As part of the Arctic Solar project, French navigator Anne Quéméré tried to sail the Northwest Passage solo—in this little solar-powered boat.
She tells Brut about this incredible experience.
She tells Brut about this incredible experience.
Category
🏖
TravelTranscript
00:00There is ice everywhere and finding a way is complicated.
00:30The passage is a rather complex place because it is a labyrinth of islands and ice.
00:36It is generally frozen for about 8 to 9 months of the year.
00:40There is no guarantee of success, there is even no guarantee of returning home,
00:45even if the goal of the game is to return.
01:00The advantage of the solar boat is that it is extremely discreet.
01:10We disturb very little the universe in which we evolve.
01:13It is a great advantage in these regions where humans do not have their place.
01:18We are alone among a nature that is completely in its place
01:22and animals that live in perfect harmony with the universe in which they are.
01:27Friday the 6th of July, we are at the end of the morning and I take the departure.
01:44I was stuck in the ice, and well stuck for once,
01:47since I was pushed, but without realizing it, very, very slowly by increasingly large blocks.
01:53It's like a labyrinth, a huge labyrinth in a bay.
01:57I thought I had taken it wide enough and finally I got caught.
02:03And I don't know at all when I will be able to get out of it, so it's a little scary at the same time.
02:08And then after 5 days, but 5 days is long,
02:11especially when it's 5 days of permanent days where we have time to think.
02:17I left again, I took the road and there I went into what for me was the unknown.
02:22This is also where I made my first encounters with the grizzlies.
02:25As I was at sea, I was not very far from the coast,
02:28but the grizzlies were not especially an aggression for me
02:33since they were sailing along the coast in search of food.
02:37And I was on my boat and I could observe them quietly,
02:40without any aggressiveness on my part or theirs.
02:44It's a universe that is really, really in danger.
02:47In the space of a few years, I was able to observe the erosion, for example, which is galloping,
02:52based on a small village that I discovered there, which is Tuktuyaktuk.
02:57Between 2014 and today, there were 6 or 8 houses that were evacuated in an emergency
03:02because they were collapsing, because the permafrost was melting.
03:06The permafrost is this frozen ground on which these houses are built.
03:09I feel like I'm on the moon.
03:18I had to haul my boat on the strike and there was a kind of miracle.
03:23There was a very small plane that was there with a few scientists
03:26who were there to study the erosion in these arctic areas.
03:30I said to myself, well, I have not fulfilled the mission that I had given myself.
03:34But I experienced an experience that is quite incredible.
03:38First of all, I still walked on almost a third of the road.
03:41So it still gave me a good idea of what the solar system was in this polar region.
03:45I think it's a very good lesson for me, but for everyone,
03:49to say to themselves, it may not be from point A to point B that is the most interesting.
03:53It may be what will happen between this point A and this point B
03:57and all the experience that we will acquire in this area.
04:00The encounters that we will make and a whole world that ultimately
04:04upsets us and allows us to think.