The Northwest Passage: Two difficult Years

“Victory awaits him who has everything in order — luck we call it. Defeat is definitely due for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions — bad luck we call it.” Roald Amundsen, the first man to sail through the Northwest Passage, 1903–06

We shot through Bellot Strait, fighting to control our schooner as swirling eddies twisted us right and left of the narrow safety line between Magpie Rock and the shoaling shore to the north. I considered our tenuous position. This route through Bellot was the only remaining possibility for success in September 2013 as the Arctic navigational season closed. To the east and west, icy doors were closing the waterways of the fabled Northwest Passage. Several of the possible routes had not opened at all in 2013. This late in the season, none would reopen until July or August of the following year. We would later learn that 2013 was reported to have had 60 percent more sea ice than 2012. The looming canyon of Bellot’s bare mountainous terrain stretched before us like a narrowing funnel, pulling us to the west into Franklin Strait and Larsen Sound. Ice was marching south down these waterways to shut off our advance, but for the moment, they were still open — if we arrived soon. To the south of us lay the Boothia Peninsula, the northernmost extension of the North American continent. To the north was Somerset Island.

We were a few hundred miles from King William Island to the south, near where Franklin’s 19th-century ships met their end, and Gjoa Haven, where Amundsen later found shelter and wintered during his transit. Since that first successful passage, only a handful of sailing vessels have wended their way through these icy channels by a variety of routes. For over 400 years, a route through the Northwest Passage was sought to reach the riches of the Orient. By Amundsen’s time that motive had been largely abandoned, but the challenge of a sea passage linking the Atlantic to the Pacific via a northerly route remained. The possibility that global warming might finally open a commercially viable passage has opened a Pandora’s box of claims, counterclaims, and concerns over the vulnerable Arctic environment.

In getting to Bellot Strait late in the season, we were fortunate and unfortunate. Fortunate in being able to transit Bellot at all. Those arriving earlier in the season had waited a month for the ice to allow them passage, only to finally turn back. We met several vessels at Pond Inlet on their way out, having decided that there was simply too much ice in the 2013 season. Unfortunate in that we had experienced some setbacks and gear failures, which ate into the already very short season. We had departed Chesapeake Bay in Virginia in late June after delays in preparing our 44-foot schooner, Gitana, for the arduous Arctic voyage. En route north, we encountered our first icebergs in the Gulf of St. Lawrence near the Strait of Belle Isle. There were three of us, and although I had been in the Arctic numerous times, the first sighting of icebergs on a voyage is always transformative. An old Inuit once told me that ice is like fire — fascinating and dangerous. We continued to

“After crossing Baffin Bay among soaring cathedral-like bergs, our steering cable snapped as we approached Pond Inlet, leaving us rudderless on a windless sea.”

encounter ice in the Labrador Sea, Davis Strait, and northward along Greenland’s ironbound coast to Disco Bay.

We entered Disco to resupply at Ilulissat. To reach this small fishing harbor, we had to detour 36 miles around an icy drift that projected seaward from the Ilulissat Icefjord. After we finally arrived in Ilulissat, this stream of ice was driven by the wind into the harbor, trapping us for days. Eventually, a northeasterly wind opened the ice just enough to intersperse dark veins of water throughout the glittering whiteness, allowing us to gingerly wedge our way out. After two days of careful maneuvering, using a lookout high in the rigging to determine the most favorable route, we were finally free of the ice.

After crossing Baffin Bay among soaring cathedral-like bergs, our steering cable snapped as we approached Pond Inlet, leaving us rudderless on a windless sea. The repairs, which took hours, drove

home our isolation and the need for self-reliance in this beautiful but unforgiving environment. Nunavut Territory has a population of about 37,000, mostly Inuit people, spread over an area of some 800,000 square miles. With temperatures dropping and the days shortening, the navigational season was rapidly closing. At Pond Inlet, we crossed paths with the last retreating vessels heading eastward. My goal had always been to get halfway through the passage in one season and have time to interact with local communities. If we could get to Cambridge Bay, we would have achieved that goal.

It was a race. Reports indicated that new sea ice was already forming in the northern passages that had been open. McClure Strait and Peel Sound (Amundsen’s route) never opened in 2013. Pushing on, we arrived at tiny Graham Harbour, a secure anchorage surrounded by bare mountainous walls on the north side of Lancaster Sound. There we waited out a gale for several days. After numerous visits from a

polar bear, seemingly baffled by our presence, we struck out southward. We promptly encountered a snow squall, blindly probing through increasing ice to the eastern coast of Prince Regent Inlet. The date was September 5. We were to find later that Prince Regent had been declared closed by the Canadian Ice Service on August 27.

