When we first conceived the idea to head to East Greenland and explore the journeys undertaken by the BAARE, we had to consider multiple objectives, just as they did in 1930.

Firstly, we wanted to be able to undertake the same small boat journeys along the forbidding coastline in the region BAARE surveyed. Doing this in a large, modern expedition yacht came with its own problems, restricted where we could go and created complex crew demands.

We needed to be flexible, fast, safe in ice, able to come ashore in remote fjords, yet still have the size and capacity to carry kayaks, our camping and climbing equipment, and of course, all our film gear and power supplies.

Intro Minicat. We’d first seen these as small, sailing tenders on large yachts, mostly in warm climates. But immediately, we saw these as the consummate expedition platform that offered all the attributes listed above, and provided an almost perfect remote region expedition platform; that can be sailed, powered with a small outboard or rowed and paddled.

Here was a boat platform, large enough to accommodate several crew, all the gear we needed, and, can be broken down into manageable bag sizes to carry on commercial flights, loaded into helicopter ski baskets or even hauled on a dog sled!
We had to try one!

Minicat immediately got behind our ambitious plan to use these boats as our main means of summer transport in East Greenland. Soon we had a demo boat sent to us in Lapland, just as the first bite of winter arrived.

Two simple bags, about the size of two large ski bags. It did not seem much, and it also initially felt that perhaps placing so much reliance on the contents to undertake such a commiting and risky venture into the ice-filled Arctic waters of Greenland may be a little over optimistic!

We opened those bags for the first time with more than a little trepidation.

It took only a few moments though, handling the first components of our demo Minicat for the first time to realise that we were dealing with something substantial and of a quality that maybe, just maybe, was in fact going to be something we could trust our expedition and lives to.

We had the boat assembled within about 40 mins, probably could have been quicker had we read the instructions, but haste, excitement and confidence in our sailing intuition combined to pretty quickly having a boat before us. A big boat, relative to the two small bags it had just emerged from, one that was clearly smartly designed, solid, simple and so far, exactly what we were looking for as an expedition platform.

Pontoons and a frame not unlike some of the white water catarafts we’ve used in Alaska, top quality marine hardware we are used to seeing on bigger vessels we sail and an obvious high quality of all the rigging, fittings, rudder, and sails.

This looked like something that could handle some abuse, and abuse is exactly what we had no doubt it would experience in a place like East Greenland.

This all sounds a bit like an outright plug for Minicat but trust us when we say we opened this thing up with the intent to find its flaws, the things that would say to us this was a bad idea for such an ambitious plan, but so far so good.

Soon we had drysuits on, with several layers underneath and in a rising wind, horizontal snow and an air temp about -4C, we launched into our Lapland lake, all with the overall question, was this thing even going to be a realistic option to sail on a multi month expedition in Greenland?

Pretty soon we had it skimming, with spray flying, the rigging freezing and even tried pretty hard to bury it in some waves and rock it on its side…

I should point out that all of us are seasoned sailors in everything from 49er skiffs to large offshore race yachts… we all know how to sail, but none with any experience sailing a multihull! I’d say it took about only an hour to feel fully confident on this platform, in what was some pretty “rugged” conditions, and probably neither conditions or sailed quite as the manufacturers had intended. It’s fair to say we quite abused our demo boat right out of the bag!

We will be taking two Minicats to East Greenland this Summer. Before then, in May, we will sail both across the Arctic Circle in Norway as a test sail and to streamline our full expedition setup.

Regular updates on progress will be posted on our social media sites and in greater detail here. Hope you can enjoy and follow the journeys!

In the meantime, learn more about Minicat at www.minicatamaran.eu or follow the link from the Partners & Supporters page on this site.