A lone sailboat drifts across the northern Atlantic.
On board, skipper Robert Graf is desperate for sleep, but the island-sized icebergs surrounding his vessel preclude him from taking his weary eyes off the horizon for a moment too long.
"You can't even take a chance on getting close to them because something could fall off them and crush you. Plus, they're notorious for turning upside-down and if you're too close they'll upset your boat," Graf says. "You're like an ant in a big field of elephants."
Navigating these icy behemoths for days on end with no one else on board to keep watch meant that Graf had to sleep in 20-minute intervals. He would wake to his trusty alarm, pop his head out of the cabin to ensure the icebergs were still a safe distance away, then return for another round of shuteye."That's one of the real challenges when you're by yourself - there's nobody watching where you're going," he says. "There's that 20 minutes where a lot can happen when you have to sleep."
Seated in his North Vancouver living room, a light autumn rain taps against the window as the 61-year-old sailor recalls the iceberg-ridden labyrinth he sailed through before entering and successfully crossing the Northwest Passage.
The voyage makes Graf the ninth person in the world to transit the Arctic sea corridor single-handedly, according to the Scott Polar Research Institute, which keeps a running tally of maritime traverses of the Northwest Passage. He is the first Canadian to cross the passage alone in a sailboat and the first Canadian to transit solo without needing assistance, according to the institute.
But Graf didn't set out to break any records.
"I didn't realize that was all going to be such a whoop-dee-doo," he says modestly, explaining he has always been intrigued by the history of the waterways around Canada's northern archipelago.
"It just seemed like a real test of your endurance and your stamina to do it, but also your skills to get through there," he says. "I'd always read about it and dreamed about it and it was on my list of places I would like to sail."
For centuries, the Northwest Passage eluded sailors. Originally sought by explorers as a potential trade route between Europe and Asia, the ice-blocked waters frustrated many an expedition. In 1845, two British ships led by Sir John Franklin famously disappeared. Records show the entire crew perished due to a combination of cold, starvation, scurvy, pneumonia, tuberculosis and lead poisoning. Underwater archaeologists only just discovered one of Franklin's sunken shipwrecks last year.
The Northwest Passage was first successfully navigated by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen in 1903-1906 (he and his small crew over-wintered three times). The first Canadian voyage was made by the St. Roch RCMP schooner, captained by Henry Larsen, in 1940-1942.
According to Capilano University geography instructor Charles Greenberg, a record number of 30 vessels transited through the Northwest Passage in 2012 and, in 2013, for the first time, a large bulk carrier passed through. Only 17 vessels managed the trip in 2014 due to a short and cold summer. The Northwest Passage "is a web of several possible routes," Greenberg notes in an email - somewhat like a corn maze. Over the past 40 years, sea ice cover has declined by around 25 per cent and is about 20 per cent thinner overall and up to 40 per cent thinner in certain areas, Greenberg says. Thinner ice is more susceptible to melting and with more melt comes more open dark water, which absorbs solar energy and holds heat longer, making it harder for ice to form the next year.
A "very tiny benefit" of this climate change might be commercial use of the Northwest Passage, Greenberg says. Still, Arctic storms, shallow waters and icebergs pose risks for ships.
A seasoned sailor, Graf has completed many endurance voyages, including a marathon three-year solo sailing journey around the world. This was his first trip to the far north. He departed Amsterdam on June 15 in his 15-metre ketch named Drifter Way. The sailing vessel has twin masts and its hull design dates back to about 1840, though it is made from modern materials.
"It's big, it's slow, it's very safe, carries a lot of supplies. It's actually kind of big for one person, but it handles very well in storms so it's pretty forgiving," Graf says.
The first leg of his journey involved dodging busy ship traffic, wind farms and offshore oil rigs en route to Norway. He stayed there a few days before embarking for Greenland via high latitudes to take advantage of west winds generated by powerful storms. There was excitement along the way - both friendly and frightening. South of Iceland he encountered a pod of some 200 pilot whales that travelled alongside him for a couple of days. And on the way to Greenland he was hit by his first north Atlantic storm. "The waves were getting big, they were getting maybe 25 feet high," Graf recalls.
