Sept 20, 2006 - First Yacht through the Northwest Passage
by Michel & Jane DeRidder

Several yachts have gone through the Northwest Passage in recent years, perhaps made easier of late by the Arctic ice melt. But the first to do so - in 1977 - was the 18-ton, 13-meter ketch Williwaw, designed for Willy de Roos by Louis Van de Wiele.

Willy de Roos was one of that breed of adventurer who felt he must test himself in harsh conditions. Willy had sailed east-west round the world by way of Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope. No stranger to rigorous sailing, he not only knew his boat, but he also had a good idea of his own abilities; several of the legs of the round-the-world trip he had accomplished solo.

We first met Willy in Tahiti during his circumnavigation. Patrick van God, a fellow Belgian who had sailed the high latitudes, was there too on his yacht Trismus. Michel is also Belgian born and raised (but a different breed of cat - those two Cape Horners were seeking adventure; Michel, sunshine and quiet havens). What hilarious camaraderie ensued! The three offbeat Belgians spent many happy hours arguing, laughing, feasting and quaffing wine. We later shared anchorages with Williwaw in Samoa and in Suvarov, and much later, visited Willy at his home in Pommereuil, Belgium where we saw his slides and movies and heard firsthand stories of his subsequent amazing voyages, one of which we're about to share with you.

Willy de Roos.

In 1975, after Willy returned to Belgium from his circumnavigation, he began preparations for his next challenging voyage - alone, north of continental North America, from Greenland to the Bering Sea via the Northwest Passage. Here progress is possible only during the short Arctic summer. In June, July and August, the average temperature rises to slightly above freezing, allowing the solid pack ice to break up. Tortuous channels appear, ever-changing, closing and reforming, and for a time the sun never sets. It is at this time that supply ships, coast guard cutters, police boats and oceanographic vessels take advantage of the brief respite to go about their business, aided by helicopter and ice breaker. No yacht had ever been through the passage, but Willy de Roos was determined to try.

But first he had to master the difficulties of polar navigation, confusing because a compass becomes disoriented and unstable so close to the magnetic pole, and the familiar Mercator charts are so distorted as to be useless. He studied the voyages of his predecessors whose names are found on the charts of the region where all too many of them lost their lives: Cabot, Frobisher, Davis, Baffin, Melville, Amundsen, Hudson, Franklin. They had all been seeking a short, high-latitude sea route from Europe to the Indies, a shortcut to Cathay with its silks and spices, gold, silver, and precious stones.

Williwaw at anchor.

John Cabot, a contemporary of Columbus, disappeared without a trace with his second expedition in 1498. Later expeditions were either driven back, trapped in the ice, or crushed and sunk. Some of the expedition members escaped overland. Others were picked up by whalers. Many died of starvation.

It wasn't until 1906 that Raold Amundsen, the famed Norwegian explorer, finally found the Northwest Passage. He ship Gjoa was a 70-foot, 47-ton converted fishing boat with strengthened frames, an additional 3 inches of oak sheathing, and a 13-horsepower kerosene engine. It took him three years to get through to the Pacific. Amundsen and his crew then sailed down to San Francisco, where Gjoa is displayed today in the Golden Gate Museum.

In the 1940s Sgt. Larsen of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and his crew successfully passed through in a specially built schooner, the St. Roch, first west to east and then east to west. They were iced in halfway through for eleven months during the winters of '41 and '42. After almost a quarter of a century working in Arctic waters, St. Roch was put on permanent display in Vancouver's Maritime Museum.

Alone in his vivid orange steel ketch, Willy set out to make his own way through the Northwest Passage, embarking from England in June 1977. It had taken him two years to prepare himself and his boat for the journey. Williwaw was already a well-equipped ship. Her depth sounder read to 400 meters. She had radar and an uncommonly large (for a yacht) Decca autopilot with a massive binnacle in the cockpit, and a huge console in the stern cabin. A ham radio operator, during his circumnavigation Willy had kept in touch with various parts of the world. A generator activated by the prop shaft supplied him with all his power requirements when under way.

Reinforced bow.

For his attempt at the Northwest Passage, Willy made additional modifications to the boat. He reinforced the bow, and added an ice breaking appendage designed to protect the bobstay and to enable Williwaw to ride up on the ice, thus absorbing the shock of impact. He insulated the steel hull and decks with a heavy thickness of fiberglass batting. He had extra fuel tanks made to hold kerosene for cooking as well as for running the engine - since diesel fuel becomes too thick to use in subzero temperatures. He brought along a wind generator and a dismountable sled. Willy realized that he would probably have to winter in the Arctic wastes. Possibly, like Amundsen, it would take him three full seasons to find a way through the frozen channels. He stocked his boat accordingly.

