The scenery was supposed to be the most spectacular of the entire trip, but instead it was like a horror picture.
The sailboat sailed in the middle of the Arctic Ocean in a place that was covered by permanent sea ice until a few years ago.
There was smoke everywhere, as a forest fire raged along the coast of Canada. It had ignited as a result of an exceptionally hot summer.
Sofa Kangasluoma and Juho Karhu getting headaches while trying to navigate through the smokescreen.
Kangasluoma and Huru sailed from Alaska to Greenland last summer.
They chose the Northwest Passage, a little-used Arctic sea route.
The fairway runs north of Alaska and Canada. In recent decades, it has been traveled mainly by the few icebreakers and cargo ships.
In the last century, the first sailors of the Northwest Passage disappeared without a trace.
There is a harsh reason for the increase in the number of ordinary pleasure boaters on the channel: the sea ice has melted as a result of global warming.
This story tells how Kangasluoma and Bear witnessed signs of global warming from their sailboat in a sensitive, arctic region. The story contains unique footage from the route shot by Karhu.
Explorers who disappeared without a trace
Karhu and Kangasluoma ended up in the Northwest Passage for the same reason that it has fascinated seafarers for centuries.
The route shortens the distance from Asia and the Pacific to Europe and the Atlantic by thousands of kilometers.
The alternative is to go around the entire American continent via its southernmost tip, Cape Horn. You can also get from one sea to the other via the canal that goes through Panama.
Karhu and Kangasluoma bought a sailboat in California on the west coast of the United States. They wanted to get to Greenland.
The harsh Arctic region attracts few boaters, but Karhu and Kangasluoma ended up sailing in the first place because of the snow and ice. That’s how the couple named their new boat: s/v Lumi.
The bear enjoys freefalling. He bought his first sailboat to be able to land in Norway on fjords that could only be reached by sea.
Kangasluoma, on the other hand, is a doctoral researcher at the Arctic Center of the University of Lapland. He studies the Arctic region for his work.
There are a total of three Arctic sea routes in the Arctic Ocean.
So far, the most traffic has been on the Northeast Corridor, which follows the Russian coast. The fairway is more open than others for natural reasons: warm sea currents melt it.
Between the Northeast Passage and the Northwest Passage, the transpolar sea route runs through the North Pole. It is still frozen and can only be penetrated by a high-class icebreaker.
The Northwest Passage is one of the Arctic sea routes that has been affected by global warming in recent years.
Attempts have been made to navigate the fairway since the 19th century.
The boat got stuck in the ice and the crew is believed to have died as it wandered south on foot. Only a Norwegian managed to sail through Roald Amundsen in the years 1903–1906.
However, it took another century for the first cargo ship to travel. The Danish ship Nordic Orion traveled the Northwest Passage from Alaska to Pori in Finland in 2013. Since then, a cruise ship has passed through the passage, among others.
However, traffic on the Luoteisväylä is still far from busy.
Karhu and Kangasluoma are only the 410th boat crew that has survived it from end to end. Statistics maintained by the research institute includes everything from icebreakers to merchant ships from the 19th century.
By November 2024, a total of 430 ships or sailboats had traveled the channel. S/v Lumi was the third Finnish sailboat.
Arctic sea routes have been the subject of interest of the great powers for a long time. Russia, China, and the United States have in turn stepped up their melting.
When the sea ice shrinks, trade routes open up. At the same time, access to the disputed Arctic oil and gas fields also opens up.
The latest chapter of the great powers’ attempts to conquer the Arctic has just opened.
As one of the reasons Donald Trump’s to the recent demand to connect Greenland to the United States, the Northwest Passage, i.e. a faster route than the current one, to the European and Asian markets has been considered.
“Same as sailing among rocks”
Finnish ocean sailors have been seen in public in recent years. They are passed Cape Horn as the sun set on the horizon or crossed the Atlantic in the warm trade winds.
The sailing of Karhu and Kangasluoma was different. There were ice floes, icebergs and snowfall.
Instead of trade winds blowing from one and the same direction, the wind varied drastically on a maze-like route.
Every morning, Huhu and Kangasluoma opened the Canadian state ice map. From it you can see where there is so much ice in the channel that a sailboat has no business going there.
When Huhu and Kangasluoma arrived from Nome, Alaska, to the beginning of the Northwest Passage in late July, the map looked red. That meant waiting a few weeks for the ice to melt.
