The Allures 44 Opale has crossed the North-West Passage : 2/5 - A logical project

‍‍It doesn't occur to anyone here to compare the merits and trajectories of explorers of past centuries, most of whom have remained famous if only because their names or those of their boats are frequently found on maps of territories in the far North, and moreover at the head of official expeditions strongly supported and financed by states or powerful armaments, with the contemporary, modest but well-executed pleasure-boating project of a telecommunications engineer who, as a young retiree, finally sees the opportunity to fulfill, with his family and friends, an Arctic dream that has been with him for years.

It goes without saying that the rise of pleasure boating from the 20th century onwards, as well as the considerable reinforcement of communications and positioning resources, and the deployment of meteorological and glacial observation and forecasting services, have made this crossing much more practicable in 2019 than in the glorious and, as we have seen, somewhat cursed era of the great discoverers.

And if we add to all this the clearly perceptible effects of global warming on glacier levels, with the scientifically attested and well-documented disappearance of the Arctic ice pack (see footnote), we can only conclude that this is no great feat, and that Opale's success is nothing out of the ordinary. And yet...

Marc Pédeau's very discreet profile conceals a strong personality, one in which determination is combined with competence without the need to flaunt it. Let's just say that our man is not the type to give lessons or boast about his actions, but rather to share his experience with a mixture of generosity, precision and restraint. While it's not uncommon for some yachtsmen to be attracted to sailing as such, rather than to the destinations it enables them to reach, it seems to us that Marc Pédeau oscillates between these two tendencies. On the one hand, he says, "I love the technique of sailing, I love the navigation, the tuning of the boat, the ability to make it go as fast as it can".

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On the other hand, he declares that he has always felt "a strong attraction to the boreal regions", and quickly became convinced that a well-designed and carefully-handled sailboat was the ideal way to satisfy his desire to discover northern latitudes.

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Forty years of sailing as a volunteer member of the Groupe international de croisière(gic-voile.fr) have taken Marc and his partner Bénédicte to the coasts of Norway, Iceland, Spitsbergen and Greenland.

This solid sailing experience then played a central role in his retirement, when it came time to acquire a boat and embark on this expedition, the ultimate goal for a man with a passion for both sailing and high latitudes.It should be noted that Marc's northern tropism is coupled with an attraction for the cultural dimension of the Far North, which he himself describes as "mythical". A lifelong reader of the geographer and explorer Jean Malaurie, he is well aware of the close relationship between the Inuit and their environment, as well as of the increasing fragility of the Arctic world as a result of global warming.Attentive to the world around him, but above all a passionate sailor, Marc was also a reader, in his twenties, of the Dutch sailor Willy de Roos who, in 1977, became the first modern yachtsman to complete the Northwest Passage. De Roos sailed the route single-handed in a single season, aboard his meters steel cutterWilliwaw.

‍Andthere's every reason to believe that the 1979 publication of Willy de Roos's book, "Le Passage du Nord-Ouest : du Groenland au détroit de Béring", in the collection "Arthaud mer.All these reasons explain why attempting the North-West Passage on his own sailboat seemed a logical project to Marc Pédeau, who declares:

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"This mythical route represents an ultimate itinerary, a culmination of the very notion of navigation in the Far North, to which we had already devoted a fair amount of time with Bénédicte, between Spitzbergen, Iceland and Greenland. All in all, we felt this project was more accessible than Antarctica, and that we would encounter far fewer people on the outskirts of Nunavut than in Patagonia.

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Note: Some projections indicate that the melting of ice, more or less rapid depending on the sector, makes the possibility of a totally ice-free Northwest Passage for 2 to 4 months in summer around 2100 credible (Arctic Council, 2009: 27).

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Note: the various geographical features mentioned in this text are shown on the map reproduced above, a large-format version of which can be viewed here.

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Continuation of this series :The Allures 44 Opale has crossed the Northwest Passage : 3/5 - Conditions for success