INFO  October 20^th 2002 

An Arctic First

Two French Women Sailors Complete the Northwest Passage

On the 2nd of October, Michele Demai, a journalist-TV anchorwoman and writer, and her daughter, Sabrina Thiery, a doctor in astrophysics, completed the Northwest Passage in their 42 foot steel cutter, “Nuage”.

The Northwest Passage was discovered in 1923 by Roald Amundsen. Since this heroic time only seventeen sailboats have made the crossing. “Nuage” is the fifteenth, and the first one with an all-female crew.

The trip took Demai and Thiery from the Pacific to the Atlantic via Arctic waters, from the Bering Strait to the Davis Strait, and more than 3500 nautical miles of navigation in the high latitudes above the Arctic Circle, in two seasons.

Michele and Sabrina left Victoria, British Columbia, on July 1st, 2001 and reached Cambridge Bay, Nunavut on the 1st of October 2001 where “Nuage” was hauled onto shore for the winter to protect her from the ice pressure.

Returning from Paris to the boat in June 2002, they spent two months preparing her for the final leg, and they cast off on August 25th, later than they had hoped, because of very dense ice still blocking the Passage. They reached Davis Strait on the 2nd of October after six weeks of extremely difficult navigation. The sailing conditions in the Arctic were exceptionally demanding during this short summer with an ice break-up later and a freeze-up earlier than in previous years.

The mother-and-daughter crew, supported by a French cheese company, Entremont-Meule d’Or, have just now crossed the Arctic Circle and are continuing south, en route to Quebec. They are hoping to out-race the coming winter…

"Maybe it's not the shortest way to go around Canada from Victoria to Quebec, but it's great to have done it, even if it was awfully demanding, pretty exhausting and… cold. A terrific challenge! To tell the truth, we do not realize yet that just a few weeks ago we still were all together by ourselves (with Pungo-the-cat) aboard our so reliable and wonderful little boat, surrounded with ice, at 74°20 of latitude North, almost on the top of the planet! What a lifetime experience."

Website: http://micdemai.free.fr

Contact: Michèle Demai micnuage@hotmail.com