldn’t have been more different than the ones we’d just left. Lacking the warm current that Greenland enjoys, this area stays locked up in ice most of the year. There isn’t a whole lot to do in one place, and it’s easy to see why the native Inuit were once nomadic. It makes sense in a place where nature is so savage.

Pond Inlet was the first of only four settlements we visited in the next 2,000 miles. Between them lie mind-numbingly vast stretches of barren, cliff-filled islands where even lichens struggle to grow in the whorls and rings of frost-heaved gravel.

We didn’t linger too long in any one place—at least, not by choice—but ­hastened always, feeling the shortness of the navigable season, and knowing that the later we got to the Bering Sea, the ­better chance we had of getting clobbered by something nasty. After an iceberg-­fraught, lumpy, breezy passage of the Navy Board Inlet, we had an ­exceedingly pleasant sail diagonally up Lancaster Sound to Beechey Island.

Between the Beechey and King William islands is where the most pack ice can be expected. Some years, it’s so abiding that no small boats get through. We were lucky. A violent south wind flushed all the ice out of Peel Sound, our projected route. After a day anchored in Erebus and Terror Bay, a band of pack ice that had barred the way opened up just enough for Polar Sun to get through.

I had always heard of iceblink, a ­phenomenon where distant pack ice throws a glow along the horizon, making it impossible to judge how far off it is. I had thought I wanted to see it someday, but I realized as we raced toward the rapidly shrinking opening to Peel Sound that I could have done without it, at least when a fogbound island, a foul current and a whole lot of ice coming out of the blink were converging on Polar Sun.

It wasn’t the last time we would squeak through a narrow gap at the last minute. The next 500 miles saw us often in and out of ice. Twice, we were denied passage out of a bay where we ultimately spent nine days trapped in the pack, shifting from one ice floe to another. We almost didn’t make it out of there at all, and when we did, it was to find the way nearly shut farther along.

At last, though, we made it to Gjoa Haven on the south side of King William Island. We sighed with relief that the ice, at least, would trouble us no more—but given the trouble we did see for the next several thousand miles, perhaps a little ice would have been the least of it.

What we hadn’t accounted for was that Gjoa is barely halfway across the Northwest Passage. There was still such a long way to go, and now, each night was dark for a little longer than the prior.

Given the lateness of the season—those nine days in the ice had really set us back—we considered leaving the boat in Cambridge Bay for the winter, but the crane that had once hauled the occasional stray sailboat was no longer there. To leave the boat in the water would be to lose it. We had already lost two crew, who had to return home for work, and couldn’t lose the time to find more.

So, Mark Synnott, the expedition leader, and I doublehanded the six weary days to Tuktoyaktuk. It’s not that doublehanding is normally that bad, but having been going hard for weeks on end, with hopes raised and dashed, with uncertainty and ice and everlasting cold, it was the longest sailing leg of my life. Before we finally rounded Cape Bathurst and raced with a strong following wind into Tuk, we had spent eight hours hove-to in a midnight blow, overheated the engine, sailed the wrong direction with a lee shore wherever we could point the bows, and did I mention the cold?

Tuktoyaktuk is on the shallow, oil-rich shelf of the Beaufort Sea. The channel barely carries 2 fathoms into the harbor at the best of times. This was not one of those times; the strong wind that rushes unopposed over the featureless peninsula tends to blow water out of the harbor. Polar Sun grounded gently just abeam of the half-wrecked public wharf. We got lines ashore to take in when the tide should float her again, and we went ashore to eat with the relief crew, who had flown out to meet us.

Without that extra crew, that last leg across the north coast of Alaska and down to the Bering Sea would have been not just exhausting, but also dangerous. Even with the new life that David Thoresen and Ben Spiess breathed into our souls, the strong following wind and seas required constant watchfulness. We rounded Point Barrow, the northernmost point in Alaska, in a welter of muddy, breaking waves, with sleet whitening the weather side of every shroud and halyard. We had thought of stopping in Barrow for a rest, but the seas were too rowdy along the shore. Besides, the wind was fair to sail south, and south is where we wanted to go.

South, that is, until Point Hope, where we needed to tuck in and hide from a typhoon—yes, a typhoon. It had strayed beyond its reasonable bounds into the Bering Sea, not only bringing record flooding to the coastal communities, but also having the audacity to pass through the Bering Strait into the Chukchi Sea, where Polar Sun sheltered in the tenuous lee of a permafrost-topped sandbar.

The eye of the storm, still well-defined although weakening, came abeam of our anchorage and made it untenable. We weighed anchor for the last time and sailed deep-reefed straight toward the center of it. Tacking some hours later to claw across Kotzebue Sound, we had occasion to wish that Cambridge Bay had worked out. The wind drove Polar Sun farther from the Bering Strait, toward a shoreline guarded by poorly charted shallow sandbars and lagoons.

It was nearly dark when the wind relented enough that we could make a run toward Cape Prince of Wales. That was the last obstacle, and we hand-steered around it in pitch-blackness, hugging the shore as close as we dared to avoid a current offshore. With the lights of Wales close abeam, and with Polar Sun surfing at 9 knots down-sea, we were grateful that we couldn’t see.

Once properly in the Bering Sea, all the jumble of the strait settled down, as if turned off with a switch. We motored sedately into Nome, Alaska, in the late afternoon, just hours ahead of the next southerly gale that pounded that ­unforgiving coast.

For the record-keepers, the Northwest Passage was officially completed halfway across Kotzebue Sound, when Polar Sun crossed the Arctic Circle just north of the Bering Strait. For Mark and me, the only two of the 12 people on the trip to sail every mile, it wasn’t fully over even in Nome. There were sails to unbend and stow, halyards to messenger out. A whole winterization had to be done, and there were long flights, which undid in 12 hours the distance we had taken 112 days to sail, to endure.  

Where does the Northwest Passage end? For me, at least, it ends when you get home. 

The post Cruising the Northwest Passage appeared first on Cruising World.

I had always imagined, looking at world globes and navigational charts, that the surface of the earth would somehow feel different the farther north you went. That perhaps gravity would pull you at a slanted angle, or that the horizon would look narrower as the longitude lines drew closer together. I imagined one would get shortness of breath or vertigo as the polar regions were approached. 

Not surprisingly, as far as those things go, everything seems the same even several hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle. The horizon is as expansive as ever, water stays level in a glass, and my head is not swimming from lack of oxygen.

What is different, though—shockingly, disconcertingly different—is the perpetual daylight. Long before Polar Sun, the Stevens 47 we’re cruising in Greenland, reached the Arctic Circle, we had left the night behind. The last darkness we saw was when we left Flowers Cove, in northern Newfoundland, at 2 a.m. to catch the downtide to Mary’s Harbour in Labrador. After that, with the bows pointed north into the Labrador Sea, though the sun would briefly set, the twilight endured until it rose again just a little to the right of where it had gone down.

It was good that it should be so because there are icebergs about in late June in the Davis Strait, and though we didn’t see many, the ones we did see made us grateful for the light and a sharp lookout. There was little else to look out for, though. Between putting Labrador astern and fetching Greenland ahead five days later, we saw only one coastal ship between each place. It was a surprisingly benign passage at first, given what I’d been led to expect about the Davis Strait. For three calm and pleasant days, we alternated between the engine and the “whomper”—a huge, yellow ­asymmetrical spinnaker—and ­congratulated ourselves on our luck.

As luck will, it ran out two days from Nuuk, the capital of Greenland. From just north of the aptly named Cape Desolation, we were treated to a strong following breeze with some confused cross swells that slammed the boat onto its beam ends every so often, and made heavy weather for the Hydrovane self-steering unit. It was a finicky business, tuning the vane, the deeply reefed sails and the helm so that everything would work together, but when we finally had it sorted, Polar Sun scooted along at 8 and 9 knots for hours on end without us touching either the wheel or the sheets. It was a good thing too because one of our number was down for the count, hugging a gently sloshing bucket of vomit in his bunk. The rest of us felt lucky if we could boil a kettle in the violently slamming boat to make ramen or coffee in a thermos without burning ourselves.

Even in the inner harbor of Nuuk, the wind was shrieking along the quays, making the boats tug restlessly at their warps. As is the custom in these parts, one that we got used to only with time, we rafted up to the first convenient tugboat and turned in. When you think about it, rafting up, especially to something big, is far preferable to grinding up and down a grubby commercial bulkhead with 15-foot tides giving your spring lines and fenders a workout. Better to let them deal with the headache of the inside tie, and ride up and down tied comfortably short. 

Besides, it’s a great way to make new friends. Farther north, in Ilulissat, we wound up in a six-deep raft-up, which made for quite the jolly social scene as everyone crawled over each other’s boats to get to and from the fish wharf.

I had expected Greenland to be much like northern Newfoundland and Labrador in the way of food and groceries, which is to say more packaged food than fresh, and more burger-and-fry joints than other sorts of restaurants. And once again, my imagination was incorrect. Being still heavily Danish, the grocery stores are crammed with European as well as Greenlandic foods, and best of all are the ubiquitous bakeries full of fresh bread and pastries. While the restaurant prices might raise the eyebrow of the cruiser accustomed to street tacos in Mexico or pupusas in El Salvador, the food is quite good, and we tried musk ox and reindeer and whale, as well as codfish and halibut. There is a bent toward the gourmet in the preparation and presentation that initially struck me as out of place in what should have been rough-hewn fishing towns, but that was just me projecting preconceived notions again.

