For those who are tempted, some details about our NW passage and a few photos...
We leave Nome on July 22 with mixed weather conditions, lacking favorable winds, we enjoy the sun and play with the currents of the Bering Strait, advancing slowly but comfortably for 3 days, crossing the Arctic Circle and spotting our first ice floes. Here we are in the Chukchi Sea in the Arctic Ocean, it's always fun to sail on a sea that turns into ice half the year... We anchor for 48 hours in front of the small Inupiat village of Point Hope. We have time to go ashore and visit this native community of whale hunters, a bit sad and isolated.
We decide to continue our route northward close-hauled for 2 days, the ice pack starting to leave a passage from Point Barrow, so we better not delay, the Arctic season is short. With southerly winds forecasted a bit later, we wait at anchor in front of Kasegulak Lagoon for 36 hours and enjoy a superb sunny day for a long walk ashore. We weigh anchor after dinner and finally find favorable winds... and denser ice that we avoid by staying close to the coast. This efficient sailing at 30 knots downwind brings us to round Point Barrow (or Uqiagvik) on the evening of July 31, the northernmost point of the USA.
We keep hugging the coast to avoid the pack ice, which is only 3 miles to the north, and sail between numerous ice floes. The air temperature has noticeably cooled, it's 5 degrees onboard, welcome to the Beaufort Sea! After 115 miles under sail, the wind drops and we continue under engine, the advantage is that the interior temperature rises a bit!
The constant presence of scattered ice floes requires continuous watch, facilitated by the permanent daylight and the beauty of the landscape but tiring for a family of 3 children, even if it doesn't seem to affect the youngest!
After 24 hours of slaloming under engine, we find open water and a bit of wind, allowing us to cross the border between Alaska and Canada on August 3, greeted by a few belugas. We reach Herschel Island, a national park managed by rangers and serving as a base for scientists studying the impacts of global warming. We are invited to share the sauna after a walk on the island. We leave the next day and are surprised by the mild temperatures of the past few days, the water exceeds 10 degrees warmed by the mouth of the mighty Mackenzie River... There is no more ice, so we continue sailing easily, avoiding the numerous artificial islands of oil drilling...
We arrive 2 days later in Amundsen Gulf and given the very favorable weather, we continue towards Cambridge Bay. The degrees of longitude pass by under the sun with record temperatures for the region... We stop for 2 short days in Cambridge Bay for Canadian entry formalities. A small town in the Canadian Arctic without particular charm, but with an oversized, brand-new Arctic research center that contrasts with the social misery of some young Inuit.
We continue our route under the sun with our Finnish friends from the sailboat Lumi towards Victoria Strait and anchor for a few days on Qikiqtagafaaluk Island (Admiralty Island) as the pack ice is still impassable in this part of the Arctic. The scenery gradually changes, little relief, very sparse vegetation, almost non-existent in the rocky terrain where a few passing geese, terns, Arctic foxes, and probably some bears and reindeer live, whose antlers and tracks we find.
The ice conditions improve and the wind is favorable for us to cross Victoria Strait and then Franklin Strait on August 22. In the snow, we sometimes have to cross some beautiful ice bands with the help of Lumi's drone to find a passage and have to slow down a bit at night during the 2 hours of darkness, our bow spotlight helping us spot the ice floes. It's also an opportunity to observe a few polar bears! We reach the anchorage of False Strait 36 hours later and after a day of rest, we enter Bellot Strait, a stage in the Northwest Passage. We drop anchor at Fort Ross joined by the 4 other sailboats we had met in Nome, at our departure from Alaska. It's an opportunity for a friendly debriefing ashore in the old buildings of the Hudson's Bay Company, one of which, a renovated cabin, serves as a refuge for some Arctic expeditions. We weigh anchor the next day heading for Greenland with favorable winds for a week and many huge icebergs to avoid in Baffin Bay. On September 1, we arrive in Qeqertarsuaq on Disko Island in Greenland, an authentic Greenlandic village with its brightly colored houses surrounded by ice giants... magnificent!
