Navigating the Northwest Passage
Samantha Merritt sails 208th boat with fiance through hard-to-get through area
Elaine Anselmi
Northern News Services
Published Monday, October 20, 2014
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
It's not in Samantha Merritt's nature to give up, and she said it's a good thing because navigating a sailboat through the Northwest Passage is not the sort of ride you can get off of.
Yellowknife's Samantha Merritt arrived in Greenland on Sept. 27 after traversing the Northwest Passage. - photo courtesy of Jesse Osborn |
Along with her fiance Jesse Osborn, Merritt steered the 208th vessel ever to complete the route through the icy waters to Greenland, where their 50-foot two-masted sailing craft, or yawl, is now being stored.
"I have to say, my fiance was definitely the driving force behind this," Merritt said. Osborn was teaching sailing in Alaska in 2010 when, prompted by a student's questions, he professed his goal of sailing around the world, by way of the Northwest Passage.
"I met him in Cambridge Bay in 2013 and he asked me a few questions.
"Would I be interested in doing the Northwest Passage and sailing around the world with him? And then he asked me to marry him," said Merritt. "I said 'yes' to all three."
Leaving Yellowknife for Cambridge Bay on July 24, Merritt (a Yellowknife pilot) and Osborn (who currently lives in Alaska) traversed the passage, taking two-hour shifts at the helm. Merritt said they pushed through as long as the moonlight would allow, stopping when there was complete darkness or as the ice dictated.
"We waited in Gjoa Haven for 10 days for ice to melt. We were in Taloyoak for four days waiting for the ice to melt and for conditions to be such that we would be able to move forward and get through a little channel called Bellot Strait - it's the key to Arctic," said Merritt. "This year it was the only way through from Baffin to the Central Arctic."
Merritt said the stops were some of the best parts of the trip, with the communities welcoming them in. Although Gjoa Haven is a common stopping point for sailors along the Northwest Passage - largely due to Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen's extensive stay in the hamlet during the first successful passage - Merritt said Taloyoak is more off-the-beaten-path and they sparked a great deal of interest in the community.
Merritt said the ice was an ever-present concern along the trip, as was the small window to make their way through the passage before it froze over.
"There were definitely times when we were relaxed, took a break, had fun and had some good food but it was always in the back of our minds. It was a fairly tight deadline - we wanted to get out of the passage before it froze again," said Merritt, adding that the passage has already frozen over.
While the deadline didn't afford a great deal of down time, Merritt said the trip certainly offered its share of stories.
"I was at the helm and I was cold, which is normal, it was pretty cold," Merritt said with a laugh, sharing one of her favourite memories. "I was moving the boat through a lot of ice - 4/10 concentration of ice, it was a lot - and I looked over to the east and there was a stretch of open water and there was a bowhead whale there. He flipped his tail and dove under and flipped and dove under again. They're just perfectly at home in this really hostile environment, it was really cool."
As well as bowheads, Merritt said they saw an abundance of seals and even polar bears along the Bellot Strait from, what she called, a very comfortable distance.
Merritt and Osborn arrived in Aasiaat, Greenland on Sept. 17, where they put the boat in storage until next July when they will continue south down the coast of Greenland and on to Iceland and Ireland. This time, Merritt said, she'll remember to bring more chocolate.