I had no notions or ideas about what to expect of the coast between Nuuk and Disko Bay, nor could I have imagined the snow-girdled mountains that rise straight from 100-fathom fjords to 3,000-foot peaks. And not just once, mind you, but everywhere you look, for days and days as you cruise north. There is an inshore passage that begins about 50 miles north of Nuuk, and treads a winding, sheltered path behind coastal islands and through narrow, winding tickles scarcely twice the beam of the boat. This route crosses many fjords, and you can pick one at random and explore—up, up, along water ever more aquamarine, until at the head, the glacier can be seen, pressing a wall of ice toward the water and sending frozen chunks out along the silty glacial stream.

We alternated between anchoring in remote coves and tying up to commercial docks in villages. It’s luxurious, with perpetual daylight, not having to hurry to get somewhere before dark or to get up before dawn to catch a fair tide. But it’s terrible for the sleep schedule, and your daily rhythms go all sideways. Breakfast at noon? Why not, if the next boat in the Sisimiut raft-up was partying till 3 a.m. and heffalumping back and forth across your deck in clunky sea boots. Coffee at midnight? Why not, if you’re still in brash ice, three hours from Aasiaat, and calving icebergs have strawed your path with growlers and bergy bits. We eventually found it preferable to arrive and tie up after working hours—there was less bustle in the harbor, and whomever we rafted to was unlikely to be about to cast off and leave.

Aasiaat is on the southern shore of Disko Bay, the center of Greenland’s tourism industry. At the back end of the bay, a river of ice 30 miles long empties its bergs into open water. From there they fan out, drifting slowly with wind and tide so that, as far as the eye could reach, as we sailed north toward Disko Island, huge mountains of ice floated in solemn silence on water 200 fathoms deep. After stops at the secluded Whale Fish Islands and in Godhavn, we finally reached the real prize of Disko Bay.

Situated at the very mouth of the fjord from which all the bergs issue, Ilulissat is guarded by a barrier of floating ice chunks that looks impenetrable when approaching from seaward. This band of concentrated ice was 5 miles wide when we crossed it, and extended for dozens of miles both north and south. Bergs of all sizes floated amid myriad smaller pieces, but an intricate path could be woven between them, avoiding all but the smallest brash. Even when the way ahead looked shut, if you carried on, there was always an opening. 

All adventure has some risk, and if we were going to sail into the Northwest Passage, ice was one danger we were going to have to get used to.

 Back in the States, people had shown us diagrams of the closest safe approach to ice, which had proved ludicrous already in the narrow tickles south of Aasiaat, and were now simply laughable as we passed an arm’s length from hundreds of bergs of all shapes and sizes. Was it safe?  Who knows—it’s a long shot whether a berg will calf or roll in quiet water while you’re next door—but what choice did we have? All adventure has some risk, and if we were going to sail to Baffin Island and from there into the Northwest Passage, ice was one danger we were going to have to get used to.

We couldn’t have chosen a better place to acclimatize to ice than Ilulissat. More days than not, smaller bergs come bumbling into the harbor with the tide, and often, as they drifted back out, we had to direct them away from the boats with some special ice poles I had made. They were mostly harmless in the calm water of the harbor, but a passing wake would set the smaller ones knocking on the hull and have us out with the ice poles again.

Chasing Icebergs in Greenland

Beyond Ilulissat and Disko Bay, the coast of Greenland stretches northward, ever more remote and frozen, and is visited only rarely by cruising sailors. Farther yet, it becomes a land where both sea and air are freezing all year long, and even icebreakers with supplies for the handful of settlements are seasonal and occasional at best.  

I’ll cruise that direction someday, perhaps, but for this trip, our northing in Greenland was done, and Polar Sun’s path lay to westward across Baffin Bay, and from there into the winding paths of the Arctic Archipelago. 

While his wife conspires to turn him into a chicken rancher, Ben Zartman runs away to sea whenever he can. When not delivering sailboats, he runs a rigging business out of his garage, splicing line for local racing fleets.

The post The Air Up There: Cruising Greenland appeared first on Cruising World.

Ginger and Peter Niemann were recently awarded the 2021 Blue Water Medal by the Cruising Club of America for their inspirational efforts and achievements during two sailing circumnavigations. Their circumnavigations took them to the Arctic’s northern latitudes and Patagonia’s southern latitudes; their second trip around the world included several rigorous, non-stop passages due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions.

The Niemanns’ first voyaging boat was Marcy, a 47-foot sloop they converted from a schooner. From 2006 to 2010, Marcy took them west-about from Seattle almost 50,000 miles around the world, including rounding the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn.

In 2017, they departed Washington State on Irene, a 52-foot fiberglass ketch. Taking the opposite direction, east-about, through the Northwest Passage and staying in the northern hemisphere, they never crossed their first circumnavigation’s track. They sailed to Greenland, Newfoundland, and the US East Coast before crossing the Atlantic to Ireland.

After touring the U.K., Atlantic Europe and the Mediterranean, they found themselves suddenly stranded in Turkey when the COVID-19 pandemic began. Like many other international cruisers, they were stopped in their tracks. Unwilling to leave Irene, they considered staying in Turkey; sailing back home across the Atlantic; or heading home to the Pacific Northwest through the Suez Canal. They chose the third option and sailed for two months and 6,000 miles non-stop across the Indian Ocean during the monsoon to Batam, Indonesia.

When they arrived in Batam they found their previously negotiated permission to stay in Indonesia revoked. Nearby Singapore let them stay, but they were required to stay onboard their boat. They lived onboard at the Changi Sailing Club for five months; in all, they spent nearly 300 days unable to go ashore. On February 2, 2021, they departed on the long cruise home to Washington State via Japan and the Aleutians. Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, Peter and Ginger persevered, cheerfully adapting to a seemingly endless onboard quarantine and undertaking lengthy sea passages under difficult conditions. CCA found their persistence and ingenuity truly inspiring. CCA recognized their teamwork, courage, good humor, flexibility and innovative spirit as evidence of their exceptional personal and sailing mettle and awarded them the 2021 Blue Water Medal.

The Blue Water Medal has been awarded regularly since 1923 to reward  seamanship and adventure upon the sea displayed by amateur sailors of all nationalities that might otherwise go unrecognized. Past winners include Eric Tabarly, Sir Francis Chichester, Rod Stephens, Webb Chiles and Eric and Susan Hiscock.

The post High-latitude Circumnavigators Awarded 2021 Blue Water Medal appeared first on Cruising World.

August 15, 2019, Graham Harbor,
Devon Island

Day 261 of the figure 8 voyage

Compared with that roaring river, the Southern Ocean, the north is a cathedral of quiet. From Mo’s remote Arctic anchorage at Graham Harbor (74 degrees N, 88 degrees W), there was such stillness that I could hear my ears ring and the low grumbling of a nearby growler as it jostled the rocky shore. Here, in late summer and yet at the beginning of the Northwest Passage, I would gnaw my fear for an ­evening while awaiting another discouraging ice report. The coming days would decide the success not just of this transit, but of the entire Figure 8 Voyage as well. Three years of preparation and two yearlong attempts would all ride on a few hundred miles of icy water, and the going did not look good.

Often during Mo’s southern circuit, I anticipated with pleasure the anticlimax to follow our second Cape Horn rounding. There, at 56 south, we would be released from the imperative to make easting; we would climb into the hospitable Atlantic, into the unfaltering and floral trades requiring no hand on sheet or tiller, or overnight calls to reef. These would be fit refreshment, I thought, after our arduous time in the wilds down below. 

And what we got on the advance ­toward Recife, Brazil, was warmth aplenty, but also a season surprisingly devoid of steady breezes and a sea clogged with sargasso weed. Where the south had promised—and usually delivered—a gale a week, now we were made to endure as many calms. By the time Mo drew level with Bermuda, we found it difficult to run off even 100 miles from one sweltering noon to the next. Ever so slowly, the lengthy blue ribbon of Atlantic slipped by. Then, on May 31, 2019, the port of Halifax emerged from fog, and here we made our first stop on Day 237 out of San Francisco.

This port call too contained its surprises. For one, as I handed Mo’s lines to Wayne Blundell, dockmaster of the Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron, the man handed back an envelope full of cash—an entry custom I’ve not found typical of foreign ports. “Sent ahead by your friends,” he said, “so you can buy a round at the bar.” 

In Halifax we refitted over the course of a month. Items not even contemplated in the previous 31,000 sea miles—­anchors, chain and windlass, autopilot, depth sounder, dinghy and outboard, the radar, the little red engine—were serviced, run hard, tested and tested again for the coming Arctic trial. And all the while the Canadian ice charts declared only pas d’analyse, nothing to report. Summer solstice had come and gone, and the ice remained unmoved. 

Mo and I departed Halifax for the north on July 2 for an uneventful run to St. John’s, Newfoundland, and then began a slow jog up the west coast of Greenland, more for the pleasure of it than to avoid the famous middle pack. There was no hurry. By July 15, reports showed that ice in Lancaster Sound had begun to flush, but it hadn’t shifted at all in Peel Sound or Prince Regent Inlet. 

In Nuuk, and with the help of local magistrate Jens Kjeldsen, I bought a rifle for defense against the polar bear. The attendant took my cash and handed over the firearm and shells with as much concern as if I were buying a quart of milk. Then I followed Kjeldsen to a birthday party for his Inuit wife. These two had just returned from a circumnavigation via the Northwest Passage. “My wife is the only Inuit to have sailed around the world,” Kjeldsen said. “She made all the newspapers.” 

