Austrians Doris Renoldner and Wolfgang Slanec have sailed around the world twice, on the Barefoot Route and around Cape Horn, 15 years in total. They travelled to dozens of countries and logged thousands and thousands of nautical miles. And they didn't stop there.
With their Ovni 41 "Nomad", the two Austrians set off again from the Mediterranean in 2012 to travel the world. After years in the tropics, they are now tempted by the high latitudes. They will sail via Newfoundland and Labrador to Greenland and finally through the Northwest Passage via Alaska to the Pacific. Not non-stop, but in stages. In the meantime, they return to Austria, where the two have become better known as "sea nomads" than almost any other pair of circumnavigators.
Over the past 33 years, they have repeatedly made audiences dream, marvel and sail away during breaks from travelling. Now, for the first time in three years, the couple are back on stage in Germany.
In the live show "Northwest Passage - from Greenland to Alaska", they talk about their sailing adventure through the Arctic and the Arctic Ocean. The journey took two summers, passing icebergs, glaciers, fjords, unclimbed mountains, historically significant places and remote Inuit villages.
How does it feel to navigate through the pack ice in the fog? To forgo the much-anticipated shore leave because polar bears are waiting there? What goes through your mind when the sea suddenly becomes your enemy? When the water temperature is hovering around freezing point and any fall overboard would be fatal? What motivation drives you into this wilderness?
The circumnavigators will answer these and many other questions during their live show on Tuesday, 15 February 2022, in Freiburg im Breisgau. Information and tickets can be found on their website and at the organiser (click).
The video trailer for the cruise and lecture
Even if you can't experience the two thoroughbred adventurers in person, you don't have to miss out on the adventure report: Renoldner and Slanec's richly illustrated book "Hart wie das Eis - unter Segeln durch die Nordwestpassage" (Hard as the Ice - Sailing through the Northwest Passage) is now available. at Delius Klasing as e-book available. An icy read for a cosy evening at home or on board.