As we pushed south along the Brodeur Peninsula, we were beset by ever-greater ice until we could proceed no further. We were completely locked in — trapped. Here we waited for two days, unable to even point the schooner westward toward what appeared to be open water just visible from the masthead. Fortuitously, the ice turned us, and we slowly snaked toward freedom, using the boat as a wedge and orienting her with ice poles. Once clear, we continued down the inlet, trying to get around a moving ridge of ice in the inlet’s center, which extended southward some 100 miles. At the end of and to the west of this ice ridge, we had to beat back northward in 35–40 knots of wind to reach the eastern entrance of Bellot Strait. Ice on the rigging and sails made sail handling very difficult. My hands became so cold grappling with the ice that although I could seize rigging or ties, my fingers slid away ineffectually, no longer under my control. Incredulous, I watched this futile groping. Cold can be painful, but this was tending toward incapacity. (For a cautionary tale, refer to Jack London’s To Build a Fire.) But each tack brought us closer. The wind-driven ice ridge edged toward the coast, narrowing our northward path. We had nowhere to go to avoid being crushed but onward, and quickly. There was no refuge elsewhere. After 24 hours, we cleared the cape and made it safely into the bay near Bellot at dawn.

Now we were shooting through the increasing darkness on the western side of the strait. The compass was worthless this close to the magnetic pole, and the charts were marked with warnings accordingly. We were steering toward our waypoints, but our real orientation at the helm was by keeping the wind at a constant angle relative to the schooner, a method as old as seafaring. We were moving southward, away from the heaviest ice concentrations, but that could change

quickly with falling temperatures. We made a brief stop at the keyhole harbor of Gjoa Haven on King William Island. Amundsen once described this anchorage as the greatest small harbor in the world. Protected from marauding bergs drifting by just outside, one could appreciate his perspective.

Simpson Strait was the last major hurdle between us and our winter refuge of Cambridge Bay. This 60-mile gauntlet of twists and turns is a witch’s cauldron of strong currents, ice, shallows, shoals and poor visibility. It is described in the Admiralty Sailing Directions Arctic Pilot as the single most hazardous stretch of water in the Northwest Passage. Tides and timing made it necessary to navigate it in darkness. After a harrowing night, we emerged unscathed at the western end just as dawn broke. From there, we proceeded effortlessly, with a fair wind, through the one-tenth ice — the relative amount of sea surface covered by ice in the area — in Queen Maud Gulf. On September 20, we arrived in Cambridge Bay and immediately began to prepare Gitana for the severe temperatures she would encounter during the Arctic winter. We then left her to await the next season, as the days quickly shortened into the Arctic night.

My crew and I arrived back in Cambridge Bay in mid-July 2014. The ice in Cambridge Bay and Dease Strait stretched almost unbroken as far as we could see. Gitana appeared exactly as we had left her, having braved strong winds and temperatures of minus 68°F. The wreck of Maud, one of Amundsen’s vessels abandoned here, rose above the ice in the east arm of the bay. Martin Bergmann, a ship searching for the lost Franklin expedition vessels, Erebus and Terror, had wintered here and was ready to resume her search once she could make her way through the ice. Her captain commented on the increase in ice in 2014 and how that would limit their search. He told me, “ln the Arctic, all you need is horsepower and patience. The more you have of one, the less you need of the other.” Of those, we would depend mostly on the latter for the limited navigational season. Slowly we trudged the three miles back and forth to town and stowed all the supplies and equipment that

we had stored to protect them from the severe temperatures. We had ample time, as the lingering ice plugged our exit as effectively as a cork in a bottle. It wasn’t until August 3 that we finally got Gitana back in her element.

Three days later we left Cambridge Bay, in the same doglegged fashion we had entered, following a reciprocal course into Dease Strait. Though the ice was clear to the west, I knew the short season limited our options. We now encountered only bergy bits. It seemed surreal. We sailed into Coronation Gulf. The water temperatures were in the 20s. Magnetic variation was changing quickly. The compass was erratic and still useless but we proceeded without incident to Dolphin and Union Strait. We were now experiencing twilight from 2300 to 0430 hours.