Below Disko Island, icebergs appeared. Distant white specks jutting above the blue plane grew to gothic spires or became tabular and sheer, all calved brash that flowed away on the current like the tail of a comet. On July 26, we crossed the Arctic Circle in fog and calm airs. Near Sisimiut, a black ooze in the bilge revealed that Mo’s little red engine (a 48-horsepower Bukh diesel) had burst an oil seal. What luck! In the last-explored parts bin of the town’s snowmobile shop, I found a lone replacement. Finally, in Sondre Upernavik, we took fuel by dinghy for the 400-mile crossing of Baffin Bay, filling all of Mo’s 14 gerry cans for the first time. 

The crossing was gray and flat and not much else. On August 9, the approach to Pond Inlet, our first waypoint in the Canadian Arctic, was ice-free, as was Navy Board Inlet and the approach to Tay Bay two days later. Even the run up Lancaster Sound presented glassy, open water, with here and there a brilliant berg. Still, each report from Environment Canada showed persistent close-pack inside the passage. Only slowly was the archipelago releasing its winter wealth.

I am often told by those in the know how much easier a Northwest Passage is today than it was in 1975 when Willie De Roos and his strong steel ketch fought for every mile. Climate change has turned an ice passage into a lake passage with but an occasional frigid encounter, say these experts. There might be truth in this, but it misses the point. 

I bought a rifle for defense against the polar bear. The attendant took my cash and handed over the firearm and shells with as much concern as if I were buying a quart of milk.

For a westbound yacht, the Northwest Passage—especially between an entrance at either Prince Regent Inlet or Peel Sound and the later exit at Cape Bathurst—is a maze of sometimes narrow, often shallow and poorly charted water. Here the pack can become trapped, swirling on local currents but unable to flush to sea; it must melt to clear the way. Moreover, though strong, Mo is not an icebreaker. Pack covering an area from one point to the next can stop us cold, and when that gate opens, allowing further progress into the maze, a gate ahead or astern might close and possibly remain so for the duration. The risk is of finding oneself deep inside enemy territory with no ability to advance or retreat, facing the prospect of a 10-month freeze.

Graham Harbor was eerie. The cove is small, and depths are too deep with a bottom too rocky for good holding; the crowding mountains threaten williwaws and put the boat in a cold shade. Three times the anchor merely clanged across the bottom before catching by a fingernail. I set the drag alarm and prepared for a night of poor sleep. 

After dinner, I reached out to ice guide Victor Wejer for one final consultation. “Prince Regent Inlet remains impenetrable,” he responded. “Absolutely no chance that it or Bellot Strait will be available to you this year. Peel Sound is your only hope.” 

Over the previous few days, the pack had begun to move in Peel Sound, but this was meager encouragement. The color-coded charts from Environment Canada displayed long stretches of orange (indicating surface-ice concentrations of seven- to eight-tenths) from its entrance all the way to Cape M’Clure. Below Franklin Strait, great masses of ice flowed down from M’Clintock Channel, and here the chart remained resolutely red (indicating surface concentrations of nine- to ­ten-tenths ice). Worse, the 165-mile run from the intersection of Lancaster and Peel to the first tenuous anchorage at False Strait provided no secure hiding places.

I knew from Victor that other yachts were having to battle in this section. Inook had punched south of Bellot Strait; friends on yellow-hulled Breskell were in Peel, with Altego and Morgane nearby. These boats had crews who worked the ice from the bow with long poles, wedging through the pack, clawing for every inch. “Alioth is a day ahead of you and reports it took 12 hours to pass from Hummock Point to the Hurditch Peninsula,” he reported. I went to the chart and measured it off: 12 hours to go 40 miles. 

All day as we crossed, the fulmars flew the other way, out from the ice maze ahead, down Lancaster Sound, into Baffin Bay and south. The fall migration had begun.

“This is a difficult year,” Victor wrote. “Most sailboat crews fight tooth and ice pole to get through Peel. But there is no ­option. It is time to take your difficult bite.”

August 16, Lancaster Sound

Mo and I departed Graham Harbor under power at 0400. Already the sun sat two hands above the horizon, brightening the fluted cliffs of Devon Island as we emerged from the darkness of the anchorage. Not a breath of wind. The sea, a navy-blue mirror. I made our course west-southwest for the entrance to Peel Sound, distance 120 miles. 

All day as we crossed, the fulmars flew the other way, out from the ice maze ahead, down Lancaster Sound, into Baffin Bay and south. The fall migration had begun. We were pushing against the stream. 

By midnight, the headlands of Prince of Wales Island had covered the sun. During our 20 hours from Graham Harbor, at least one white chunk had always decorated the horizon, and now being off watch for more than 15 minutes was too long. Given the difficulties of the next leg, I decided to take one last, long sleep. Off Cape Swansea at the head of Peel Sound, I hove to and shut down the engine. Mo drifted slowly northward. I crawled into the sleeping bag, but I could not find sleep. Worry brought me on deck every hour. At 0400, I rose and made coffee and a hot breakfast. By 0500, we were underway.

August 17, Peel Sound

It was clear and calm again. As we motored hour after hour, each notation in the wind column of the log read, simply, zero. Bright sun, warm on face and hands, produced temperatures in the cockpit of 50 degrees F. With no ice in sight, I set about chores: topping off the fuel tanks from the gerry cans, lifting the hydrogenerator, and removing the windvane water paddle from the transom. Neither would be needed for many days, and either could be fatally damaged by a nip from the ice. 

By 1100, we had crossed Aston Bay in open water, but two hours later, Mo moved through long, low plains of two-tenths ice off M’Clure Bay. I disengaged the autopilot and took the tiller. Easy-going: The ice was rotten. Some pieces appeared to be nothing more than floating snow; others had been eaten by the warmth into the shapes of pale green and white mushrooms or were canted at strange angles like Titanics forever on the verge of sinking. I pushed Mo at full speed and kept an eye forward for more. 

From abreast of Hummock Point, I saw solid white on the horizon, which the day’s mirage transformed into the crest of an ivory tsunami rolling toward us. Soon we moved through more ice than water, but with care and concentration, I could always find a lane just when it was needed. Mo, a heavy bird, swooped and dodged through the floes; I exercised the tiller as if it were the handle of an oar. And it was exhilarating, the constant motion, the rapid decision-making. We can do this, I thought. 

Only once did I screw up, and this was by aiming to split two close floes; too late I saw the diagnostic light-green water between them, indicating their connection below the surface. Mo thunked quietly; then there was a clinking sound like ice cubes in a glass. Astern, the floes drifted apart. 

Ice went thin, then thick, then thin again. Sometimes the way ahead seemed closed until we were right up at the pack edge, then a sliver of water. We’d follow slowly, feeling a route as much as seeing it, then a pause. I’d climb to the spreaders, searching the whiteness for dark veins. Then onward and out. I’d heave to for a cup of coffee or can of soup, then we’d be back at it again. Hours passed this way, and I was still working the tiller. 

By 2300, what had been heavy-going began to thin. The water was clear enough that my course changes were slight, mere nudges of the tiller between my legs, my hands in pockets for warmth. I played the dangerous game: How little could I change course; how close to the ice could I safely get? Only occasionally there was a miss, proof being a soft swooshing on the hull and a smudge of black bottom paint on the passing floe. 

Midnight: The western sky burned ­orange, but to the east it was a frigid ­purple with a full moon over a low ­silhouette of hills. Such perpetual dusk made for difficult seeing, but here the floe was odds and ends. I had been hand-­steering for 20 hours. Fatigue weighed on leaden eyes; my thighs were shaking. 

Ahead at last was a long, dark opening as wide as the sound. Clear water. The faint white on the horizon must be a whole 10 minutes distant. I flipped on the autopilot, dropped below, and set the alarm for a five-minute nap. I collapsed against a bulkhead, immediately asleep. 

Then on the fourth minute, a heavy crash. Mo shuddered as if hitting a wall and stopped dead. The engine ground right down. I leapt for the throttle, backed her off and then looked forward. Mo and an ice block the size of a bus were drifting slowly apart. 

At 0200, there were scattered floes, but we’d gotten past the first plug. A sense of satisfaction, and still we motored south. Finally, to the east I saw the expected cut in the land, False Strait, where we dropped anchor at 0600. We’d come 150 miles in 26 hours and were through Peel Sound. 

August 18, Tasmania Islands

At noon the next day, the anchor came up clean, the tip shining bright—another rocky bottom. Over a quick morning coffee, I pulled an ice report and then also noticed a message from the crew of Alioth.

Hailing from Belgium, Alioth is a 55-foot aluminum expedition sloop we’d met for the first time in Halifax. Here I’d gotten to know her crew of three: skipper, Vincent Moeyersoms, with Olivier and Jean, brother and friend, respectively, experienced sailors all. After a day of outfitting, we would meet to compare notes over a beer, and I came to admire Vincent’s thoughtfulness and his careful preparation. Still, one cannot anticipate every eventuality. This morning’s message said that Alioth’s gear box had failed (who carries a spare gear box?). Now she was without propulsion in five-tenths ice south of the Tasmania Islands, some 75 miles from our position. She’d have to sail the 250 miles to the next village, Cambridge Bay, for repairs, and was asking if we would join her as escort. I quickly got us underway.

