Top: Bagan on Disko Bay, about halfway up the west coast of Greenland. The crew stopped here to marvel at the ice coming down
from the Greenland ice sheet before crossing to Lancaster Sound and entering the Northwest Passage. Above left: Sisimiut, the
second largest town in Greenland, is just over 45 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Above right: Sefton Theobald on “ice watch” on
Bagan’s foredeck. The crew had to watch for submerged ice shelves, which could have ended the trip very suddenly.
had reached Seattle safely. Generously, he had come to
show off the boat (which was for sale), to talk about
the adventure, and to give away CDs containing a
video from the voyage. With him was Dominique
Tanton, his stepdaughter and a member of the Bagan
crew throughout the five-month journey.
Theobald said Dominique is a skilled boat handler,
with five years’ experience as a first mate and chef on a
number of yachts. Aboard Bagan, she also proved her
skill at fending off threatening hunks of ice. But her
reputation will endure because of her cooking: she
prepared 150 dinners for as many as six crew members
during the expedition without repeating a recipe.
In total, the crew was extraordinary. It included a film
director and a writer; a master diver-photographer; a
cinematographer; Theobald’s stepson, Chauncey Tanton;
and his son Sefton, a University of Colorado student. Not
all were aboard for the entire trip.
I had expected the Nordhavn to look a little beat
up from her trials in the Arctic. But her exterior was
in exceptionally good condition, and interior spaces
looked new—so new that only those who truly know
the Nordhavn line would have identified her as a
1998 model.
Theobald was in satellite contact with Jim Leishman at
Nordhavn’s headquarters in Dana Point, California, during
