Maria Canton
Northern News Services

Iqaluit (Oct 02/00) - A Norwegian kayaker who cheated death in the icy waters near Pangnirtung in August, couldn't beat it a second time.

Roy Willy Johansen was found dead in his kayak on Lake Melville, an inlet that leads to the Atlantic Ocean from Happy Valley Goose Bay, Labrador in the morning hours of Sunday, Sept. 24.

He was 37. An autopsy said he died of a heart attack.

Johansen was attempting to retrace the 1,000-year-old voyage of Viking Leif Erikson by kayaking the 400 km between Sisimiut, Greenland and Baffin Island before heading south. L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland was his final destination.

Johansen, who had 22-years of kayaking experience, encountered ugly conditions early in his voyage while paddling west across the Davis Strait.

Rough, cold and windy weather left him with severe frostbite. An icebreaker rescued him. He stayed at the Pangnirtung Health Centre and was medivaced to Iqaluit's Baffin Regional Hospital in the first week of August.

He was treated for frost bite that had turned his hands and feet blue. A surgeon said he needed three to four months to recover.

Johansen said before his rescue, he had to stay awake and alert for four days in his kayak because of poor weather.

While in the hospital, Johansen made arrangements to have his kayak flown to Pangnirtung. He then attempted to have the single person touring boat shipped to Nain, Labrador where he intended to resume his journey in mid-September.

Johansen planned to recuperate before venturing onto the water again.

Frostbite made his hands and feet almost unusable.He told RCMP officers that he was going to visit his father in Florida for the month of August.

RCMP in Happy Valley Goose Bay said that he had been in the area for a couple of weeks before his death. RCMP in Iqaluit said he called their detachment nine days before his body was found.

He was looking for gear he had left behind.

It's not clear exactly what Johansen had in mind. While in Iqaluit he said he wanted "to paddle to Newfoundland before the ice comes in."

The president of Iqaluit's Frobisher Bay Kayaking Club, Suzanne Laliberte, said she never met Johansen, but heard of his fate.

"Nature is stronger than we are and you will never defeat nature in the arctic, you just won't," she said.