As we steamed southwest, I could see heavy floe issuing from milewide Bellot Strait as a continuous sheet. How fortunate we were to be heading away from it; how unfortunate that within 10 minutes we had entered an obliterating fog. I reduced speed to 4 knots and began to pick my way through loose pack. It was easy-going enough, but I had no idea what lay ahead or if my lane would remain clear. 

The cold was nipping hard. My hands were in a triple layer of fleece and leather mittens, but the mitt on the tiller felt as thin as paper, and that hand soon ached. Toes were numb in their insulated boots, even after stamping in place. And so painfully slow was our progress! I began counting off the seconds between when ice became visible and when it passed abeam. At first the count was five. When the fog dissipated enough that I could count to 10, I put Mo at full speed. 

We approached the Tasmania Islands in late evening; here the deck lifted and the ice thinned to mostly open water. I knew that I needed a short sleep before encountering the unknown with Alioth, so I decided to risk the pass between the easternmost Tasmania island and the mainland. Depths were not marked on my chart, but I had faint recollection of Bob Shepton having been through here in Dodo’s Delight in 2013, and a divot in the coast catty-corner from Cape Rendel looked like a promising catnap anchorage. 

It was nearing midnight when we made the entrance, and here we passed a solid line of growlers grinding together where tidal streams met. Inside the pass, the current pushed against Mo, and our way slowed dramatically. Worse, the cut was full of brash and scattered floe. With such a current, the anchorage I’d hoped for would be too easily swept. There would be no stopping after all. 

The bottom continued to be uniformly deep mid-channel, but ice kept me at the tiller. In the darkness, fatigue and cold bore down and were moderated only by the sense of risk and the need to keep moving. By 0400, we had exited the pass and were back into the relative safety of the strait. Exhausted and shivering, I hove to, shut down the engine, made a can of soup, and went straight to my bunk. 

RELATED: Sailing the Southern Ocean

Two hours later, I woke to a heavy thud against the hull. Already the day was squintingly bright, the sea a solid white all around as Mo lay gently heaving in close-pack. From the pilothouse, we seemed penned in, but from a perch on the gooseneck winch, I found the floe looked loose enough that we could make slow way to the southeast. Alioth lay to the southwest, half a day away, and where, according to Vincent, she was jogging back and forth under mainsail in the gut of a large opening. Vincent reported solid pack to his north, east and west, but he could see what appeared to be a clean lane due south. That was good news indeed, but would it last? 

By 1400, I’d worked below a solid line of pack separating our two vessels, and then was able to swing due west toward Alioth’s position. An hour later, her sleek gray hull came out of the mist where she was hove to in a cove of blue surrounded by sparkling, icy shores.

“Nice to see a friend,” Vincent reported on VHF. “Our lane seems to be holding, and there is a north wind.” Alioth spread her wings immediately, and we began to make our cautious way. Sometimes our lane would tighten; at others, it would divide, and then Vincent and I would study what we could see in binoculars and negotiate over VHF which path we thought best. Each decision, so made, paid off. Three hours later, the lane became so wide and straight, it was as if Moses had parted a sea of white. Then suddenly, the ice receded altogether. We were below the second plug. Alioth made a close approach to Mo, and we four cheered our good fortune. 

We knew current from M’Clintock Channel had pushed its pack well out into our preferred route, so we continued south until nearly aground on Clarence Island. Then we wore toward Victoria Strait in open water. Overnight, our two vessels sailed in company in a beautiful following wind, and around midnight, Alioth took the lead and kept watch while I rested below. Twice the VHF barked, “Moli, wake up. Growler to port; do you see it?” 

In the Arctic, a sailing wind is rare and short-lived. Thus, the next day came on gray, the sea greasy smooth; with it arose a new problem. We were becalmed 100 miles from the shelter of Cambridge Bay, and though this presented no serious difficulties for the moment, the forecast called for an intense westerly gale to sweep our quadrant two days hence. Our position well north of Jenny Lind Island provided no room for running off or lying to a drogue in a blow that would work to push us back onto the ice we had just escaped. 

I offered to take Alioth in tow, but Vincent refused. He didn’t wish to risk another man’s engine—and by extension, a successful passage out of the Arctic that season—just for the sake of his own. He countered that we should proceed to safety without them, an offer I found equally unsatisfactory. Having achieved stalemate, we drifted in company most of the day, taking a little breeze now and again for a mile or two, and until the evening forecast insisted we acknowledge the coming danger.

Mo pulled alongside Alioth in the ­twilight. Vincent lifted over a yoke and towline, which I took and secured. I throttled up the little red engine; the line came taut, and the two vessels were underway at 4 knots for Cambridge Bay. All night we motored and into the next day. Gradually the sky lowered and grew threatening, but still there was no wind. In the late evening, we entered the long channel to Cambridge Bay. Then we were inside and steaming up the welcome confines of the West Arm. At 2300 on August 21, I cut loose Alioth over her chosen spot, and her anchor splashed down. I moved farther up-bay and let go Mo’s hook in 35 feet. 

In the night, the gale came on as foretold. From my bunk, I could hear the rigging roar as it had not done since the Falklands. Mo started at her snubber, but the holding here was ancient mud and the anchor lay buried far, far to windward. I eased deeper into the down of the bag and fell asleep listening to the blow. 

Homeward Bound

A few days later, Mo and I left Alioth in Cambridge Bay to await spare parts, and at Cape Bathurst, we departed the ice as well. On September 12, we crossed the Arctic Circle headed south; we stopped in Nome, Alaska, the next day, made Dutch Harbor on September 20, and returned to our home port of San Francisco on October 19, 2019, completing the Figure 8 Voyage in 384 days.

Randall Reeves is a West Coast sailor, writer and adventurer. For more about his Figure 8 Voyage, check out his book-length account, available at figure8voyage.com.

The post The Crux of the Matter appeared first on Cruising World.

“Reeves, you are a beacon on the shoals of life,” a man yelled from up the dock. All morning I worked on deck. The weekend had emptied the boatyard, quieting the bustle of lifts and cranes. Today there would be no interruptions from passersby, and I could happily focus on the present task: preparing Moli, my 45-foot aluminum cutter, for her second figure-eight-voyage attempt. Then the voice: “I am thrilled to follow your adventure,” the man said. “You show me places I never wish to go; you have experiences I never wish to have. You are a warning to others: ‘Pass not this way.’”

Such sentiments, I had found, were not uncommon, and even I had to admit that the first figure-eight attempt—a solo circumnavigation of the Americas and Antarctica in one season—had not exactly gone to plan. The plan, in brief, was to sail the Pacific south from my home port of San Francisco, and, after rounding Cape Horn, to proceed on a full east-about trek of the Southern Ocean; after rounding Cape Horn again, the course would proceed up the Atlantic, into the Arctic, and then would transit the Northwest Passage for home. Admittedly, it was a challenging goal.

Mo and I departed for the first time via the Golden Gate Bridge on September 30, 2017, but heavy weather knocked Mo flat west of Cape Horn and then again in the Indian Ocean. The former incident dealt fatal blows to both self-steering devices; the latter broke a window in the pilothouse, drowning most of Mo’s electronics. Both required unscheduled stops for repairs, by which time it was too late in the season to continue. The only logical solution: Sail home and start again.

RELATED: My Seventh Circumnavigation

On July 10, 2018, Mo and I returned under the Golden Gate Bridge, closing the loop on a 253-day 26,453-mile solo circumnavigation, which some had dubbed, and not by way of a compliment, “the longest shakedown cruise in history.” Three months later found me in the boatyard readying Mo for her second attempt when the stranger’s words broke my solitude.

Departure day came on October 1, 2018. Indian summer in San Francisco is warm but windless. Mo motored under full sail out to sea—and with an escort fleet of exactly one vessel. On departure the year before, I had looked to the horizon from under a cloud of foreboding, but now I felt relaxed. Now I knew what lay ahead, and I had a plan.

Our first test of this second attempt came in the Pacific at 49 degrees south, in the form of a Force 8 and 9 northwesterly blow lasting four days. My assessment of the previous year’s ­failure was that I’d not sailed fast enough. From the beginning, I had intended to follow the example of heroes such as Vito Dumas and Bernard Moitessier and keep moving through the worst of blows, but as conditions eased and seas stood up, I made the repeated mistake of staying on the tiny storm jib for too long. Counter to all intuition, speed is safety for a heavy boat in heavy weather because it provides the rudder with needed corrective power when the extremities of motion are making control a precious commodity. Thus, my vow on this second attempt was to keep up speed, to carry more sail—to leave the damned storm jib in its bag.

By day two of this blow, we were surrounded by great blue heavers with long troughs and cascading tops. On a deeply reefed working jib (over twice the sail area I’d carried on previous occasions), Mo rushed along with a steadiness that thrilled me. Several times she surfed straight down a massive wall, throwing a bow wave whose roar rivaled that of the gale. But she never faltered. Standing watch in the security of the pilothouse and amid this orchestrated chaos, I felt my satisfaction growing. Now we had a chance at a full circuit of the south, I thought. Soon I found myself whistling happily with the whine in the rigging. Only later did I recall with embarrassment that whistling in a blow is terribly bad luck, and forthwith, I scrawled instructions on a piece of duct tape fastened to the companionway hatch by way of reminder: “No Whistling Allowed!”

