Sailing to remote destinations offers bucket-list exploits, increasingly rare sights and experiences few will ever get to share. But such adventures also bring a unique set of challenges.
At the southernmost tip of Patagonia is a stretch of the Beagle Channel nicknamed Glacier Alley. The 150-mile passage is serrated by fjords cut by five tidewater glaciers that flow from the huge Darwin ice field. Captain Gerhard Veldsman recalls taking Aquijo, at 282 feet the largest sailing ketch in the world, gingerly into them as one of the most memorable experiences of a decade of two circumnavigations.
“We had the boss and his family on board for a month. We went right up to all the glaciers and the sights were amazing,” Gerhard says. He describes immense ice cliffs, an evening barbecuing on a wild, isolated beach and making a luge from iceberg ice and filling it with vodka. “It was one of those surreal moments,” he says, “with silence all around, a mountain of ice nearby and the family laughing around the fire.”
Aquijo was always destined to sail to remote regions and go the long way round the world, as her 295-foot masts are too tall for the height restrictions of the Panama and Suez canals.
“We have to go via the extremities of the planet to get around the world,” Gerhard says.
Since her launch in 2016, Aquijo has rounded the tip of South America and been through the Northwest Passage, transiting some of the world’s most demanding and difficult waters. Her guests have seen volcanoes, polar bears and pristine reefs, and been to mountain communities with ancient tribal cultures.
Sailing to these places is particularly demanding in a boat as large and complex as Aquijo. You need to take experts along, both for pilotage expertise and their understanding of cultural nuances that open doors closed to other travelers.
Going Beyond the Known
EYOS Expeditions was set up in 2008 to help superyacht owners and crew prepare for these special places, to take them “beyond the known.”
“Yachts are such a great platform with their small, intimate sizes,” Ben Lyons, CEO and a former captain, says. “Our idea was to support crews to break out of their comfort zone, as we saw yachts going to places and missing out on some of the best experiences because they didn’t know who to reach out to. We make recommendations on how a yacht should be prepared, develop an itinerary and take care of permits.”
In the early days there was more of a standard expedition playbook, “but now we are able to put together programs that are so much more complex and ambitious. For example, we took a yacht to the Ross Sea recently and it was the farthest south a yacht had ever been in history; nobody thought you could do it,” Ben says. “We routinely help with programs involving several vessels, including support yachts and helicopters; people can be off heli-skiing, hiking, kayaking or doing scientific expeditions on the ice cap.”
For all high-latitude voyages, EYOS begins with a pre-polar meeting. “We send a couple of team members to meet with captain, chief engineer and chief stew and run through a comprehensive checklist and any questions they may have,” he says. “That could be anything from garbage disposal to access points where a polar bear [might try to] come on board. On top of that, we have extensive standard operating procedures for things like small boat operations and wildlife encounters. Wildlife viewing is a huge one from a safety perspective and also ensuring responsible behavior so we view the animals acting naturally.”
This all forms part of the permit application submissions process. The Antarctic and Arctic tourism consortia IAATO and AECO, of which EYOS is an operating member, “lay out all sorts of guidelines, even down to site-specific locations, like you can land at Neko Harbour [on the Antarctic Peninsula] at this spot but you can’t go to that spot because there is a colony of birds or there were crevasses there earlier. So we even have that level of playbook that we are working to,” he says.
EYOS co-founder Rob McCallum adds that places like Neko Harbour, a real staple for tourist vessels, are booked most days of summer. “It is an awesome spot, but it is also one of the most visited commercial sites,” he says. “The flexibility of a private expedition on a yacht gives us the freedom to find better spots that are off the tourist trail.”
On Aquijo’s first voyage via Cape Horn and Patagonia, the yacht had EYOS consultant Skip Novak on board. He has operated his own expedition yachts in Antarctica for more than three decades. He knows the area intimately and has extensive knowledge of the weather, ice behavior and the flora, birds and marine life.
A local pilot is also mandatory in Chilean waters. Gerhard emphasizes how crucial it is to find one who is accustomed to superyachts. “Guides are critical in places like this, but you need a pilot that is used to big boats and accommodating guests,” he says. “We had a guy called Marcel and he was great, knew the area very well and was proud of showing us his country.”
Yachts must be well prepared and self-sufficient, and their crews cautious. “We traveled for two weeks from Ushuaia to [the southern Chilean town of] Chacabuco without seeing another living soul,” Gerhard says. “You are isolated, and even if boats have helicopters they are not allowed to fly unless they have to. You have to be able to survive.”
The weather can be unpredictable at the polar extremes, and winds can move ice around quickly and trap or embay a yacht. “The wind can go from zero to storm force in a few seconds, and it happened a few times,” he says, highlighting some of the problems that can quickly arise.
“You must be ready for that. If you anchor in front of glaciers you won’t know how deep it is, so you send tenders out ahead of you. But if the wind swings and the ice breaks up off the glacier and you need to move, you have to be careful not to get them in your thrusters. Or if your chain were to get trapped underneath an iceberg and you couldn’t get the anchor up, you’d have to let it go.
