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Showing posts from June, 2024

Royal Newfoundland Yacht Club - 47° 31' 21"N 52° 58' 02"W

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It has been a busy week.  We are now fully provisioned, fuelled and prepared for our attempt at the North West Passage.  The communities we are visiting along the way are small so we are set to be as self-reliant as possible.  We will top up with fuel at every opportunity and hope to buy some fresh food occasionally but we are prepared to make the transit with what we have aboard. So, what does food for four people sailing through the Arctic look like and how did we figure it all out? Cans are stored in a locker under the settee If we are not in Dutch Harbour in the Aleutians by the end of September, we run a very real risk of being iced in. So we have provisioned for 100 days - just over three months.  Any longer and we will be on Plan B!  We are generally eating a vegetarian diet and will not be fishing along the way. So here is our list! Rice, coconut milk and a few treats are under the settee Snacks such as ramen noodles, dried fruit, nuts and soup mixes are in the sea berth Fruit

Conception Bay South - 47° 31' 21"N 52° 58' 02"W

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Voyager at the pontoon at the Royal Newfoundland Yacht Club We are currently in St John’s, Newfoundland aboard Voyager, preparing for our attempt at the North West Passage. The boat is victualled, fuelled and ready to go!  We will be heading for Nuuk in Greenland in the next weather window which look like it will be early next week.   Voyager (MMSI 269117980) is also a Garcia Exploration 45.  You will be able to track our progress at  via the Garmin Tracker at   https://share.garmin.com/QXKTP  - the Password is Voyager.  We do have StarLink aboard but it will only be on periodically.  Our contact information is below but we cannot guarantee a prompt response! Email -   chinook@nuther.com WhatsAp - Sean (+1 403 801 9714); Kate ( +44 7592 913179) Leave a message on our blog - if you don’t have a Google account, be sure to sign off with your name, otherwise you just shown as ‘unknown’ and we won’t know who left the comment! For those on Instagram, Marisa and Adriano post awesome videos.  

The Irish Loop - 47° 53' 30" N 52° 56' 21" W

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  The Irish Loop We took a day off boat preparations and headed out sightseeing.  First stop, breakfast at Quidi Vidi, a charming cove just to the north of St John's Harbour. Fully fuelled, we headed off to drive the famous Irish Loop.  The Irish Loop is a 310km circuit of the Avalon Peninsula - an endless ribbon of stunning scenery.   Quidi Vidi The Avalon Peninsula is surprising.  The mighty cliffs that mark the western edge of the North Atlantic Ocean are as rugged and wild as you would imagine.  The tiny villages or outports that huddle in the warmth of the valleys at the mouth of the rivers are colourful and quaint.  Most of them sport a wharf for fishing boats.  There is no yachting infrastructure, sailing boats are not the normal marine traffic. We clamoured on the rocks and watched whales at the Ferryland Lighthouse.  We enjoyed stunning weather which the locals say is short-lived in this part of the world. Thank goodness we popped a pair of shorts in our luggage when we we

Jupiter Point - 50° 23' 32" N 04° 13' 57" W

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 As we mentioned back in this post, we are planning a transit of the Northwest Passage for this year.  If we are able to get through, we will be one of less than 500 vessels that has EVER made it .  This includes military ships, but not submarines, as they often do not check in/out of the passage. Here is our proposed route.