And then it was time for the Cape Horn approach. Out of prudence and heartfelt respect, I had planned this rounding to pass south of Islas Diego Ramirez, a group of rocks 20 miles below the Horn and on the edge of the continental shelf. South of these is open water of true, oceanic depth, but between Diego Ramirez and the Horn, the bottom quickly shelves to as little as 300 feet. Here, seas unmolested by land since New Zealand can pile up dangerously when weather is foul. In this case, however, a low sky brought only a cold and spitting rain. We had a fast wind but an easy sea, and on November 29, 56 days out of San Francisco, Mo and I swung in so close to the famous Cape that we could kiss her on the shins.

By morning, the headland could still be seen as a black smudge on the gray horizon astern. Mo creamed along under twin headsails in a brisk southwesterly, and as the water of the Pacific blended into that of the Atlantic, so my pride at the summit just attained was quickly cooled by thoughts of the challenge ahead.

My Southern Ocean strategy was simple: to stay as far south as I dared. There were two reasons for this. One was that at my target latitude of 47 degrees south, the circumference of the circle from Cape Horn to Cape Horn again was almost 2,000 miles shorter than at the more-typical rounding latitude of 40 degrees south. Secondly, Mo would wallow in fewer calms. The monstrous lows that march endlessly below the capes tend to hoover up everything around them, leaving vast windless spaces in ­between. The farther north of the lows one sails, the longer the calms last; the farther south, the more ­consistent the wind.

As it turned out, a lack of wind would not be a problem during this passage. By early December, we were above the Falklands and had turned to an easterly course when our first major low approached. Its winds built during the day but really came up to force overnight, with the anemometer touching 45 knots and gusting higher. The main had been doused, the boom lashed to its crutch, and the working jib was deeply reefed. The sea continued to build. Near midnight, I was dozing fitfully in my bunk when I felt Mo lift sharply, then there was a heavy slam of green water hitting the cockpit and companionway hatch. The boat rolled well over, and I rolled with her from my bunk and onto the cupboards. Then she righted, and I could hear the tinkling and splashing of water in the pilothouse.

I groaned at the thought that we’d yet again broken something vital. Grabbing a flashlight, I crawled into the ­pilothouse but found no shattered glass. In the cockpit, the dodger’s plastic door had been ripped open and the windvane paddle had been pulled from its socket. We had been badly pooped, but all that streaming wet below was from nothing more than the wave squirting in between the ­companionway hatch’s locked slide. “Keep the water out,” was Eric Hiscock’s advice for those making a Southern Ocean ­passage. As it turns out, this is rather more ­difficult than it sounds.

Two weeks later and halfway to Good Hope, we’d already ridden out three gales, and two more were in the forecast. My log was a succession of “large low arrives tonight”; “winds 35 gusting 45″; “chaotic seas—wind continues to build”; “the ocean is like a boulder garden”; “another low on the way.” By Christmas, we were well past the prime meridian and into the Indian Ocean. So far Mo had averaged a fast 140 miles a day, and the storm jib hadn’t budged from its position lashed onto the rail.

The most dreaded of questions an adventurer can face is why—why pursue such long, lonely, tiresome, risky voyages? At first, such inquiry caught me off guard, and my responses were halting. Wouldn’t anyone, given the opportunity, put at the top of his priorities list a solo sail around the world?

To me the answer is an immediate “yes.” But to others, and when the endless days of discomfort are weighed in—the sleepless nights, meals eaten from a can, the perpetual, clammy damp, hands so raw that the skin sloughs off, the gut-gnawing fear of an approaching storm, the inescapable wrath of a heavy sea, and months of exposure to a remoteness that makes the crew of the space station one’s nearest neighbors—when all that is known, most would choose not to go to sea and regard as crazy those who do.

But here’s the attraction: Sailing the Southern Ocean is like exploring an alien world. Down here, there isn’t the evidence of civilization that one finds in other oceans. Down here, there are no ships on the horizon, no jet contrails in the sky; no plastic trash ever clutters one’s wake. For months on end, there isn’t so much as a lee shore, and the waves, freed from all confinement except gravity, roam like giant buffalo upon a great, blue plain.

Moreover, down here, the animals one encounters live in such a purity of wildness that you could well be their first human encounter. Many days Mo and I were visited by that absolute marvel, the wandering albatross. As big as a suitcase and with a 12-foot wingspan, this bird lives most of its life on the wing and beyond the sight of land. It can glide in any direction in any strength of wind; so adapted is it to this environment that it can even sleep while aloft. When my little ship is struggling to survive, this bird hangs in the air with an effortlessness that defies understanding. There, above that crashing wave, it is poised so still as to seem carved out of the sky.

Or take the stars. Out here, on a clear and moonless night, the heavens shine such that our brother constellations recede into the melee of twinkling and are lost. On such a night, looking upward with binoculars is like dipping one’s hands into a basket of pearls. Look down, and galaxies of phosphorescence spin in your wake.

By January 18, Day 105 out of San Francisco, we were nearing the opposite side of the world and the halfway point in our circuit of the south. After dinner, I noticed that the barometer had dropped from 1,010 to 1,002 mb in a mere four hours. What had been an easy 20-knot westerly soon veered into the north and hardened. At midnight, I dropped the poled-out twin headsails and raised the main. Winds continued to build, and by 0200, the main was down again and lashed to its boom.

By 0400, pressure had reached 998, and brought with it a freight train of wind from the northwest. Now there was just enough light to make out the cement-colored sky pushing down upon the water. Seas were smack on the beam but manageable.

The front hit at 0600 with winds of 40 gusting to 45 and a pelting, horizontal rain. Crests of waves were blown off; the barometer dropped another 2 points. When it passed, the gale settled down to do its business. Long, wide crests of sea broke together and stained the black water with city-block-size patches of cream and ice blue. The barometer kept on sliding. At each two-hour log entry, it was down another 2 points. Four reefs in the working jib, Mo laboring.

At 1400, we reached the bottom of the low, and the barometer flattened out at 989. The wind roared. Mo shuddered in its force. The log read: “Seas massive; some plunge-breaking.” Two hours later: “A crazy, mishmash heavy sea. Pyramidal.” At 1700: “Long gusts to 50. Working jib down to a hanky.” Later that night: “Our first screaming surf down a wave I cannot see.”

To this point, Mo had been sure-footed. Always at the center of the surrounding chaos, her decks seemed as still and solid as Mother Earth. Yes, there were times when she stumbled, fell off a breaker and was thrown over to the windows, but she came back to rights and shook off things so quickly that the fall seemed hardly worth mentioning. Only when I went on deck did the fierceness of the gale become apparent.

On deck, I moved aft to adjust the windvane when I heard a crashing from the blackness astern. But I did not look aft, I looked up—and there a white wall hung for a moment. I leaped for the rail as it consumed the boat. Mo rolled. She was under. Immediate cold down foulies and boots. And then she was up. Cockpit a bathtub. Sheets trailing in the water. The main halyard was wrapped around my leg. Amazingly, there was no damage.

By 0100, I had been working the boat for 20 hours, was achingly cold and beginning to feel undone. Wind had eased significantly, and with its diminishing, so too the sea subsided. The moment had come to start adding back the sail we’d withdrawn so long ago, but this time I did not. I left Mo with but a handkerchief of a jib, tore off my foulies, and hit the sack. I didn’t even set an alarm.

On and on like this goes the Southern Ocean. By February 12, we were below New Zealand; by March 5, we were 5,000 miles due south of San Francisco; and as we descended for the second Cape Horn rounding, Mo and I were weary but battle hardened. This approach proved more tempestuous than the first, but now even dangerously foul weather couldn’t keep us from spying that great rock, that Everest of the watery south. Another gale came on. Mo pointed steadily onward and to within sight of our goal. The seas built. The wind roared. And then all cleared. Cape Horn came out of the abyss—gray, hulking rock not so much barren as raw, and with breakers throwing themselves at her feet. Then we were around, and yet on we raced. On and on and on…

On March 20, 2019—and as part of the figure-eight voyage—Mo and sailor-adventurer Randall Reeves completed a 15,343-mile 110-day circumnavigation of the Southern Ocean but continued north for a first stop in Halifax, Nova Scotia, after 237 days at sea. Coming next month: Mo and Reeves heed the call of the Northwest Passage. For more, check out Reeves’ book-length account of the voyage, available at figure8voyage.com.

The post Sailing the Southern Ocean appeared first on Cruising World.

Photographer, sailor and Arctic explorer David Thoreson sits down with Cruising World editors Herb McCormick and Mark Pillsbury to talk about conditions in the far north, share some of his photography and recounts adventures he’s had in several expeditions, including two through the Northwest Passage.

The post Cocktails with Cruising World Featuring David Thoreson appeared first on Cruising World.

Aboard the 64-foot cutter Ocean Watch, en route to the Northwest Passage, we’d put the Bering Strait astern and were just miles away from crossing the Arctic Circle. First, we had a mission of sorts, to retrieve a ­weather buoy for a scientist at the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Lab that had beached itself on a remote barrier ­island; the drift buoy was now high and dry, but its satellite responder was working fine. We knew precisely where it was.

But just a few hours before we got there, we had an encounter that, a decade later, still makes my tummy flutter and my palms clammy. For that was the night we briefly ran aground off the tiny Alaskan village of Shishmaref, on its own flat ­barrier island flanking the Seward Peninsula. Earlier that very week, a BBC reporter described the place thusly: “It is thought to be the most extreme example of global warming on the planet.”

