A French couple are refitting their 50-foot sailboat on the Portland waterfront as they prepare to launch a new business offering expeditions to Greenland.

Nolwenn and Pauline Chauché, who live on the boat, are taking advantage of the growing international interest in the Arctic among both scientists and the public. While Greenland is the focus, they eventually plan to offer trips in the polar regions near Canada and Russia.

“Our playground is the whole of the Arctic,” said Nolwenn Chauché, who spent five years as captain of a research vessel operating in the waters off Greenland.

The two plan to depart for Greenland on Thursday and are looking for paying passengers to join them on the two-week journey.

The Chauchés are spending as much as $30,000 refitting their two-masted, steel-hulled boat at Portland Yacht Services, located adjacent to the International Marine Terminal. The couple say Portland offers expertise in vessel maintenance and repair and also logistical support. They noted that the Icelandic shipping company Eimskip, located next to the boatyard, can ship customers’ supplies and scientific equipment to Greenland. The company delivers cargo from Portland to Greenland via Iceland.

“Logistics in the Arctic is a headache for everyone,” Nolwenn Chauché said.

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Their decision to overhaul their vessel in Portland is an example of how businesses here can benefit from the port’s new identity as a gateway to the high latitudes of the North Atlantic, said Phineas Sprague Jr., owner of Portland Yacht Services. Maine’s geographical position as the closest U.S. eastern state to the Arctic gives it an advantage as business opportunities open up in the region, according to Sprague.

“It’s a new frontier and opportunity for Maine and Portland,” he said.

SAILBOAT WILL CARRY COLLEGE STUDENTS

Workers at the yard are currently refitting another sailboat, the 95-foot steel-hulled schooner Westward. Sprague, who owns the boat, plans to use it to bring college students from the United States to Greenland, starting in 2016.

In addition to refitting two Arctic-bound boats, Sprague’s yard is now preparing a sailboat to be shipped on an Eimskip vessel to the Faroe Islands, an archipelago located halfway between Norway and Iceland. His staff has removed the masts and is placing the boat on a wooden crib. The boat will be lifted onto the ship on a flat-rack container. This is the third sailboat the yard has prepared for shipment to Europe since Eimskip arrived here two years ago.

The Chauchés’ business, Access Arctic Ltd., is booking six tours this summer, with each tour lasting from 10 to 14 days. A 14-day tour of Greenland’s Disko Bay, where glaciers can be seen calving into the sea, costs $3,700, not including airfare to Greenland, where the tours will start.

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The company’s website. www.accessarctic.com, is mostly in French, and all of the customers who have booked for this summer are from Europe. The Chauchés are now translating the website and hope to get customers from North America for their Greenland tour. The site currently has a map showing Europeans two places where they can board a tour: Aasiaat, a town in Greenland with a landing strip and 3,100 residents, and Portland, where they would sail from.

No one has signed up yet for the Portland-to-Greenland trip, which costs $2,400. That trip is mostly over open water, although there will be some time to visit glaciers and remote settlements if the sailing is good, Nolwenn Chauché said.

The couple are also lining up scientific expeditions just for researchers.

Their sailboat, Ivilia (named after a Basque goddess from pre-Roman time), has four two-person cabins, so there’s room for six passengers in addition to the Chauchés, who live on board year-round.

LONGTIME SAILOR AND RESEARCHER

Nolwenn Chauché, 28, is deeply familiar with the boat. He lived aboard it between the ages of 12 and 19 with his family as they sailed through much of the Atlantic, including the waters of West Africa, the Caribbean and South America. He later spent a year on board a cruising sailboat in Patagonia and Antarctica.

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Beginning in 2009, he worked as skipper of the sailboat Gambo, which carried researchers to western Greenland to study the interaction between glaciers and the ocean. Also he purposely lived on a boat for one winter while it was trapped in Arctic sea ice. His own research allowed him to complete a Ph.D. in oceanographic glaciology for the University of Wales.

He said he doesn’t want to serve as tour guide. Rather, he wants to educate people about the science of glaciers and the Arctic environment. He said a small boat allows people to visit remote villages without overwhelming village life, which is what happens when cruise ships stop at ports in Greenland.

Pauline Chauché, who grew up on a farm in the Burgundy region of France, has a master’s degree in climatology. She and Nolwenn met in Paris in 2010, and she later joined him on a 15-month Arctic expedition on the Gambo, working as his first mate. They married in Burgundy last July.

The couple this spring sailed to Portland from Trinidad, located off the coast of Venezuela. In Trinidad, they installed new sails and bedding. In Portland, they are installing a new 65-horsepower engine, new electronics and safety equipment, and repainting the hull.

They have been planning this business venture for months and are excited that the final leg of their journey to Greenland will begin this week.

“We made the dream,” Nolwenn Chauché said. “And we are trying to make it a reality now.”

 


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