Solo Northwest Passage sailor makes stop in Nome

By Ariana Crockett O’Harra

Tamara Klink, 28, a Brazilian sailor famous for her solo sailing adventures, and her boat, the 34-foot Sardinha 2, stopped in Nome last Thursday after completing the Northwest Passage before heading south to overwinter her boat in Kodiak or Homer.

Klink began her journey in Lorient, France this summer.

The prior year, she had overwintered in the ice in Greenland for eight months. She said that when her overwinter in Greenland drew to a close in 2024, she was not ready to leave the North.

“I did not want to leave the Arctic anymore, and I wanted to find how were the other parts of Arctic alike, and how were the other cultures on the way and how is it being transformed by climate change,” she said.

So, she set out to sail the Northwest Passage this year.

“I left Greenland on the end of July this year, and then I sailed through Canada by Nunavut,” she said. After stopping in Tuktoyaktuk, she kept on sailing to Nome without stopping.

While enroute to Nome, she says she was surprised by how little ice there was. “I just saw what probably everybody in Alaska has been living and seeing and having to adapt to for the last 50 years.”

Near Point Barrow, Klink’s boat was boarded by an unexpected visitor. When boats sailing the Northwest Passage wait for a weather window, they will often raft up together for safety. Klink awoke one day to a call from another sailor next door.
“My boat was moving a little bit, but I thought maybe it’s waves, and then the other boat called me on the VHF, ‘Tamara, Tamara, wake up. There’s a bear on your boat.’”
Luckily, Klink was able to scare the polar bear off her boat by starting the engine. The bear created the only technical problem she experienced – it managed to tear a hole in the bag containing her life raft.
“He opened it. It was the only issue I had on the trip, which is very good,” she said.

After Point Barrow, Klink sailed south towards Nome, completing the Northwest Passage in about 45 days. She stopped in Nome briefly, visiting the Rec Center to make use of the showers before continuing towards False Pass.

Klink’s first solo trip, a 2020 voyage from Norway to France across the North Sea in the 26-foot Sardinha, had many challenges.
“It had many problems in the engine, in the mast, in many areas, but at the same time being able to start with a small object gives you the freedom to make mistakes,” she said. Klink said that the same problems on a larger boat would have been more money to repair. She initially purchased the original Sardinha for “the price of a bicycle.”

Klink studied boat architecture at ENSA Nantes, in Nantes, France.

Klink’s father, Amyr Klink, is a sailor famous for his 1999 solo circumnavigation of Antarctica, but she says that when she asked him for help, he told her that she had to learn do it on her own.
“When I asked him if he could teach me or help me to have my own boat, he said, ‘No,’” she recalled. “He said, the help I will give you is to not give you any help. Okay? Because if you want to be a sailor, you have to do it by yourself. You have to make your own boat, build your own path, build your own story.”

In 2021, she again set sail from Lorient, France, to Paraty, Brazil, when she became the youngest Brazilian to cross the Atlantic solo. When she finished the trip, she was surprised at the reception she received from fans and people online.
“I was so overwhelmed by the reception of like how the trip was seen by the people that I did not know,” she said. She said that people viewing her as courageous was confusing, as she felt no different about who she was when she started the trip.
“Everybody saw me different because they said, ‘Oh, you’re so brave.’ But to me, I was like, so scared all the time,” she said.
“It was the fear that guided me,” she said. “The fear that woke me up when I had to wake up. It was the fear that obliged me to check my lines very often, and to reef the sails when there was a storm, and to take water out of the boat.”
“I thought, well, maybe I need to find a way to find out who I am, and I thought that spending a winter in the ice was a way to navigate,” she said. “But instead of navigating through a distance, I would navigate through time and through the seasons.”

This inspired her to attempt overwintering in the sea ice in Greenland, with her current boat, Sardinha 2. She spent eight months in the ice over the winter of 2023/24.
Klink said that the story of Ada Blackjack, the Inupiaq woman who was the sole survivor of an expedition to Wrangel Island, was part of what inspired her to spend eight months solo anchored in the ice in Disko Bay in Greenland.
“This story was always in the back of my mind,” she said. “As a question that I need to solve, is it necessary for a person like me or a woman to have someone else, or can we be autonomous alone, and can we find perhaps happiness alone? And some kind of freedom?”

The solo aspect of the trip was also a way to test the limits of human autonomy.
“I wanted to find out what was the minimum necessary to be happy in autonomy,” she said. “What is the minimum necessary in terms of warmth, in terms of pleasure, in terms of water and food and energy?”

Klink says that she chose food based on how little packaging it had, and when she was done with her meal, she would break down the packaging, whether it was a can or wrapper, into the smallest space possible. By the end of winter, she had a nearly perfect cube of trash to throw away.

The one food she is very careful to ration for herself is chocolate. Klink says she has stashes all around her boat so she never runs out.

One of her challenges in preparing for her overwinter experience was making Sardinha 2 as simple as possible. There is no toilet or shower. “Everything is super simple now, and I use very little energy,” she said. “I prefer using a bucket just to free my mind for potentially water coming inside from the toilet.”

During the winter, the ice would occasionally go through a freeze-thaw cycle. “I spent about eight months in the ice with some breakups and build ups again, of the ice in the middle, which was like the most stressful and dangerous part,” she said.
The closest community to where Klink was moored was Ilulissat. “If I had a problem when the sea was frozen, I would have to walk for at least six days through the mountains,” she said.

Klink says that her time in the ice last winter, where the challenge is not navigating through space but through time and seasons, reminds her of Nome.

“[That] is pretty much what you live here, even if you stay in the same place here in Nome, it’s always changing. It’s changing a lot, and you have to adapt to it,” she said.

Klink says that part of the excitement of traveling is being invited into and getting to experience different cultures.
“Especially when you’re sailing, not all the borders are open to everybody, and when we have the chance to be invited and feel welcomed, it’s something very, very valuable. So thank you very much for inviting me,” she said.

Those interested in Klink’s travels can find her online at tamaraklink.com.