Transit of the Northwest Passage by Sailboat (2019)

This film follows the 2019 transit of the Northwest Passage by the Belgian sailing yacht Alioth, a voyage that carried her crew from Delaware on the Atlantic seaboard all the way to the Aleutian Islands of Alaska.

The Northwest Passage is the sea route that threads through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago to join the Atlantic and Pacific oceans across the top of North America. For centuries it was one of the great prizes of exploration, sought by navigators who were convinced that a northern shortcut to Asia lay somewhere among the ice, and many of them never came home. The most famous tragedy was the lost Franklin expedition of 1845, and it was not until 1906 that Roald Amundsen completed the first full transit, a journey that took him three years. For most of recorded history the passage was simply frozen shut.

That a small private yacht can now make the crossing in a single season says a great deal about both modern seamanship and a rapidly changing Arctic. Even so, it remains a serious undertaking. The sailing window is short, the charts are thin, the weather turns without warning, and drifting pack ice can close a channel in a matter of hours. A crew has to be entirely self-reliant for weeks at a time, a long way from any port, fuel or rescue.

Aboard Alioth for the 2019 passage were Vincent Moeyersoms, Olivier Moeyersoms and Jean Englebert, who carried her from the temperate water off Delaware, up through the labyrinth of Arctic straits and islands, and out into the cold North Pacific by way of the Aleutians. It is exactly the kind of quietly audacious, self-made expedition that fits the Alby Mangels spirit of just packing up and going to see the world.