The only specialised marine publication in Oceania that focuses on the maritime industry, from super yachts to small craft to large commercial ships, including coastal shipping, tugs, tow boats, barges, ferries, tourist, sport-fishing craft
Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaleditions.com/i/101615
Looking for a way through the ice pack Herschel Island beach of darkness and there is ice forming on deck overnight - maybe it is time to get out of here. The next day we finally started heading south again towards the entrance of the rarely travelled Prince of Wales Strait. There was some ice at the entrance and then we came across a long skinny bit of open water for a few miles until another barrier of 3/10 ice slowed us down again. This is still a workable density but only just, and needs lots of manoeuvring with the occasional nudge against a stubborn ice flow. As usual, Cristina did a lot of the driving, which is just as well as we do occasionally crash hard into the ice, probably doing a bit of damage to the paintwork; it is nice to have a strong aluminium hull. The channel is 180 miles long and we managed to get through it in a single day, working hard. By now we are a good team and everybody gets involved, with one person up to the first spreaders or hoisted to the top of the mast looking for leads through the ice flows that are blocking our path. One of the big advantages nowadays is the ability to receive relatively up to date ice charts, giving some indication of which side of the 10 mile wide channel promises less ice, or maybe patches of open water. Of course the wind and current situation can dramatically change in a few hours, but the ice charts together with good weather info proved invaluable to us. The ship has an Iridium and Inmarsat high-speed internet link, so we can download files directly. If you start doing this sort of stuff then it is handy to have a bit of a budget, as it is not cheap. After a short stretch of pretty dense 4/10 ice at the southern end we were released into the Amundsen Gulf and became the eleventh vessel and the first sailing vessel to make it through Prince of Wales Strait, an amazing yet sad record and another indication of the impact that climate change is already having. The day is getting nearer, that this remote and isolated part of the world is exposed to the full onslaught of our society, and as a species, we have a record of messing our planet up big time. This year about a dozen small vessels/yachts have been making their way through the NWP. Up until this point we were 24 Professional Skipper January/February 2013 well behind most of the other boats, but now all of a sudden by going through the Prince of Wales Strait we are in front of everybody. We only just made it through the strait, it was packed full of ice again the day after we passed so it is not quite plain sailing yet. We stopped for a night of R and R at Cape Parry on the Canadian mainland. This is the site of a North American, Star Wars missile early warning station: a full-on military installation with big walls, helicopters and of course, radio silence. They obviously did not want us to crash their party. After not seeing other vessels for weeks there seemed to be boats and people everywhere. A friendly Mackenzie River tug with four huge cargo barges behind was followed by two big cruise ships. After some friendly radio chatter, our skipper managed to convince the officer of the watch on the Hansiatic Explorer (111 crew and 145 passengers), to find a bottle of gin, put it in a couple of plastic bags and throw it over the stern. We picked this up after some deft manoeuvring by the skipper to the amusement of the passengers on board the cruise ship. One of the few deep water anchorages on this bleak and shallow Western Arctic coastline is Herschel Island. This historic place once had three Inuit villages on it before it was corrupted by the whaling fleet in the late 18th century. The whalers used to overwinter in Pauline Cove so they could set off hunting in early spring. In 1890 an estimated 1500 people overwintered on Herschel Island and by 1907 following the collapse of the whaling industry, no boats overwintered. The weather in the Arctic was very kind to us; not too much wind in the high Arctic but you need big fuel tanks up here. It was interesting to meet some of the other boats/yachts that are doing the same trip and to see the different styles. Some people have obviously spent a lot of time and money getting their boats ready for this environment. There are also small fibreglass yachts here that I would hesitate taking outside the Hauraki Gulf. One beautiful 70 foot classic wooden yacht Norwind lost its anchor due to the failure of the chain stopper. The half coupling