This we had to see for ourselves. It proved to be an iffy decision—you never want to kiss a sandy spit in the dead of night on a lee shore—but thankfully, not a tragic one. However, we hadn’t been drawn to Shishmaref because it’s a boomtown. Quite the opposite. It was a town going boom.

Shishmaref was in the news at the time for all the wrong reasons. Totally open to the north, it got sucker-punched by each successive winter storm. Warmer weather and water in the Arctic—not to mention melting permafrost—meant less protective ice, which translated to a shoreline exposed to wind and waves, which in turn eroded the tenuous beaches and cliffs. Everything along the foreshore was sliding into the sea, including the main road and a whole bunch of houses, which we could see on our approach.

It was just after midnight, the sea and sky a uniform slate of gray, but still fairly light outside in the high latitudes. There was activity along the beachfront, and after transmitting an open-ended call on the VHF inquiring about local ­knowledge, one of the villagers arrived on a skiff offering to guide us in. However, with our 9-plus-foot draft, it wasn’t to be. Suddenly we ground to a halt. There were some agonizing moments—what a sad way it would’ve been to dash our dreams—but eventually we powered off and carried on. The disappearing village vanished astern.

I was reminded of Shishmaref just before the new year after reading the results of the annual “Arctic report card,” a yearly assessment produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that, according to The New York Times, “takes a broad look at the effects of climate change in the region and compares current findings with the historical record.”

“If I had gotten a report card like this as a kid, I would’ve been grounded,” noted one professor. “It’s not showing much improvement at all. Things are getting worse.”

Where to begin? Rising temperatures. Thawing sea ice. Earlier-than-usual seasonal melts. Growing concerns over sea-level rises. Somehow, this very exact science has become politicized by many in the social media set, and elsewhere, but it’s quite real to the people living in the Arctic who have been dealing with the repercussions for decades now. Later fall freezes leave communities isolated; warmer waters mean you can’t travel over the ice; wildlife movements and patterns, the main source of sustenance through hunting and fishing for, like, eons, are disrupted. The distant tit-and-tat over the changing climate is kind of secondary when your stomach is growling. Young people raised in the Arctic are bailing in droves. Who could blame them?

Oh, about that melting permafrost, which sure has changed the real estate market in Shishmaref? It releases the carbon dioxide it traps into the atmosphere, spinning the cycle ever more rapidly. It’s all interconnected—a circle, a loop—and it’s not slowing down.

Back in Shishmaref, today, the 500 or so remaining residents are stuck between sticking it out or relocating to the mainland. It’s clear they’ll eventually need to leave, but tell that to a people with a history spanning, oh, 2,000 years or so. Talk about roots.

I never did set foot on Shishmaref; hours later, I was off on fresh adventures. That nice guy in the skiff who tried to help us out that night? In my rearview mirror, mate—not my problem. He’ll figure it out. Right?

Herb McCormick is CW’s executive editor.

The post Off Watch: A Disappearing Town Along the Northwest Passage appeared first on Cruising World.

The sun peeked over the gentle rolling ocean swell, smearing the underside of the clouds with Crayola colors. Janna Esarey sat on a creatively fashioned dock box-turned-cockpit seat as DogBark galloped across the Pacific at 10 knots, under a reefed main and full genoa. She was sailing almost due south, 900 nautical miles north of Hawaii, with 25 knots of breeze over the port beam. DogBark was in her element, with the strong trades fueling her drive to sail fast. Janna’s confidence in her boat’s aptitude permitted her to sip coffee casually while admiring the stunning sunrise. She contemplated the winding path that led to this moment, charging across the Pacific on a 60-foot boat she had learned to love and call home. This is the story of a family, a quest and a yacht called DogBark.

Like a complex puzzle, revealed one piece at a time, the tale begins decades earlier with a unique distance-racing sailboat built halfway around the world. It meanders across a coincidental meeting between two equally passionate (read: crazy) racing sailors, and a compelling conversation with an Arctic explorer. And finally, in its third act (thus far), it lurches through an intense year of boat renovations before ice conditions wrench the storyline from a wintry 71 degrees north to a tropical 20 degrees north.

The first puzzle piece materialized in 1989 when Australian Kanga Birtles, owner of Jarkan Yacht Builders, splashed his newly designed, custom racing sailboat, designed by John King and built in accordance with the relatively new Open 60 (now called IMOCA 60) box rules. The boat, christened Jarkan Yacht Builders, came in at just under 60 feet, with a 9.5-foot draft and enough positive stability to right itself from a deep knockdown. At the time, at least in the Open 60 realm, it was a conventional design, with a fixed bulb keel, a single rudder, 30,000-pound displacement, and about 10,000 pounds of water ballast in tanks extending 18 feet along each side of the hull. Birtles had the 1990 BOC Challenge in mind, a solo around-the-world race, and being on a restrictive budget without major sponsorship, wanted a “bulletproof” boat to limit costly and potentially dangerous breakages midrace.

The BOC Challenge (renamed the Around Alone race in the 1990s) was, at the time, the world’s premier singlehanded event. Of the 25 vessels that left Newport, Rhode Island, in fall 1990, with dreams of returning half a year later both intact and ahead of their competition, seven withdrew due to damage, injury or both. Completing the race was a testament to the strength and fortitude of man and vessel. In May 1991, Jarkan crossed the finish line fifth in its class.

An offhand comment from Birtles after the race underscored his vessel’s fortitude. Despite a chilling knockdown in the Southern Ocean during the race’s third leg, the only damage Jarkan sustained in 136 days of racing were a few bent stanchions. Birtles had built a fast, robust vessel capable of withstanding the toughest ocean conditions on the planet under the guidance of a lone crew.

Twelve years later, that sleek, sturdy Open 60 called to Al Hughes from the docks in Seattle. Al wasn’t looking for a new boat, but Primetime America, its name at the time, was looking for a new owner. Al already owned a boat; he lived aboard a custom 39-foot sailboat with his wife, but was drawn to Primetime’s sexy lines and long-distance ocean-racing credentials. She was going through a rough patch, owned by a bank looking to recoup its losses, and desperately needed an infusion of new energy.

Much to the chagrin of his usually loving and supportive wife, Al’s absurdly low offer was accepted, and he became a two-boat owner in January 2004. The renowned Open 60 was rechristened DogBark, a tribute to his pup, Gus, and a tongue-in-cheek reference to “dog-bark navigation,” in which sailors in Scotland’s fog-shrouded waterways listened for the sound of barking to know when they were too close to shore and needed to tack away into deeper waters.

Al’s friends told him he was crazy, but his ambitions crystalized with his admiration of DogBark. He’d hustle to the start line of the Singlehanded Transpacific Yacht Race in San Francisco, five short months away, to see what she could do. Al assured his wife he’d do one singlehanded race before selling the boat. Short on time and money, he changed little about DogBark, adding only the required safety equipment and replacing spent batteries and a few fraying lines. After one qualifying sail, he headed to the start line in June, with a perilously low number of hours spent sailing the boat.

But DogBark took care of him. Twelve days later, he took line honors in Kauai, Hawaii (a mere 45 minutes ahead of the second-place finisher), and sealed his love for the boat that carried him there. While 60 feet is a lot of boat to handle alone, and challenging weather conditions kept Al on his toes, DogBark made his job as easy as she could, barreling across the ocean without complaint. He hit a top speed of 24 knots, a wild sleigh ride down a particularly steep wave that had him holding on and shouting with glee. Despite his wife’s urging, Al couldn’t part with the boat. He returned to take line honors in the 2006 and 2008 editions of the singlehanded Transpac. So much for his one-and-done promise.

While Al was galloping across the Pacific on DogBark, a newly married couple untied the lines of their Hallberg-Rassy Rasmus 35, Dragonfly, for an extended honeymoon cruise. On their two-year voyage across the Pacific, Graeme and Janna Cawrse Esarey fortified their loyalty to each other and to the sea. When they returned to Seattle to start a family, it was with the knowledge that the ocean would call them back to cruise as a family one day.

In the following years, their daughters, Talia and Savai, grew into precocious individuals and confident sailors, and Graeme fostered a dedicated and competitive race crew for his Farr 1220, Kotuku. In the way that happenstance interactions can inadvertently alter the narrative of those interacting, another puzzle piece dropped into place when Al found himself racing with Graeme…and Graeme in turn found himself admiring Al’s immense knowledge and skill.

Graeme soon learned Al had a fast boat of his own. And, in the way that seemingly inanimate objects can wiggle their way into the heart of an unsuspecting observer, Graeme fell in love with DogBark the first time he saw her standing proudly in a boatyard near Seattle. As a long-distance-racing enthusiast, he fantasized about the adventures he could have with a boat designed to sail with a small crew anywhere in the world. But practicality kept him grounded; he already owned a wonderful boat for racing in the Northwest and, anyway, DogBark’s utter lack of interior comforts would not sit well with his family.

It was not until Graeme talked to polar explorer Eric Larsen that the puzzle’s outline came into focus. He and Janna wanted to take their daughters, now 10 and 12 years old, cruising before high school commitments took precedence but were struggling to find enthusiasm for the tropical route they took on their honeymoon cruise. Janna had learned she preferred cold-weather sailing, and with the world so big, taking the same path through the tropics felt uninspiring. Eric, recently returned from an unsupported expedition to the North Pole by foot, mentioned the Northwest Passage’s growing water-to-ice ratio. Walking across the ice wasn’t on Graeme’s radar, but exciting cold-weather cruising grounds were. Furthermore, that sturdy, oceangoing racing machine sitting in the boatyard had been calling to Graeme for years.

