Northabout - My Condensed Version

Planing sea voyages must be a daunting task? Finding like-minded people: undertaking such journeys, skipper and crew need to have absolute trust in and respect for each other, they need to be open to the diversities of and have patience with the cultures, language barriers and laws of the nations into who's territorial waters they will sail. Select crew with relevant skills. Source insurance and sponsorship. Find, or in this case, have a boat designed and built to the highest specification for the journey. Furnish it with the most up to date technology available. Secure and translate necessary documentation,  employ ice pilots, source courtesy flags for each country on route. Pack sufficient food: weather-appropriate clothing, fresh water, medication and spare parts to last twice the length of the planned voyage.

Skipper Jarlath Cunnane and his rotating crew members did all of the above before setting sail from Westport, Co. Mayo: following the route of so many other Arctic explorers, along the North West Passage; starting in Baffin Bay, Greenland, to complete this epic journey at Barrow Cape in Alaska in 2001. Northabout: their boat was then laid up ashore, to over winter in Nome, Alaska.

Summer's melting of sea ice allowed the sailors return to Nome to collect their boat. Sail south: transit the Panama Canal, cruise the Caribbean, take in the sights; cross the Atlantic and arrive in Westport was the plan, until it changed! Northabout was anchored in Oregon, as another sailing season ended.

Choosing Prince Rubert Port, located on the Canadian Alaskan border as their departure point those seafaring adventurers challenged themselves by completing the North East  Passage from the Bering Strait, setuated between Siberia and Alaska to finish in Barents Sea, on the Norwegian Russian border. This set them up for the eventual home run to Co. Mayo.

It proved a somewhat start, stop, reverse back, move leads, try again scenario, as the Northabout entered Russian waters. Combinations of gale force winds: floating icebergs and getting trapped in Artic pack ice, which necessitated assistance from the powerful Russian nuclear powered icebreaker Vaigach; made travel slower and more testing of everyone's resiliance. Eventually traversing the North Pole by the Irish team, was successfully accomplished in two seasons.

Those mariners - for which Jarlath Cunnane received an award - provided assistance to Ductman Henke de Velde, sailing with just an ice pilot in Siberian waters skippering the yacht Campina,

After approximately four seasons and twenty thousand miles of ocean saling, the circumnavigators returned home: safe, healthy and victorious to Westport, accompanied by their trusty yatch, and "Donk" the mascot.

Seven years later: in 2012 an opportunity arose which set Jarlath Cunnane, his crew and Northabout on another adventure. Sailing from Westport, to St. Petersburg, they navigated through the Belomrsk, or White Sea Canal which forms the link to the Baltic Sea via Lake Onega in northwestern Russia. Their return voyage took them past Norway's North Cape, the northernmost point in Europe.

Throughout their many voyages: travelling through countries, islands, waterways, cultures and communities, most of us seldom hear about and definetly will never visit; those shipmates witnessed Artic and Antarctic phenomena of the land of the rising sun, the northern lights as rarely seen before, winter lasting ten months in Dikson, on the Kara Sea, and flowers on the tundra.

The Northabout expeditionists experienced stunning landscapes: amazing sunsets,  the majestic albatross and sea eagles soring through the skys; admired beautiful king pinguines, got up closer than advisable to polar bears, viewed walrus: humpbackd whales, sea otters, caribou, muskoxen in their natural habitats and sampled colourful, tasty artic char, similar to salmon.

On a less charming note the skipper and crew got to visit the Gulag Archipelago seeing remains of gulag prison camps and their hidden burial grounds in Sandarmokh: our yachters  saw skulls and graves of the lost Sir John Franklin expedition crew of 1845 on Todd Islands, Canada.

During their Caribbean two seasons voyage, the Northabout crew were called upon to help with a small sea rescue in the mid-Atlantic's turbulent waters, by taking on board Gilbert Brun and Marie Rose Haufman: two inexperienced French sailors from the Nérée yacht.

Eventually Northabout found new owners. Sailing under the Jersey flag, she's still finding adventure, with the Unu Mondo sea protection expedition.

Jarlath Cunnane, affirms in his book, that he and his crew planned to retrace the steps taken by explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, alongside Irish man Tom Crean, and four others in the lifeboat James Caird while trying to rescue his men, which he was successful in doing, after their ship Endurance was crushed by polar ice in the Weddell Sea off Antarctica in November 1915.

Due to their boat, the Tom Crean capsizing, plus forecasts for ten days of tempestuous weather: the Irish contingent had to abandon their 1997 South Arís plan, leaving the skipper no option but to scuttle his boat. They completed the expedition on Pelagic their  support vessel.

It saddens me: when I think of this beautiful, aptly named, chunky little wooden boat, gamley sporting her red duradon sails, lying on the ocean floor; somewhere between Elephant Island, close to the Antarctic peninsula and South Georgia, in the south Atlantic ocean, ne'er again sailing the high seas', nor completing her maiden voyage.