North Star – We did it!

September 27, 2026
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ken@kensblog.com
All, NW Passage

Greetings everyone,

This is just a quick note to let you know that we successfully transited the Northwest Passage!

We covered a LOT of distance. The final distance from Nome to Halifax was 9,517 nautical miles! And very few of them were what I would call “easy miles”. When we weren’t trying to weave through icebergs, we were rushing to avoid storms, or battling high winds.

I’ve only sent out blog updates for the first part of the trip, so I have a lot of catching up to do, and many of the high points, and even a few low points of the trip, are still tucked away in my memory, and the memory card of my camera. There’s an amazing amount of story still to be told. Expect more video and email blogs to trickle out over the next month.

This is the map of our 9,517nm trip from Seattle to Halifax Canada.

Click on it to see the map in greater detail. Compare the area covered to the entire size of the United States or Europe. We did it all in just four months, which includes almost a month of waiting for weather in Nome.

The route after Nome is taken from actual data. The route from Seattle to Nome is approximate.

Our incredible troop of daring adventurers!

[L to R] Engineer Hudson DuCharme, Captain Garrett Davis, Ice Pilot Clive Shute, Owner Ken Williams with Pixie, Expedition Leader David Reid, Chef Dani DiBattista, Mate Lydia Pleasants, Owner Roberta Williams with Keeley, Mate Kim Kirch

The interesting thing about this picture is that we were still five hours out from arrival in Halifax, and Lydia is smiling while organizing fenders and lines. It says something about excited and happy we were to be nearing the end of the road

We were given an amazing place to tie up, right in the center of the waterfront in Halifax. You cannot imagine our excitement! The last thousand miles of our southward trip had to be run around the clock, sometimes in challenging seas, with constant pressure to reach Halifax before a storm that would have set us back several days or longer

A very happy team, on the dock in Halifax. [L to R] Capt Garret, Chef Dani, Engineer Hudson, Mate Kim, Leader David, Owner Roberta, Mate Lydia, Owner Ken

WHAT NEXT?

Roberta and I have gone through a variety of different itineraries over the last couple of weeks. We’ve discussed the Caribbean this winter, and New England or Europe next summer. At this point everything is just discussion. Today we pack up and head home.

Meanwhile…

Unbelievably, with the marina in sight, half-an-hour from arrival, our port main engine quit. It has been the weekend and we haven’t really been able to dig in on what the problem is, but it doesn’t look good. My strong suspicion is that the boat will be in Halifax for a while doing some necessary maintenance. Had the engine decided to fail a few days earlier in rough seas, or up in the arctic, it would have been a very different trip. We have an amazing team and I’m sure we would have figured it out, but we’re very happy the engine waited until the end of the trip to have a bad day. Over the next few months the goal will be to put the boat back in perfect shape and ready for our next adventure!

A THANK YOU TO EYOS

Our ice pilot Clive and our expedition leader David were provided by a tour company named Eyos Expeditions (https://www.eyos-expeditions.com/). Eyos also assisted us in the background to help with provisioning, fueling and spare parts. I do not think this trip would have been possible without them. Thank you Eyos!
Thank you! Ken and Roberta Williams — and Pixie and Keeley

PS Here’s a bit of fun. I stumbled into this entertaining video of a frenchman who attempted the passage going East to West via an old wooden sailboat. The video is beautifully shot, but a spoiler: He didn’t make it.