Beothuk

Blazing an icy trail

Beothuk became the third Doggersbank and the 163rd vessel to successfully navigate the hostile Northwest Passage. Connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and less than 1,200 miles from the North Pole, the frigid body of water remains one of the greatest nautical encounters on the planet.

The journey

The Quintessential Polar Exploration

Captained by Liam Devlin, the journey was a long-held ambition for Beothuk’s owner, who acquired the Kuipers-built, Vripack-designed yacht in 2011 for the purpose of doing the trip.

“I had done around five winter expeditions to the Arctic in the previous years, hunting and dog sledding with the Inuit on icy tundra,” says the owner. “I developed a real interest in the area and people and wanted to experience it by sea.”

Those earlier visits gave him an invaluable appreciation for the unpredictability of the region. During his first trip to Baffin Island, in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, he spent weeks on the frozen sea ice. At one point, he and three Inuit men were cast adrift on a piece of ice that unexpectedly broke away. “We went floating off into the ocean where we stayed for four days until the wind blew us back,” he says. “It was alarming, but I knew I was in safe hands. Much like yachting, the key is to do it with the right people.”

“It’s the little things, like not one drop of condensation on the windows, that is the biggest testament to its impressive Vripack design”

Liam Devlin

The journey

The journey was less treacherous than expected, despite misty weather every day and a freak wave in the Gulf of Alaska damaging the exterior door on the Portuguese bridge. They hid out from squalls in small bays and spent a week in Nome on the Alaskan side waiting for a large storm to pass through. When they encountered brash ice — an accumulation of floating ice made up of fragments not more than 2m across — they sat and waited for it to move on. “The boat was designed to deal with brash ice but in places where it was virtually solid we had to wait for a few days or push between the cracks,” he says.

In the light of the summer months, the disappointment of not seeing the aurora borealis was balanced out by moments of real beauty and memorable wildlife encounters with polar bears and orca whales. They fished along the way, set off on land adventures and the two crew even braved a Polar plunge. A naturalist who joined them on the journey further enriched the experience with his knowledge of sea birds and marine life

Their time in Greenland delivered real highs, including soaring icebergs and the chance to reconnect with old friends in Resolute. The inside passage on the Canadian side stood out for its magnificent glacial display, while the Bellot Strait, which separates Somerset Island from the Boothia Peninsula, produced ethereal ice sculptures. Even encounters with past travellers came to the fore when they visited an old Hudson Bay Company trading post, well-stocked with tinned food and supplies.

After covering 8,800 nautical miles between July and October, they disembarked in Seattle.

“A journey of that length requires a lot of oil changes, but Beothuk had sufficient oil in the tanks, sufficient dirty oil storage and sufficient black water storage, too. It’s the little things, like not one drop of condensation on the windows, that is the biggest testament to its impressive Vripack design,” he says. “I was transfixed on following in the footsteps of prior generations and it was so nice to take Beothuk (named after the indigenous people who lived on the island of Newfoundland) to its namesake. Most exciting of all, though, was the chance to use the yacht for what it was designed to do.”

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Blazing an icy trail

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