Michele LeTourneau
Northern News Services
Shishmaref, Alaska (Sept 03/01) - The Northwest Passage evokes images of Franklin, Henry Larsen, the St. Roch and the Manhattan. Now, add a 15-metre sailboat and eight Irishmen to the legend.
She carries eight Irishmen in her belly, sports an old-fashioned Canadian oil stove, and her tall mast made her the talk of Cambridge Bay.
But the 15-metre Northabout is not a luxury yacht. This sailboat is all business, carrying eight sailors through the Northwest Passage.
Retired construction site manager and ship's captain, Jarlath Cunnane built the Northabout.
"Jarlath, Frank (Nugent) and I, we needed a trip. All the decisions were made over a pint of Guiness," said expedition leader Paddy Barry.
The three have previously re-enacted Shackelton's Antarctic voyage and sailed Northern Russia. For their Northwest Passage adventure, they were joined by filmmaker John Coyle, Mike Brogan, the ship's doctor and fiddler, Kevin Cronin, the voyage's accountant, Terry Irvine and Gearoid O Riain.
"Frank is the historian, he adds intellectual virtuosity to the voyage," added Barry, a civil engineer when he's in Dublin.
They sailed Northabout across the Atlantic Ocean and up Greenland's coast before heading into the passage through Peel Sound.
They stopped in Cambridge Bay for a few days recently, and had two weeks to get to the Beaufort Sea. If nature handed them bad weather, they planned to leave the boat in Tuktoyaktuk for the winter, fly home and return for her next summer.
They didn't have to do it, and at last report were near Shishmaref, Alaska.
Development parallels
"There are two things. We are trying to do the Northwest Passage but at the same time we are trying to see as much around the route as we can, in the way of the landscape and the people. Particularly with regard to the history," said Barry, with a rich, rhythmic Irish accent. His particular interest in the Inuit stems from Ireland's development over the last 150 years.
"We're interested in the development of the people. (Ireland) missed out on the Industrial Revolution, which developed Europe. As a result of that, we were backwards to a degree and poor to a greater degree. And over a period of about 150 years we have changed from being a rural society to a modern society.
"So we're looking here at Inuit society, which is making the same change in a much shorter duration, with the attendant problems of anything that's done in a hurry."
Last Tuesday, responding to an e-mail from News/North, Barry had this to say:
"We've managed to make fair good westward progress since we left Cambridge Bay. Met ice at Cape Parry, which held us for a while and shoved us inward.
We were in Tuk one day only, and then across Mackenzie Bay. A lovely sailing wind all the way into Herschel Island -- a most interesting place, as we knew. The following day we had a flag lowering ceremony, as we left Canadian waters. Only for three weeks as we are going for Vancouver. Yesterday was a day of 'ups and downs.' Getting inside the ice near Barter Island we went aground close to the shore in four feet of water, while trying to get inshore of ice. To get floating again we had to lay out an anchor and take it to or winch to pull, with the engine -- that got us off. We're now 10 miles east of Prudoe.
Best Regards, Paddy Barry