Until now, the Northwest Passage has only been warm enough for sailing in some years.
Last summer, the route was open for yachts from the end of July to September. There is just enough time to cover the entire distance, i.e. almost five thousand nautical miles.
If for one reason or another the speed slows down or there are interruptions, the sea starts to freeze again.
Then you have to wait for next summer along the fairway.
It was still contradictory to hope for a meltdown, Karhu and Kangasluoma say. Winter lovers do not want the situation in the Arctic to change any more.
– Yes, it made me feel a little guilty. Ice maps are published daily and we then updated them and hoped that the ice would have decreased along our route, says Kangasluoma.
This year, the Northwest Passage was even exceptionally ice-free in places. The statistics show that daily records were broken in the absence of ice.
– The fact that we still had challenges with the ice was a relief in a certain way, Karhu says.
Drifting between ice floes requires real sailing skills.
Hitting ice is the same as hitting a rock.
Sea ice is not a solid slab with its edges attached to the continent. Instead, the ice is in rafts and pieces here and there. The pieces change places and you can’t always see them in the waves.
For a sailor, it means unrelenting, round-the-clock observation. Much progress was also made with the help of the engine.
– It’s the same as sailing among rocks. If you drive on ice, it’s the same as driving a boat into a quay, says Karhu.
There is also a danger of drifting into a place where there is so much ice that you cannot move forward.
In the worst places, the Finnish couple cooperated with the French boat crew.
The bigger boat went ahead among the ice and opened a route to Karhu and Kangasluoma.
When the journey became dangerous
The most dangerous moments for the couple in the entire Baffin Bay right near their destination, Greenland.
There are huge icebergs in the open bay, which, unlike sea ice, cannot be seen on the map.
The couple arrived in the bay in September, when the amount of sea ice in the Arctic is at its lowest all year. However, the nights are already dark and storms are possible.
Kangasluoma and Bear stopped the boat for the night in the middle of a wide area of sea churning in waves. They didn’t want to hit an iceberg in the dark.
When a sailboat stops in such conditions, it rocks and shakes like a bottle cap. Karhu and Kangasluoma became seasick.
– We were so close to Greenland, we didn’t want to make a mistake. But that was a moment when I could think about why I had to leave, Karhu says.
When the earth collapsed and other signs of warming
Kangasluoma and the Bear can’t compare what they saw before, but there was no need to look for the consequences of global warming separately.
Wildfires told of an exceptionally hot summer at the very beginning of the route. One of the most arresting sights was the land that collapsed into the sea on Herschel Island.
The reason was the permafrost, which had started to melt.
The weather also changed drastically. Sometimes the top jackets and beanies were taken off, and Bear surfed on a windsurfing board in a wet suit and a t-shirt.
Polar bears were a common sight on the melted continent. They swim to feed when the edge of the sea ice drifts closer to the continent.
Kangasluoma interviewed the local residents of Arktike for his new research.
The ice has become more fragile and unpredictable, they said. It can no longer be read in the same way as before.
It is more difficult to ask for food, for example whales. Accidents had started to happen on hunting trips on the ice.
– It’s not just the ice that’s disappearing, but the whole culture, hunting, food. The whole life is revolutionized, Kangasluoma says.
“This is not a trip, this is our life”
The sea adventure in the Northwest Passage ended in September, when the couple reached Greenland.
It had been their dream for a long time.
They spend the winter and the whole spring in a Greenlandic bay, where the boat gets stuck.
The nearest village is hours away by snowmobile. The snow boat is loaded with engine spare parts, medicine and food, among other things. The boat is heated by a small diesel stove.
Kangasluoma and Bear dig out their skis and move out of the boat to their other favorite hobby. They also expect peace and observing the surrounding nature and seasons.
A new member has also joined the crew, the Greenland dog Nova, whose task is to warn of approaching polar bears by barking.
The couple says that acquaintances often ask when they will end their trip and return to normal life.
Kangasluoma wonders about the question. The sailboat is their permanent home.
Kangasluoma works there as a researcher. Karhu, on the other hand, currently earns his living with the videos he shoots from the Arctic region. He publishes them on his popular social media channel.
– This is not a trip, this is our life, Kangasluoma says.
All photos and videos of the story are Juho Karhun described by
A researcher has also been interviewed for the story Jaakko Seppät From the Institute of Meteorology.