Canadians warn sailors about Northwest Passage

by Sail-World Cruising/National Post on 9 Aug 2010 Freshly navigable after confounding sailors for centuries, the Northwest Passage has suddenly become a draw for the inexperienced, creating a dangerous and expensive burden for the Canadian Coast Guard, according to a spokesman for the organisation.

Talking to local newspaper National Post, Jean-Pierre Lehnert, office-in-charge of marine communications in the Baffin Island town of Iqaluit, commented 'Last year, which we thought was a big season, at this time of the year we had something like 30 ships in the Arctic waters. This year we have something like 50 vessels, which is a lot. This doesn’t even include the adventurers from the pleasure crafts and we expect a lot of calls from those guys.'

The passage is akin to Mount Everest, its iconic stature drawing adventurers, including several sailing boats from around the world, as changes in climate and technological advances put conquering it within reach. But as with Everest, not everyone who attempts the adventure is capable of handling its challenges.

Two British Royal Marines became the first people to travel to the centre of the Northwest Passage in an open vessel last summer, but they have been followed by dozens of sailors, many of them older tourists in conventional sailboats from Germany, the United States and elsewhere.

Apart from the sailing boats, one charter company, Adventure Canada, has offered guided tours through the Northwest Passage since 2008. They are sold out this summer and through part of next summer as well, and small cruise ships also now regularly ply these waters.

Adventurers sail the northern seas from late July through September with peak travel during the month of August. The most-travelled Northwest Passage waters run northeast from the Beaufort Sea through Resolute Bay and Davis Strait, and into Baffin Bay.

The mounting number of inexperienced adventurers navigating through Arctic ice and water will lead to a rise in public funds used to rescue them considering an icebreaker dispatch can range upward of $25,000, Mr. Lehnert said. He recalled one of several rescue missions last year that required the combined efforts of a Coast Guard station, Environment Canada and an icebreaker to help free a Seattle man’s pleasure craft from an ice jam.

'He was really panicking because the ice was putting pressure on his boat and he was getting really scared,' said Mr. Lehnert. The man and his two friends were freed soon after; a weather specialist helped steer them through ice that had coincidentally broken due to high winds.

'Sometimes we have an icebreaker escorting something like four pleasure crafts through a very narrow passage. We receive at least a couple of those calls every summer.'

The craft that carried the two British Royal Marines was built by Belfast, P.E.I., boat manufacturer Norseboat. The 17-foot-long wooden cruiser called Arctic Mariner is an open-concept boat featuring a ballasted stub keep and centreboard, a cockpit and modest shelter.

'The boat wasn’t designed for conditions like that (Arctic), even though it’s a sea-worthy boat,' said Kevin Jeffrey, Norseboat’s owner. If anything, he said, the Arctic Norseboat escapade has only served his business well.

'People have asked me how sturdy the boat is and now I can point to that one and say, hey, they went through extreme conditions, dragged the boat across ice, and it’s still in good condition.'

Marty Bergmann, a Canadian scientist stationed in Resolute, Nunavut, said public interest in Canada’s north has grown because there has been an increase in northern scientific research since the International Polar Year in 2007-08.

'It certainly increased the number of people wanting to discover things in Canada’s Arctic. Certainly the Northwest Passage, with its changing ice conditions, would be quite a curiosity too, because it’s not quite what it was 30 years ago,' said Mr. Bergmann, director of the Polar Continental Shelf Program. Although his research focuses on arctic land, he conducts some ice work on the frozen ocean in April and May.

Mr. Bergmann stressed 'appropriately educating people about the north' because of increasing numbers of amateur expeditions.

Editor's Note:
Full directions for sailors wishing to undertake the Northwest Passage can be found with a recent article published in Sail-World about the crop of 2010 hopefuls. To find the article click http://www.sail-world.com/CruisingAus/Northwest-Passage---the-adventurers-and-Canadian-advice/72820!here.