“All of these things can happen to you — that’s what it is like down there. So you prep the crew that it is going to be hard work, but it is very exciting for everybody as it’s all new, and if you have a good crew, it is fantastic.”
The second circumnavigation took Aquijo through the Northwest Passage, a two-and-a-half-month odyssey that began in Boston and finished in Nome, Alaska, taking them via Greenland to the north of Canada. The preparation was rigorous — “even more involved than Patagonia,” Gerhard says.
Complex permissions were required, as well as additional insurance and certification. Daily passage plans had to be filed en route.
“All our officers did ice navigation courses,” Gerhard says. “The coast guard is very specific. They don’t want you to get trapped in the ice as they have to come and get you.”
“Expedition cruising in challenging ice conditions is dynamic, intense and rewarding,” Rob says. “It requires hard-won expertise, imagery, great shore support and patience. Conditions change daily, so you need an alternative plan and a flexible mindset.”
When you see the ice, however, this all becomes worthwhile. Disko Bay in Greenland was one of the high points of Aquijo’s trip, full of towering, white and turquoise icebergs, “some as big as two or three [soccer fields],” Gerhard recalls. “You literally see them marching; it is amazing, but they are also very unstable and can turn around next to you and you quickly want to get out of their way.”
An ice pilot is mandatory for insurance for this region. Initially, Gerhard was skeptical. “I thought it was a waste of money,” he says.
“But as soon as we hit Greenland we saw icebergs, and it was quite daunting. The pilots do add value if they are good. They will talk you through getting a path through the ice as they have an eye for how it moves with the tides and wind.”
Ancient Cultures, New Friends
One of the most remote stops in the Northwest Passage transit was Cambridge Bay in northernmost Canada, which is ice-free for only 10 days a year. Aquijo had a contingency plan in place for topping up fuel here by taking two 260-gallon containers with them, loading them onto a tender and going to a beach where a fuel truck from a local community could drive up and fill them up. That worked perfectly, but the crew also had to be mindful not to deplete these tiny communities’ limited resources.
Aquijo took a specialist expedition doctor on board who had worked extensively with polar explorer Ranulph Fiennes. Although she was never needed, she was there throughout “just in case.”
External expertise was invaluable in many other places. In Papua New Guinea, Aquijo had the help of Angela Pennefather, an EYOS expedition leader who works in the yacht support industry in Australia but grew up in Papua New Guinea. “She is the expert in Melanesia. If you want to get the best out of it, you need to take a good local guide with you,” Gerhard says.
She quickly took action during an emergency when a crew member developed decompression sickness after a routine dive. She arranged for a specialist air ambulance capable of flying at low altitude — vital for keeping air pressure as close as possible to sea level — to take the crew member to Australia, where they were treated for two weeks.
“There isn’t much availability of doctors on small islands, so you need to insure yourself properly for adventure travel. It is like a life raft; the day you need it you will be grateful for it,” Gerhard says.
She helped Aquijo’s crew in many other ways. “I coordinate community engagement, whether it’s arranging educational workshops, health support or repairs,” she says. “My job is to transform an expedition from a passive journey into an experience with real social impact. It’s the difference between being a tourist and becoming part of a shared human story.”
Papua New Guinea, with 850 language groups, is an “anthropological mecca,” one of the last true frontiers where ancient tribal traditions still exist, she says. “You have this incredible spirit within the people. There’s something really moving about seeing one of the world’s wealthiest individuals sitting cross-legged, sharing a coconut with a village child. It reminds people what really matters, and it reconnects them with a shared humanity; that’s what makes it unforgettable.”
Cultural opportunities abound. “In the Louisiade Archipelago you can sail a traditional sailau ocean-going canoe,” she says. Constructed of nothing but natural materials, these simple craft voyage across vast tracts of the ocean, powered by the wind and a crew of four.
“New Ireland is home to the ‘shark callers of Kontu,’ where men in tiny dug-out canoes catch sharks by hand using nothing but a noose and a hand-carved propeller, an ancient art unique to this culture,” she says. “Every island has a different culture — different rituals, dances and songs that carry traditions through the millennia. These are shared willingly, with the entire village turning out to perform for us in New Hanover, an authentic cultural event that brings the village together to give the warmest of welcomes.”
Beyond the traditional trade-wind routes are coastlines few yachts ever visit. In Melanesia, you can find islands that have not had a visitor in years; hundreds are uninhabited. Even close to the beaten track you can spot rare wildlife and marine life, secluded communities and deserted beaches.
“The diving in French Polynesia was amazing, the outlying islands of Papua New Guinea and all of Melanesia were all highlights, but other places stood out, too,” Gerhard says. “In Tasmania, there were beautiful beaches with kangaroos and wombats and nothing else on them. Hobart had the best whisky in the world and wineries and museums. We saw places that were very different to the remote locations. There were so many surprises.”