The rest of the family was—OK, tentatively at first—on board with the harebrained idea to buy DogBark, refit her in less than 12 months, and leave Seattle to sail through the Northwest Passage before continuing to the Mediterranean. Dreaming became planning, and planning soon became doing. Al, understanding the drive to pursue wild sailing dreams better than most, handed over the keys to DogBark, along with a seemingly limitless stream of advice and knowledge.

Shortly after ownership passed hands, my husband, John, and I were incorporated into the wild scheme. We had raced with Graeme and Al aboard Kotuku until, inspired by their knowledge and passion for sailing, we had purchased our own boat and left Seattle to go cruising. When Graeme called us in Nicaragua with the news of their “new” boat and their related Arctic plans, it took us less than a breath to commit to join them for the Northwest Passage. As a writer/photographer team, we would be able to document the journey while contributing as crew, and stand-in aunt and uncle to Talia and Savai.

As friends had with Al, Graeme and Janna’s pals regularly informed them they were crazy. The Northwest Passage, while a significantly more feasible route than a decade earlier, was still far from a sure thing. DogBark’s fiberglass hull and deep draft were concerns in a region dominated by perilous ice and shallow bays. But for Graeme and his crew, those concerns were offset by her watertight crash bulkheads and a thick, sturdy hull. DogBark was designed with high-latitude sailing in mind.

When Al had prepared to do his second and third Transpac, he’d touched up the bottom paint on DogBark, changed the oil, tested a few systems, and took off for the start line. The list of requirements and comforts for a two-week solo passage in temperate waters was concise. That list grew immeasurably longer as the Esareys considered a multiyear cruise for four people, starting with two extra crewmembers and a month or more of voyaging above the Arctic Circle. DogBark had a strong hull and an engine with low hours but lacked creature comforts—such as beds or a bathroom door—that would make living aboard suitable for the whole family.

So they all got to work. They crafted a “Master Project List,” a shared Excel document pages long with notes, dimensions, priorities and dates. Step one required several power washers and elbow grease to clear the deck’s flourishing farm of moss and mold. Step two was…everything else.

From the very first day, it was clear there was not enough time to do it all. Many boat owners spend three or seven or 15 years preparing themselves and their boat to go cruising. The Esareys had less than one. Other boat owners dream of it all their lives but are never quite able to untie the lines. Graeme and Janna were well-aware of the traps of shore life, so once the plan was hatched, they were determined to untie the lines the following summer, even if it meant sailing north before the water tanks were plumbed or heaters installed. With a long list and a short timeline, Graeme and Janna divided tasks and dug in.

Graeme focused on ensuring DogBark was as safe (and fast) as possible. He worked with Port Townsend Rigging to replace all of the rod and wire rigging, including fabricating new spreader ends and replacing all of the turnbuckles. Under Al’s guidance, he added a bowsprit to make flying and jibing the asymmetrical kites easier, and to extend the anchor away from DogBark’s plumb bow. Ballard Sails issued a new suite of working sails: a main, a genoa and a jib, and recut two spinnakers. Graeme added all new B&G electronics, an autopilot, and an electric winch to assist the new mainsail up the 85 feet of mast. He expanded fuel, fresh water and waste capacity. He purchased a new life raft, two solar panels and an engine-driven heater, but he didn’t have time to install them before departure.

One of DogBark’s qualities that enticed Graeme was her shorthanded sailing prowess. Built for singlehanding, the sail controls were designed for one person to make sail changes and adjustments, despite the loads of a 60-foot boat with a nine-story spar. Almost without exception, whenever Graeme changed the way a line was led, he soon re-led it the way it was originally. He updated the banks of clutches and replaced worn lines, but otherwise found that the leads, winch placements and reefing systems worked most effectively unaltered. DogBark was well-sorted.

Janna focused on the interior renovation. While safety and speed were tantamount, cruising with a family required converting the interior from a simple layout, one designed for a single, low-maintenance racer, into a practical and comfortable home with storage and sleeping space. She knew her husband would happily sail in a bucket (as long as it was a fast bucket), but the rest of the family wanted some level of comfort and amenities. DogBark had only one real “bed” (which had morphed into space for storing sails), so the biggest challenge was converting the aft spaces on either side of the companionway from water ballast tanks into cabins. In the end, they ground out 9 linear feet of ballast tank on either side, pulled out the large aft-facing nav station, and custom-built single bunks that converted into doubles. To make it homey, Janna’s father added shelving to cover the ballast tank and a pocket desk controlled by a line that allowed it to “gimbal” when the boat heeled. Doors would give the sisters some form of privacy but, without time to custom-make them, decorative shower curtains sufficed.

Once Talia and Savai saw their rooms taking shape and realized their parents were truly committed to this adventure, the dream felt real and they started to get excited. Having grown up on and around boats, they knew the demands—and the potential fun—of boat work. While their friends spent lazy afternoons at the park or playing video games, Talia and Savai were on the boat with their parents, getting dirty and working hard. They helped paint every exposed inch of the interior, cover the audacious yellow Formica countertops with a more pleasing slate gray, and re-cover the bright red saloon cushions with easy-to-clean faux leather. They ran wires through the engine room, scrubbed the bilge, installed wood paneling, and went up the mast to run new halyards. They brought energy and silliness to the boatyard, alongside their hard work and creative solutions.

Many projects that started out with a prominent place on the master list soon dropped off the back, due to a shortage of time or a change in perspective. DogBark came with a funky space-pod-looking hard dodger with crazed plexiglass windows that wouldn’t offer much visibility or protection from the cold bitter elements of the Arctic. The family agreed the dodger needed to be replaced. But designing something better within their time and budget restraints proved impossible. They made what felt like a compromise by simply replacing the plexiglass, and adding a frame-and-canvas cockpit enclosure to the back of the dodger, and marked the project done. Soon, though, they all agreed it was the right decision. DogBark maintained her sleek, sexy lines without the addition of a bigger, boxier dodger, and the canvas enclosure expanded the living space while maintaining visibility and flexibility for any weather condition.

Time is unbiased. It does not care how busy we are or how long our project list still is. Soon it was spring and nearly time to go. John and I entered the mayhem a few weeks before untying the lines, and jumped straight into final preparations. We installed hardware, tested systems, bought parts, stowed gear and went provisioning. In a blink, our departure date arrived. When we left the dock in Port Townsend, Washington, in spring 2018, most of the gear was still in boxes. Solar panels leaned against the stern rail, wrapped in foam and cardboard. Only half of the water tanks were plumbed. Tools were scattered across the new saloon table. But the bilge was full of canned goods, the aft lazarette was full of topped-off diesel tanks, and the new cruisers were full of excitement and appreciation. The puzzle was complete. The Esareys had made a commitment to each other, to DogBark and to themselves, and they were not shying away from that. It was time to go cruising.

Graeme knew he would cherish DogBark’s speed, but Janna, who had never called herself a racer, had never considered performance as a boat’s most important feature. But this boat won Janna over from their first sail, and in the following months, DogBark demonstrated her confidence and grace again and again. She ghosted across the Strait of Juan de Fuca, effortlessly reaching 8 knots in a wispy 9 knots of true wind; she powered through strong choppy seas in the Gulf of Alaska and easily legged out ahead of a low-pressure system bearing down on her in the Bering Sea. When a strong headwind contradicted a swift current in the shallow waters of Hecate Strait, the spiteful seas opened the forward hatch, filling the bow locker with seawater and effectively testing the strength of the soon-to-be-revered forwardmost watertight bulkhead. Despite an extra few thousand pounds of weight, DogBark sailed on, a bit sluggish but mostly unperturbed, until her crew discovered the intrusion and pumped the water back outside the boat, where it belonged.

Unfortunately, despite DogBark’s ­preparation and enthusiasm, ice conditions barred almost every boat from transiting the Northwest Passage that summer. Of the 25 boats to attempt the passage, only two made it through. Many more were damaged by ice, and one sank after colliding with an iceberg. The rest turned back to try their chances another year, DogBark among them. Having sailed past 71 degrees north and east along the north slope of Alaska, DogBark tucked her tail and sprinted nearly 4,000 miles in three weeks to thaw out her crew in the lush green paradise of Hawaii.

It is a testament to DogBark and her new caretakers’ renovations that she was just as comfortable tiptoeing past icebergs in the Chukchi Sea as she was galloping across the Pacific under a big colorful spinnaker. It is a testament to her crew that when one door closed, they were able to realign their aspirations and expectations, turn south, and take off for new Hawaiian cruising grounds.

And so, we end this chapter of DogBark’s ongoing story by picking up where we began:

As the sun climbed higher, pushing new heat into the already warm tropical morning, Janna relished in her quiet moment with DogBark, again thanking the old girl for taking such good care of her family. It had been a wild ride so far—the decisions, the boat projects, the learning, the Arctic rejection, the ocean miles—yet she knew the adventures with this marvelous boat had only just begun.

After leaving DogBark in Hawaii, Becca Guillote and her husband John completed an ocean crossing on their Valiant 40, Halcyon, sailing 4,000 miles from Panama to French Polynesia. Read more on their travels on their blog. Meanwhile, the Esarey family continued onward from Hawaii to the Marquesas and Tuamotus before returning home to Seattle.

The post Ocean Racer Turned Family Cruiser appeared first on Cruising World.

