Doubts cast on Yvan Bourgnon’s record Arctic journey
One year after his record-breaking solo voyage through the Northwest Passage, the French-Swiss sailor Yvan Bourgnon is accused of not having travelled so solo after all.
The feat was momentous: over 7,500 kilometres (4,660 miles) through the sub-zero temperatures of the historic Northwest Passage joining the Atlantic to the Pacific via the Arctic – all on a small catamaran sailboat without motor, without company, and without help.
Franco-Swiss navigator Yvan Bourgnon – whose more recent project is a pledge to clean the world’s oceans of plastic waste – was roundly lauded, at the time, for the daring voyage.
+ Cleaning the sea’s plastic waste with a catamaran
However, a report (in German)External link by the NZZ newspaper has cast doubt on the solo nature of the adventure. It claims that Bourgnon was assisted by various other sailors. For example, the report says that a Dutch boat towed him for over 150 kilometres (93 miles), and also gave him onboard shelter and food for six days when the weather turned.
Another sailor interviewed by the newspaper, Susanne Huber-Curphey from Hamburg, also claims that she supplied Bourgnon with an anchor chain, a gesture that the navigator asked her to keep secret.
Bourgnon himself, questioned about this by a German sailing magazine, has strongly denied receiving any assistance during his voyage. He was towed for a couple of hundred metres on one occasion, he says, in order to leave a bay, but he insists that he spent the entire trip solely onboard his small catamaran.
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