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Alluring Arcticvideo
6 December 2025 · 34 min · 1.1M views · Greenland
Sailboat navigates shattered ice in Greenland’s frozen fjord.
What this video covers
Juho and Sohvi Kangasluoma deliberately froze their Garcia Nouanni 43 into a freshwater lake near Sisimiut, Greenland's second-largest city, for 181 days of Arctic winter — one of perhaps zero to three leisure boats overwintering in the Arctic each year.▶ 1:59 The boat, bought in California for €50,000 and fitted out over five to six months before sailing north via Alaska, Canada, and Norway, is not a purpose-built ice vessel; it has an aluminum hull but was not designed for this use.▶ 2:49 Site selection near Sisimiut balanced isolation with lake access to town, avoided areas with polar bear activity, and required large rocks for mooring because many candidate locations offered nothing to tie to.▶ 5:57 Key risks they identified include ice movement crushing the hull or fouling the propeller and rudder, fire or flooding with no rescue infrastructure nearby, and polar bears — mitigated partly by their Greenlandic dog Nova.▶ 14:48 Winds of 18–20 m/s and temperatures around +7–8°C in what should be a −25°C winter stripped insulation from the boat faster than expected.▶ 21:33 Both crew worked remotely throughout, Sohvi as a post-doctoral researcher at the Arctic Centre, University of Lapland.▶ 23:04 No published guide exists for this overwintering method; their preparation relied on gathering information piecemeal.▶ 13:49
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