Are you ready for an adventure that will make history? We’re about to sail across the top of the world, to explore the fabled Northwest Passage and set foot on places few people have ever been.
For decades, Canada’s high Arctic remained terra incognita, a fascinatingly dangerous obsession that drove explorers to commit to three years of hardship on wooden ships with icy decks in an environment that could break ships as well as the resolve of even the most resolute sailors.
It’s easier and infinitely more comfortable today, but it still takes commitment and only a handful of ships attempt the journey each year. It will take a full three weeks for Seabourn Cruise Line’s new Seabourn Venture to complete this inaugural voyage from Greenland to Alaska through Arctic Canada. And navigation still depends on tides and ice, so our advance itinerary promises only that each day will be a Northwest Passage Experience.
“This is a voyage of discovery. We don’t get too attached to time or place,” Fridrik Fridriksson, the expedition leader who hails from Iceland, advised the cruise guests gathered in Venture’s Discovery Lounge as we set out. “Plans will change, so focus on the experience, because you never know what we might encounter.”
And Fridrick concluded with advice: “open your mind to a journey that is mind-opening.” Those words echoed with us as we eagerly stepped out on deck each day to scan the water and shores for bears and belugas, seals and seabirds and elusive narwhals or gingerly stepped into inflatable Zodiac boats from the ship to make wet landings ashore on rugged islands where nature still has the last word.
Nearly all of the close to 200 passengers on this voyage have already done at least one polar cruise in Antarctica and, in fact, many are such Seabourn Cruise Line regulars that they’ve logged hundreds of days on Seabourn ships. But this inaugural Northwest Passage is a bucket list journey for everyone.
And we’re exploring in a luxury early explorers couldn’t have imagined.
Seabourn does everything first class. After a complimentary night in the best hotel in Iceland’s capital Reykjavik, the journey began with a flight on a chartered A321, whose leather seats featured headrests featuring Seabourn’s logo. Canapes, lunch and wines were served on the two-hour flight to our starting point, the desolately remote end of Greenland’s stunning Kangerlussuaq fjord. There’s no need to worry about the luggage, the bags were picked up at our hotel and will be in our rooms by the time we board the ship.
Seabourn Venture would seem like a space ship to Arctic explorers of the nineteenth century who tried and failed to find the passage to Asia across the top of the world while surviving on a diet of hardtack and grog. Seabourn Venture is purpose-built for exploration, with a polar class 6 hull designed to break through first year ice and packs of floating bergs up to four feet thick.
It features some of the largest accommodations on any ship cruising anywhere in the world. And its climate-controlled larders are stocked with container loads of fresh produce, prime cuts and gourmet goodies that will allow us to dine in style in a choice of restaurants, including a club featuring some of the best sushi afloat. There are also kilograms of sustainable caviar and a cellar stocked with wide range of fine complimentary wines.
We’re primed for adventure and learning, with an expedition team that includes 26 specialists in wildlife, photography, history, botany, ecology and geology. There are two mini-submarines to take those who choose to take the plunge, deep into unexplored water. The team even includes two experienced ice pilots in case the floe-dodging gets tough. But the forecast is for clear skies and smooth sailing—and in fact it’s been a summer without ice; which would also be a revelation to the sailors of the nineteenth century.
We’ll also be visiting Inuit hamlets to learn about traditional indigenous life. Our guide to the culture of Nunavut is Mia Otokiak, who has lived all her life in Cambridge Bay, whose population of 1,760 makes it one of the largest towns in Canada’s Arctic.
We’ll be tracing the voyages that made breathless headlines in the nineteenth century and visiting the sites of the explorers hardships and failed attempts. Remarkably, it wasn’t until 1903 that Norwegian adventurer Roald Amundsen actually make it all the way through the Northwest Passage in a sailboat with a crew of six. But it still took him and his crew three years to complete that trip. We’re looking to do it in just three weeks.
Brilliant afternoons, lingering golden dusks and the tantalizing opportunity to see the Northern Lights make every day sailing through the Northwest Passage unforgettable.
In everything we do, Seabourn Venture will be following the prime directives of ACEO, the Association of Arctic Expedition Cruise Operators to ensure that expedition cruises and tourism in the Arctic is carried out with the utmost consideration for the vulnerable natural environment, local cultures and heritage sites. We’re here to observe and not disturb. Don’t leave any trace of your visit and do not rearrange stones or bones or pick flora or disturb wildlife. The need for these rules will become evident as the cruise progresses.
The Northwest Passage is no longer the Impossible Dream, but it’s still very much an epic voyage. There’s much more to come in the weeks ahead; so open your mind and enjoy!
Story by Wallace Immen, Executive Editor of The Cruisington Times
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