Freeze-up a happy accident for Aussie couple

SARA MINOGUE

CAMBRIDGE BAY – In February 2003, an Australian couple handed over the keys to their home and their small business to a man they said would have the run of the place for at least two years.

Two years later, the pair are six months into their stay in Cambridge Bay, where their boat, the Fine Tolerance, got caught by ice during an attempt to make the Northwest Passage last summer. It’s no bother, they say, as the man running their business is happy and so are they.

Phil Hogg and Liz Thompson never thought they’d be sailing the Northwest Passage, or spending the winter in Cambridge Bay. After sailing 1600 km from their home town of Bundaberg to Melbourne, they entered a 10,000 km non-stop race from Melbourne to Osaka, Japan. They spent almost two months in Japan after arriving, and then headed to the Aleutian Islands for the summer of 2003.

That’s where they got their first surprise. They found the islands green and lush – and beautiful.

“It’s a paradise!” Hogg says. “No one’s there.”

They also loved walking around, without fear of the snakes and spiders and scorpions one would quickly encounter in backwoods Australia.

After eight weeks, they ran out of summer, and so they followed their original plan and headed south to Vancouver and Seattle, from where they meant to keep going south, to Mexico, South America, and then South Africa and home. Instead, they quickly decided to come back north next summer and explore parts of the B.C. coastline that they’d missed.

In the meantime, they talked about going further north, though it seemed like a large proposition.

“We’d never heard of the Northwest Passage,” Hogg admits. In school, they had learned about the Ross Ice Shelf, and could easily name the capital of Antarctica (there isn’t one), their neighbour continent. The North, however, was completely foreign, and Hogg was surprised to see the familiar place names of Antarctic explorers who had also ventured north.

Cold was another obstacle. The coldest it ever gets in their home town was about 12 degrees. They first encountered real cold on their journey to the Aleutians.

“About a week from Japan we got the biggest shock of our lives,” Thompson says. The boat was almost freezing, and condensation left everything wet all the time. “We had no heater.”

Nonetheless, they spent the winter getting supplies, including a heater, a year’s worth of food and fuel, and communications gear: two receivers, two GPS devices and two radios (two for backup). They talked to fishermen about the Aleutians, and borrowed some maps from a man in Nanaimo, B.C, who made the journey in 1994.

In spring 2004, they headed back North, past Cambridge Bay and into the passage where they joined up with three other boats: the Minke I, sailed by a Halifax man who had spent the winter in Tuktoyaktuk; the Polar Bound, an English boat; and the Dagmar Allen, helmed by German adventurer, Arved Fuchs, who had also failed to get through in 2003.

Two of the boats scraped through – one of them just after the coast guard had dropped, by air, fuel supplies to last him through a dark, lonely winter on the ice. The Australians, conscious that they were slower than the others, decided to turn back rather than risk getting caught in the ice.

“It was the hardest decision we’ve ever had to make,” Thompson says.

But they don’t regret it. The pair now live in a small house whose owner is away. Thompson has become known as “the number one volunteer” at the elementary school. Hogg played Santa Claus at the community Christmas party, and has lately been building shelves for a local businesswoman.

They plan to take another stab at the passage this summer, but aren’t too concerned about the results.

“Before, the big thing was to get through the Northwest Passage,” Thompson says. “Now, that’s not such a big thing.”

In their temporary living room, Thompson reads a letter from a friend of theirs and fellow northern traveller back in Australia. “You two are a source of controversy,” he reports, and their “sanity is in question.” But he’s been here, and knows the appeal of the North, and has been acting in their defence.

None needed, they might retort. Bundaberg is famous for its Bundaberg Rum, made from the local sugar cane crop. The rum is famous for its incongruous polar bear on the label. It’s a natural connection.