[PCW] Northwest Passage, was Mono vs. Cat

[Georgs Kolesnikovs]

>Don't look now but private yachts as small as 40 feet have been doing that
>trip for a couple of years now.

Gosh, don't start thinking for a minute that it's now an easy cruise 
across the top of the hemisphere. Sure, in the last decade there have 
been two relatively easy years, but Mother Nature still rules, and 
she can be mean.

I've been interested in the Northwest Passage for close to 20 years, 
tracking passages by yachts. I lived for two years in the Northwest 
Territories. As I told someone last week, there is absolutely no 
guarantee you can get through in one season, even today. In fact, if 
you're considering a transit, you should plan on being stuck in ice 
for one winter. Far, far, far more yachts have had to over-winter 
than got through in one season.

Two years ago, I had a chance to talk with Ben Gray who was the first 
to make in the passage in a trawler yacht, a 57-foot Buehler custom 
monohull. "Don't talk to me about global warming," he said, recalling 
he was certain he and his sons were going to lose Idlewild when she 
was trapped by ice, forced up unto an ice floe like a marooned 
aluminum whale.

http://www.trawlersandtrawlering.com/news/idlewildpassage.html

The one and only power catamaran to make the transit was a Royal 
Canadian Mounted Police patrol vessel that lucked into one of those 
two "easy" years but it travelled with an icebreaker for support.

http://www3.bc.sympatico.ca/VE0NWP/MainPage.htm
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/12/04/MNW136483.DTL&type=science

Even the RCMP got a scare, albeit from a polar bear.

--Georgs
-- 
Georgs Kolesnikovs
   Power Catamaran World
   http://www.powercatamaranworld.com