Ten years passes quickly. It’s hard to believe a decade has slipped by since the cold spring in Seattle in 2009 when we were just weeks away from setting out for a west-to-east attempt at the Northwest Passage aboard the 64-foot steel cutter called Ocean Watch. I had never experienced such a conflicting set of emotions, in equal measures anticipation and anxiety. It all seemed so audacious. And kind of, you know, dangerous.

My nervousness stemmed from the fact that, as a lapsed history major, I’d become obsessed with the literature and annals of the storied Arctic waters, particularly the chronicles of disaster. Figuratively speaking, I was the rubbernecked sap on the freeway who can’t avert his gaze from the terrible car crash. Which meant I was particularly infatuated by the awful tale of the ill-fated Franklin Expedition, perhaps the world’s greatest mystery of the mid-1800s. Thanks to a terrific new exhibition called “Death in the Ice” at Connecticut’s Mystic Seaport Museum, all of it — Franklin’s journey, and my own — has recently come rushing back.

It’s been a chilly stroll down icy memory lane. Once you’ve experienced the Northwest Passage, I’ve discovered, it’s like the Hotel California: You can check out, but you can never leave. The “Death in the Ice” traveling exhibit, created by the Canadian Museum of History, is just incredible. Following the showing in Mystic, it will be on display this summer from June through September at the Anchorage Museum in Alaska. If you’ve always wanted to visit Alaska but needed a little extra incentive, head north. It’s that good.

The Franklin Expedition was named after its leader, Sir John Franklin, who in May of 1845 set sail from Britain with two ships and 129 men to find and chart a course through the then theoretical “Northwest Passage” to Asia. Somehow, the notion of sailing vessels called Terror and Erebus (the dark region of Hades in Greek mythology) seemed like a swell idea. In any event, after a final sighting of the boats by some whalers in Baffin Bay at the passage’s eastern entry point in late July, 1845, Franklin’s entire party simply vanished. Gone. Poof.

Two years later, the first of what would become over three dozen search expeditions spanning some three decades was launched. Bit by bit, as fresh pieces of evidence were uncovered — a crewman’s letter left under a cairn, eyewitness accounts by Inuit hunters, abandoned campsites — the story emerged. Franklin’s death, the ships locked in ice, starving survivors, cannibalism; it wasn’t pretty. Then in 2014 and 2016, the sunken ships were discovered, and the mystery was fully solved once and for all.

Truth, as always, was stranger than fiction.

When we left Seattle in late May of 2009, headed north for the Arctic Circle and the legendary waters beyond, our fate was still unknown. The Northwest Passage was just the first stage of a planned trip “around the Americas,” from Seattle to Seattle, via Cape Horn, to promote awareness of ocean-health issues and climate change. The most daunting leg was the initial one. Would the ice permit us to pass Or would we become beset in it, like Franklin? It was all yet to unfold.

Nearly every day aboard Ocean Watch brought new adventures. By mid-July we’d made it through the surprisingly placid Bering Strait and reached Barrow, Alaska, at 70° N, having survived our initial harrowing encounter with the ice. The Northwest Passage loomed ahead, and soon enough, we were in it.

The landscape was flat, lunar. Polar bears came and went. On several occasions, we were literally stopped cold by the pack, our patience tested until new leads in the ice opened up. A successful transit was very much a tenuous matter. The pastel twilight was so beautiful it rendered us speechless. The local Inuit, after years of dealing with the consequences of warmer winters, were open and friendly but seemed wary of the future. The voyage itself took on its own all-encompassing life. There was nowhere else on the planet, only the present, the here and the now.

In late August, in a night I’ll never forget, we dodged the last icebergs and sailed down a dramatic corridor of snow-capped peaks lining Navy Board Inlet and into the small village of Pond Inlet at the tip of Baffin Island. Lo and behold, the Northwest Passage was behind us. It was, and remains, difficult to comprehend.

Unlike Franklin and his doomed mates, we’d made it. We were the lucky ones.

Herb McCormick is CW’s executive editor. For more on the voyage of Ocean Watch, visit its website.

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The ice is in charge up there in the arctic. It’s what we’d said from the very beginning. As we researched routes and talked to friends about the journey, our plans and dreams were based on a declared contingency: “we’ll sail to the Mediterranean, assuming we make it through the Northwest Passage”; “if we get through the ice, we might winter over in Iceland”. It was an outward reminder that underlying each assumption of what we wanted to do was the truth: the ice is in charge up there.

But in February, when a record warm front pushed across the Northwest and melted over 50% of the sea ice in the Bering Sea, and when the scientific graphs continued to state boldly that every decade we are losing 13% of the ice in the arctic, and when there was a clear route from Barrow to Cambridge Bay at the end of June (five or six weeks earlier than usual), it was hard to believe we wouldn’t be able to get through. I continued to include the contingency with my statements, but I will admit I didn’t really believe it.

I knew sailing through the Northwest Passage would be hard and cold and sometimes frustrating. But I also knew we had a rockstar crew, a stout boat and knowledgeable resources to help us. I felt confident we would persevere through the hard stuff and celebrate it all when we arrived in Greenland. This confidence was bolstered by the early predictions of warm temperatures and an “easy” ice year.

I didn’t linger on the “what ifs” of not achieving our goals. Instead I imagined watching polar bears ply the shoreline (from a safe distance). I imagined sailing past towering icebergs bigger than houses. I imagined standing on the bow, laughing in amazement at beluga whales feeding and frolicking nearby. I imagined the sweet taste of success after overcoming immense challenges and discomfort.

But reality was something quite different.

The reality was that despite record melting early in the year, the summer season found sections of the passage choked with ice driven south and stubbornly unmoving. It seems logical that the warmer temperatures and melting sea ice would reveal an easier passage, but it turns out the opposite can also be true. Instead of a single solid ice sheet that backs away from the northern shore during the summer, the warmer temperatures break up the ice sheet, spreading defiant chunks of ice across the water that range in size from a teacup to a city bus. These chunks act on the whims of invisible currents, but rarely in a predictable manner. Instead of a narrow band of navigable water between an ice sheet and the shore of northern Alaska, this year there was an unpredictable mass of swirling ice in every direction. The reality is we still don’t understand the changes that the arctic is undergoing.

We encountered these floating chunks of ice immediately upon rounding Point Barrow and entered the northwest passage. Sometimes we sailed easily among sporadic chunks dotting mostly clear water and sometimes we had to pick our way through a thick stew of churning ice. For a month, we paced from anchorage to anchorage, occasionally spending sleepless nights defending our anchor chain from ice slabs. Bundled from head to toe against the biting winds, we wandered along one sandy spit after the other, skipping rocks and watching for polar bears under heavy grey skies. We started running out of time in the season, and the ice stew in front of us refused to budge. Along with our daily ice reports, harrowing stories rolled in from other boats attempting the passage. One got caught in unexpectedly thick ice and anchored to an iceberg that broke free in 50 knots of wind. One was nearly driven up onto the rocks when a fast-moving ice slab ensnared their anchor chain, forcing them to cut away their ground tackle. Nobody was making much progress.

Finally, we made the torturous decision. We bowed in deference to the ice in front of us, tucked our tail, and rain west. It was devastating, but it was the prudent decision for us. As we retreated, the ice repots didn’t get any better and updates from other boats didn’t hold any new optimism. Just two days into our retreat, the truly terrifying news filtered in that a boat had sunk on the east side of the passage, its side hove in by ice. The crew spent 11 hours huddled on an iceberg before being rescued by a helicopter. The news sent shudders through our crew and reinforced what I had been working hard to convince myself: we made the right choice to turn back.

This was not the year for DogBark! to transit the Northwest Passage. In fact, it was not the year for most boats to transit the Northwest Passage. In the end, of the 21 boats that attempted the passage from either side, only two were able to complete the passage, and both spent weeks trapped in thick unforgiving ice.

Substantiating our weak conviction in the contingencies we had stated aloud for so long, our plans did not include options for ending the summer season on the west coast of the US. So, we had to improvise. One night, when retreat was starting to feel inevitable, we unfurled a chart across the table and focused our attention on the west side of the continent. With all of the initial options off the table (Greenland, Iceland, Nova Scotia, Portugal), we discussed new possibilities, weather and timing. After pondering a winter in Alaska or a passage strait to Hawaii or a marathon run to Mexico, there was a unanimous vote for Hawaii.

Once our decision was made, we moved fast to get out of the arctic. In three days, we had sailed south of the arctic circle, leaving the endless cold grey days and aggravating swirling ice and uncharted sandy spits behind. In those three sad days, we backtracked across four weeks of waiting and worrying and watching, past the long hours of intense navigating, through the baited anticipation and the dashed hopes. Just like that, we were out of the arctic and on our way south.

As we sailed out of Alaska and around the Pacific High, the decision felt righter and righter every day. The crew relaxed and shed layers of jackets and disappointment. Watches got immeasurably easier with the warm breezes, deep water and obvious lack of ice. Dreams of lush green hillsides and fresh coconuts soon supplanted fears of icebergs and polar bears.

The ice is in charge up there, and we know that now better than ever. Sailing in the arctic is humbling and intense and beautiful and scary and frigid and inspiring. We learned new things about each other, our own fortitude, and our planet, and it probably won’t be our last arctic adventure. It seems likely that another year will find us bundling up and sailing north to transit the northwest passage…if the ice allows it, of course.

The post Journey Through the Northwest Passage: The Ice is in Charge appeared first on Cruising World.