It's been almost three months since about a dozen adventurers from the small Baltic nation of Estonia left their country’s capital of Tallinn, bound for the Arctic. Their goal was to travel by sailboat through the Northwest Passage, a sea lane that passes from the Atlantic to Pacific Ocean through the Greenlandic, Canadian and Alaskan Arctic.
“First of all, sailing is so romantic, that's the reason why I'm sailing,” said Tiit Pruuli, the expedition leader.
His wife, Maris, is the ship’s boatswain, in charge of the maintenance and deck crew. Their ship is named the Admiral Bellingshausen, after the Estonian-born explorer who first discovered Antarctica.
In 2019, the group sailed the vessel from Estonia on a six-month voyage to Antarctica. Maris said the crew is inspired by another Antarctic explorer who made the same Arctic journey.
“We have one polar idol, Roald Amundsen, who was the first to pass Northwest passage in 1903 to 1906,” she said.
Since Amundsen’s expedition over a century ago, the Scott Institute for Polar Research estimates that only about 350 boats have made the Northwest passage trip, and only about half have traveled using sails like Amundson and the crew of the Admiral Bellingshausen.
Maris said it is the first time an Estonian ship has completed the endeavor, a trip of nearly 8000 nautical miles from Tallinn.
The crew was excited to visit Kotzebue because of a historic connection to Estonia. Several place names familiar to residents of the Northwest Arctic bear the names of scientists and explorers from present day Estonia, including Kotzebue, Cape Krusenstern, Cape Espenberg and Eschscholtz Bay. At that time, those scientists would have considered themselves Baltic-Germans. All of them were part of Russia's first circumnavigation of the globe in the mid-1800s.
“They are part of Estonian culture,” said Tiit. “So, we know very well what they did, and we are proud of them.”
“We actually have in our capital city Tallinn, a Kotzebue Street, and one of our crew members lives on that street,” said Märten Vaikmaa, one of the boat’s owners.
The Admiral Bellinghausen is a modern vessel compared to the giant, three-masted ships the Baltic-Germans explorers of the 1800s would have sailed in. The converted yacht is about 75 feet long and 20 ft wide, equipped with a 400-horsepower diesel motor. It has modern navigational tools, satellite internet, and a radio transmitter that is able to broadcast regularly to Estonia.
“We find it quite important to take the message to as many followers as possible,” Maris said.
The crew has thousands of fans in their country of about one million people. Tiit said one of the messages they’re trying to share is something they have encountered throughout their 3-month journey - the fragility and rapid change affecting the Arctic.
“In Europe, we're talking about climate change, it's a theoretical thing for us,” Tiit said. “But here we can see it's real. It's real everyday life, that is also very important.”
“In spite of climate change, and all kinds of problems, we have seen bright-eyed youngsters who say, ‘we have to save our language, we have to save our culture,’ which has been one of the most beautiful parts for seeing people on the way here,” Maris said.
The Admiral Bellingshausen plans to sail from Kotzebue to Little Diomede Islands, Nome and to the Aleutians before heading to Seattle for the winter.