Then, with the wind becoming unfavorable, a meter reading indicated that the batteries weren’t being charged. This was a serious concern, as all our instruments and the starter motor were dependent on those batteries. There were no near anchorages as we entered Amundsen Gulf. Two small communities were 100 miles upwind, both without good shelter. The nearest place of any size was Kugluktuk (formerly Coppermine) back across Coronation Gulf and 170 miles in the wrong direction. In this sparsely populated frozen land, I reflected again on self-sufficiency and by what a tenuous thread our safety hung.

I turned and with the wind now astern we started giving up the miles we had so recently gained. Once in Kugluktuk, we had some good fortune. First, Australians Roger and Ali Grayson on their motor vessel Wave had somehow gotten in behind a breakwater. They came

out in their dinghy and showed us how we could do the same. This was a great help, as much of the Arctic — 70 percent by some estimates — is uncharted, and “iceberg gouging” can change the sea bottom considerably from one year to the next, a significant issue in an area which is extremely shallow. Then, the following day, the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, made a crew change off Kugluktuk. I spoke to the chief engineer. At his suggestion, with some sophisticated borrowed equipment, we checked Gitana’s electrical systems and concluded that the problem was a faulty circuit board rather than the charging system itself. We had lost six precious days, but we were reassured and ready to proceed.

We again entered Amundsen Gulf on August 15, en route to Tuktoyaktuk on the western side of Cape Bathurst. This area was now mostly ice-free, but ice hovered along stretches of the Alaskan North

“We had first crossed the Arctic Circle off Greenland on August 13, 2013, and recrossed it southbound on September 9, 2014.”

Slope as the season’s end drew closer. Point Barrow is often frozen over by September 15. We anchored at Summers Harbour in the Booth Islands, named for the English gin company that was an early sponsor of Arctic exploration. Henry Larsen, who took the schooner St. Roch through the Northwest Passage in 1940–42, described this place as the best harbor in the Canadian Arctic. We fueled up and did some maintenance, then sailed toward Cape Bathurst, a notorious ice choke point. The Smoking Hills’ fortress-like barren sea cliffs range 30 miles along this coast. Numerous smoke plumes rise from the hills due to spontaneous combustion of bitumen deposits — an unusual sight.

Once around Bathurst, the seas flattened and the water turned a shallow milky green. This area has the highest concentration known (some 1,350) of pingos, formations that are unique to the Arctic. Resembling volcanic cones, they form on land and under water, where they can be a navigational hazard. Created by ice incrementally lifting the earth over many years, they can reach heights of 200 feet.

At Tuktoyaktuk, a community of about 900 people near the mouth of the Mackenzie River, we resupplied for the 1,000-mile run along Alaska’s north coast and through the Bering Strait to Nome. We were invited to a traditional feast of dried white fish, cooked white trout and beluga whale muktuk — raw scored blubber. All over the Arctic, we were shown generous hospitality by the inhabitants. While in Tuktoyaktuk, I was invited to a meeting of Inuit Canadian Rangers, who were assembling for a patrol with the Canadian military. To the frustration of the Canadian officer, the group operated by consensus, avoiding direct orders.

From Tuktoyaktuk we headed for the old whaling station on Herschel Island and along the daunting north coast of Alaska. This portion of the passage is something of a gauntlet. Ice was still fast along some of the shore. In the late summer, a 40–50-mile-wide channel often opens between the shore and the offshore ice pack. This channel is not stable and can close with onshore winds. The coast is shallow, with minimal tide. There are few anchorages and scant protection for a vessel drawing six feet. It is about 400 miles from Herschel to Point Barrow, an open roadstead with no protection. About 10 miles southeast of this point lies the very shallow Elson Lagoon, with a difficult approach through shifting shoals. The lagoon shoals rapidly inside the pass, and protection is described as only fair in good weather. At Barrow, the ice moves on– and off–shore until July or August, but can stay closed all summer. Northerly winds bring the ice shoreward. Freeze-up begins at Barrow in September and at Bering Strait in October most years. There is not much protection for 300 miles from Barrow until Point Hope, where one can sometimes anchor in the lee depending upon wind direction.