It wasn't long before he lost control of his boat. It took an hour to get back on track, but by that time the wind had blown him off course toward Newfoundland. "In the morning, everything looked better. But at the time, for a number of hours, I had that sick feeling that . . . if it gets worse than this, it's going to get really scary." Graf sailed Drifter Way to the south of Greenland where he stayed for three weeks, first at the Polar Oil fuel depot south of Nuuk and then in the west coast town of Maniitsoq.
Travelling up the west side of Greenland proved difficult due to strong head winds and massive icebergs. Making matters worse was the frigid temperature; it never got higher than four degrees Celsius inside the cabin. Dampness permeated Graf's thick clothing and although he brought fuel on board, he opted to conserve it for his motor in case of emergency rather than use it for heat.
On Aug. 16, Graf arrived at Lancaster Sound, the entrance to the Northwest Passage. He proceeded west to Resolute, Nunavut, where he stayed two nights and got more fuel before making a hard left into Peel Sound. From thereon out, he saw very few other ships.
"Once I started travelling south in Peel Sound, that's when I hit my first ice," he says.
According to Canadian Ice Service, the water was three-tenths ice. "That means the whole surface is covered in 30 per cent ice and you have to weave your way through it."
Zig-zagging around frozen sheets was tiring, Graf says, but the view was spectacular: the vast white expanse was covered with hundreds of seals lined up in rows like fat cigars. Victoria Strait was perhaps the most exhausting leg of Graf's journey. He spent more than 24 hours motoring through drift ice. There was an audible grinding noise near Collison Peninsula as the frozen sheets merged together, but he managed to squeak through the strait without a minute to lose.
"It just closed right up into a solid mass of ice as far as I could see. It was one chunk of ice and it started to move in one direction. My boat would have been just crushed."
From Resolute Bay to Nome, Alaska - a distance of some 2,400 kilometres - Graf anchored to sleep only four times. The rest of the voyage he stuck to his 20-minute sleep cycle in hopes of avoiding icy collisions.
On Sept. 10, off the coast of Barrow in northern Alaska, the fog was so thick Graf couldn't see much in front of him. It was windy and there were ice floes everywhere. Meanwhile, autumn was setting in and it was starting to get dark at night. Around 4:30 a.m., he gave up on sleep and decided to check on his position - but he was too late. "There was this massive big explosion and I knew there was something wrong because I saw ice passing on both sides of the boat through the portholes. By the time I got up on deck there just was ice on both sides."
Drifter Way had plowed headfirst into a chunk of multi-layered ice the size of a two-car garage. Graf quickly dropped the main sail and was able to gingerly back out of the floe, but with big waves crashing about, he couldn't avoid crunching up the side of his boat. Fortunately, the damage wasn't too serious and he was able to make it through the Bering Strait to arrive at his final destination of Nome, Alaska on Sept. 14. He stayed there until the end of the month, waiting for the right conditions to haul Drifter Way out of the water, then flew back to Vancouver.
Graf is still adjusting to life on dry land. He's down 28 pounds after three months of consuming little more than instant coffee, canned fish and rice. And he finds himself waking frequently in the night after training himself to survive on a fragmented sleep schedule.
"There's kind of a letdown when you come back because you've got to wind down," he explains.
With the constant fatigue, cold, damp and loneliness still fresh in his mind, the lifelong sailor is wondering if it might be time to hang up his captain's hat.
"When I'm out there and getting bruised and battered, I always think the sea always finds another way to punish you and drive you crazy," he says.
"I might be finished with sailing now."
After the spring thaw, he'll retrieve Drifter Way from storage in Alaska, repair the boat, sail it back to Vancouver, and decide whether or not to sell it. He admits, though, this isn't the first time he's considered retiring from sailing after a particularly trying journey. "I usually recover and start planning another voyage," he says with a chuckle.