Willy crossed the North Atlantic with his autopilot at the helm and only a hitchhiking pigeon for company. The pigeon made great inroads on his store of precious nuts and added several archipelagos to his chart before leaving the boat as they neared Greenland. Willy sighted the first ice bergs as he made his way up Davis Strait between Greenland and Baffin Island. Though the ice bergs were visible on radar, the smaller "growlers" were not always discernible on the screen. Constant surveillance was necessary. Exhausted, he decided that it would be much easier with two aboard; his autopilot was almost useless due to the instability of its compass in such high latitudes, and was utterly useless in rough seas. So Willy made arrangements via ham radio for a crew member to meet him in Greenland. In Egedesminde, Greenland, his first stop after the 28-day transatlantic passage, he was joined by Jean-Louis Gerlache. Jean-Louis was the son and grandson of Belgian polar expedition leaders. He had never sailed before, but he had spent some time in the Arctic. He remained with Willy until they reached Gjoa Haven in the Northwest Territory, more or less the halfway point, where Amundsen had wintered twice. Here Jean-Louis took the opportunity to hop a plane to rejoin his archaeological dig at Ponds Inlet on Baffin Island.

While waiting in Egedesminde for Jean-Louis to arrive, Willy came across the Canadian yacht J.E. Bernier II. Five young French Canadians had set out from Montreal the summer before with the same goal in mind - to be the first yacht to traverse the Northwest Passage. After their first season, they had left the 11-ton steel sloop in Greenland for the winter. Now they were back on board and ready to carry on. Marie-Eve, the only woman aboard, presented Willy with a maple leaf courtesy flag and a copy of the Canadian Sailing Directions, on behalf of Bernier's crew. She also taught him how to make bread.

Melville Bay - imprisoned in the ice. (Photo from Le Passage du Nord-Ouest by Willy de Roos.)

The two yachts made their way together from Greenland to the Canadian Arctic, Williwaw acting as ice breaker on several occasions in Melville Bay, and as tow boat after Bernier lost the use of its engine. They parted company when the Canadians stayed behind to make repairs to their transmission, a recurring problem apparently caused by the incompatibility of a rubber-mounted engine and a rigid-mounted shaft. Better prepared and better equipped, Willy was able to take the lead and hold on to it. As he said to himself, "Only one of us can be first."

Spurred on by the knowledge that Bernier was behind him, Willy pushed on, radioing back reports of the ice conditions he encountered along the way. It was an unusually ice-free summer. One day he made good 220 miles. It became apparent that he would get much further that first season than he had anticipated. Over-motivated, Willy was pushing himself beyond his limits. He realized that he could easily overdo it, like a husky dog with a bad master that will keep going until it drops. He decided that he must discipline himself if he was to succeed. He must force himself to follow a schedule, get sufficient sleep, prepare adequate meals, keep the boat in order, and do repairs as required - and above all, to navigate with extreme care.

Williwaw's hull being squeezed upward by the pressure of the ice, revealing the reinforced bow and bobstay guard. (Photo from Le Passage du Nord-Ouest.)

In spite of unusually benign conditions for that part of the world, Willy suffered many setbacks. He was blocked by ice and had to retrace his tracks. He was driven back by gales. Weakened by lack of sleep, anxiety and fear, he doggedly kept going. In spite of fatigue, he was not oblivious to the beauty of the blue polar ice, the black water and red icescapes fired by a low altitude sun. He wrote, "The pack ice is an obstacle course, a playing field - a very beautiful one." Throughout the voyage he kept in touch with ham radio contacts in Canada and in Belgium. He even found time occasionally to bake bread.

Finally, on September 18, 1977, Williwaw passed between Alaska and Russia into the Pacific - a historic moment. He had been a mere three months in the Northwest Passage. Later in Vancouver Willy de Roos was given a hero's welcome. Having been prepared to spend three years in the Arctic, he decided he might as well head for Antarctica so as to use up some of his provisions. He set forth the following year to finish his voyage around the Americas by way of Antarctica, where he spent several weeks before sailing north, back across the Atlantic to complete his unusual circumnavigation of the Americas in Belgium in 1978.

Willy de Roos' book, Le Passage du Nord-Ouest du Groenland au detroit de Bering was published by Librairie Arthaud, Paris 1979, with spectacular colour photographs and several maps. It was marred by a few typos, the worst of which states that Williwaw successfully doubled Fairway Rock at the exit of Bering Strait on the 18th of September 1877. This regrettable lack of proofreading was corrected in the 1980 English edition with just black-and-white photographs (published by Hollis & Carter, London, Sydney, Toronto). The English edition has a forward by Rear-Admiral G.S. Ritchie, one-time Hydrographer of the Navy and President of the Directing Committee of the International Hydrographers Bureau. This provides fascinating historical perspective, along with information about the sketch maps by those who had searched before him - the old maps Willy de Roos had studied and copied before setting forth.