On the way to Point Barrow, we attempted to shelter in the lee of Cape Halkett to avoid adverse west-northwest winds, but the soundings proved shallower than charted. The charts also had “iceberg gouging”

cautions with six-foot variability, which is significant when one has three feet of water under the keel and no real tide to assist if grounded. We decided instead to tack out and head for Barrow, with the northern lights dancing in the darkness, finally reaching Eluitkak Pass, the shifting entrance to Elson Lagoon. The zigzag approach was unmarked and we passed around a shoal with four quick changes of course. We had less water than charted, about two feet under the keel. We held our breath, the water deepened, and we were inside. We could only go in a half-mile before shoaling forced us to anchor, with four miles of fetch across open water from a road that led to the town of Barrow. It was late August and freeze-up could start within two weeks. Gitana was now 300 miles from Point Hope and 600 miles from Nome.

The wind was relentless out of the south-southwest, which was to be our course. We refueled, cleaned, and prepared for the next leg. I went ashore to check in with customs. (Barrow is not a port of entry, but I had been instructed to contact Fairbanks’ customs if we stopped in Barrow.) The sun peeped out briefly as I set out in the dinghy, but then a snow squall hit, obliterating all visibility. Gitana disappeared from sight but I had brought a handheld GPS with her position marked. I waded through boggy tundra with my 12-gauge bear gun until I reached the track into town, about eight miles away. The next morning, I contacted Fairbanks and was cleared in remotely. In the meantime, the wind had increased to 30 knots with rain, snow, and fog. I felt I had to get back to the schooner, although the return trip was risky. Gitana was not visible until I got within a half mile of her. I had to bail the dinghy constantly and the quartering seas became dangerous as the fetch increased. I progressed slowly across the four miles of shallow lagoon. I realized I would have to close with the schooner on approach, as I would not be able to bring the dinghy about in these breaking seas without capsizing. Gitana’s bowsprit pitched and plunged into the shallow green seas. One of my crew was on deck checking the anchor rode and grabbed the painter as I banged into the hull. I was very happy to be back. The next morning, visibility was only a few feet and the deck was covered with snow.

After a week in Elson Lagoon, a place I would not recommend and was delighted to see the last of, we got a slight weather window. We plowed out through breaking seas around the shallow bars and into the pass. The waves were considerable. At times the depth indicator showed zero feet under the keel in the troughs, but we didn’t touch, and finally we made it into deeper water, running along the spit that terminated at Point Barrow. We were now in the Chukchi Sea, rounding the northernmost point of the United States and heading southwest toward Point Hope and the Bering Strait, the last leg of the Northwest Passage. Fog rolled in and the shore vanished, snow blew horizontally but we had a fair wind. On September 7, just past midnight, we anchored to the east of Point Hope, where we had a bit of protection. From here we would sail almost due south to the Bering Strait, but two lows were now converging. This would bring extended bad weather, so we departed in the early morning darkness and raced into Kotzebue Sound. We no longer had the midnight sun, but we were out of the ice! The air and water temperatures began to

rise. We had first crossed the Arctic Circle off Greenland on August 13, 2013, and recrossed it southbound on September 9, 2014. After an uneventful transit of the Bering Strait, we were in the Pacific Ocean and the Arctic was now astern.

The following morning in the rain, we anchored in Port Clarence, our first real shelter since Herschel Island. We were less than a hundred miles from Nome where I would over-winter. We went ashore to the small village of Brevig Mission, with a population of about 500, and were, as everywhere, warmly received. After weathering a gale at Port Clarence, we sailed on to Nome.

The Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, England, lists Gitana as the 87th sailing vessel to traverse the Northwest Passage. Later that same year, I read with interest in a Nome paper that “the ice is very heavy this year. There is a myth that there is no ice in the Arctic and that is exactly that, a myth.” True, at least for our two passage years. I look back with some awe at our Northwest Passage and am glad in retrospect that we experienced all that ice.

MICHAEL JOHNSON makes his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, between voyages. A seasoned mariner, he has sailed on a variety of craft including Chesapeake Bay skipjacks, British training schooners, and East African dhows. He has doubled Cape Horn twice and circumnavigated the globe east-to-west south of the five great capes in Aissa, an engineless 32-foot Westsail. His extensive explorations have taken him throughout the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and have included trips to the Arctic, Antarctic, Greenland, Asia, Africa, and the Mediterranean. In 2016, Michael was presented with the club’s distinguished Blue Water Medal in recognition of his 40 years and 125,000-plus miles of voyaging. His many other honors include twice receiving the Ocean Cruising Club’s Barton Cup. In 2000 he bought Gitana, the 44-foot staysail schooner which took him through the Northwest Passage. That two-year voyage spanned 6,891 miles from the Chesapeake to Nome, Alaska. He is now extensively outfitting and repairing Gitana in Seattle, Washington.