Tommy Cook, a former Port Angeles who still calls it home, had wanted to sail around the Northwest Passage for more than a quarter century.
At the age of 63, he has finally set sail.
The former Coast Guard officer left Two Harbors, Minn., April 6 on a counter-clockwise journey through the Great Lakes, down the St. Lawrence River, up the coast of Newfoundland and through the fabled Northwest Passage when the ice breaks up in late July or August.
Cook is sailing alone in a fast and lightweight Corsair F-31 sailboat named the Lemuel R. Brigman III, or Cap’n Lem for short.
After he gets to Nome, Alaska, this fall, Cook will fly to Port Angeles and return in the summer of 2010 to sail the Cap’n Lem to Port Angeles.
Cook said he never doubted this day would come.
“Dreams without hard work, vision and goals are mere fantasies,” Cook wrote in an e-mail to the Peninsula Daily News from Lake Superior.
“I did not always know when, or even how, this would happen, I just knew it would.”
Legendary route
The Northwest Passage is the legendary mariner route off the north coast of Canada.
Early European explorers tried unsuccessfully to find the passage for a direct shipping route to Asia.
Roald Amundsen of Norway made the crossing in 1906 in a 47-ton seal hunting ship. It took Amundsen and his crew three years to move through the vast portions riddled with ice.
In the summer of 2007, however, an open-water route opened up for the first time since satellite records began in 1978, according to the Sept. 17 edition of National Geographic that year.
Climate models had projected that the passage — a shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through the Canadian Arctic — would eventually open as the rising temperatures of global warming melted the Arctic sea ice — but the ice-free condition of the passage was about 30 years ahead of predictions, a scientist with National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., told the magazine.
For Cook, the melting of Arctic ice offered an opportunity.
“With the news that the Northwest Passage was opening up, I started to look in earnest at how I could go,” Cook said.
Cook initially planned to use a heavy dual-hulled steel boat. The receding ice would allow him to go light and fast. His small sailboat can reach speeds of 23 mph.
Cook also was able to tow the lightweight boat from Washington state to Minnesota.
“The first and foremost purpose of my trip is adventure and to share that adventure with anyone interested,” Cook said.
“Yes, it will be an opportunity to help bring awareness to what’s happening in the far north climate, but I don’t have an ax to grind with anyone.
Clean up messes
“I am an environmentalist, that is, I care deeply about this planet and the fate of all God’s creation. I just wish people would clean up their messes and think before they make another one.”
Cook named the boat for his friend and mentor of 44 years, Lemuel R. Brigman III, who died in 2006.
He is posting regular blog entries on his Web site, www.arcticsolosail.com.
“There are worse things than the danger of shipwreck and drowning to me,” Cook wrote Thursday.
“The danger of doing nothing, of giving up and letting dreams die. These things scare me more than anything the sea has to offer.”
The Cap’n Lem has a small kitchen, propane heat and a bunk. Cook even has a keyboard to pass the time. He is relying on GPS navigation as well as old-fashioned celestial navigation.
A small wind vane keeps small amounts of power stored in batteries on board the vessel.
Cook is not alone on this solo journey.
His support crew, Ken Birdwell and Ben Straight, will monitor ice conditions from afar and meet up with Cook when they can.
Cook met his crew while working as a boatswain aboard the Lady Washington tall ship.
The 20-year-old replica of the original Lady Washington is based in Grays Harbor.The original Lady Washington, captained by Robert Gray, was the first American ship to reach Japan in the 1700s.
Coast Guard
Cook moved to Port Angeles in 1992 to work on the oil spill recovery vessel Shearwater for Clean Sound Cooperative Inc.
He still calls Port Angeles home.
“I’ve lived there longer than anywhere else,” Cook said.
After retiring from the Coast Guard in 1990, Cook worked as a merchant mariner.
In working aboard the Coast Guard icebreakers Polar Star and Polar Sea, Cook made five trips to the Arctic and four to the Antarctic.
In the fall of 1982 — while working as a boatswain aboard the Polar Sea — the idea of traveling the Northwest Passage began to take hold, Cook said.
Cook was the captain of the oil spill recovery vessel Shearwater for about 14 years before he retired in 2004.
“Now I just sail when and where I like,” said Cook, a licensed captain of large ocean vessels.
Cook was never stationed at the Coast Guard Air Station/Port Angeles, but his daughter was a seaman apprentice there and is now a Coast Guard lieutenant stationed in California.
Cook’s godmother, Irene Dwyer, 90, lives in Port Angeles.
“That wonderful lady has prayed for this sailor boy every day for over 30 years, and she is doing some mighty tall praying for me, I know,” Cook said.
He has no other relatives in the state.
The Cap’n Lem is owned by a small limited liability company in which Cook is a partner.
“I hope to recoup our investments by writing and speaking about the trip,” Cook said.
Even if he doesn’t make it though the Northwest Passage, Cook said his trip, now two weeks old, has already been a success.
“I’ve met people, wonderful people like the ones in Two Harbors, Minn., and Grand Marais,” he said.
“I’ve seen things I would never have seen had I stayed home. The trip will be a success, no matter the outcome. It will be up to natural forces beyond my control whether I can get through the passage.”
Cook said his greatest challenges on the voyage could be weather, ice and breaking parts.
“These very things . . . are at the heart of adventure,” he said.
Cook recalled a miserable night he spent on watch aboard the Lady Washington during a fierce storm off the coast of Oregon. Seasick and cold, he repeatedly told himself: “Adventure is not comfort.”
“If you want comfort, stay at home by the fireplace,” he said.
Cook doesn’t believe in luck. He saids well-thought-out choices, hard work, foresight and experience can lessen the adverse effects of unforeseen events.
“I like to tell people the trip is only one mile long, the mile that’s in front of me.”
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
