Three Alberta sailors have successfully completed their attempt to sail around the world.
On June 25 at 10:27 p.m. Alaska time, captain Ben Gray and his sons Brad and Kevin arrived at the spot in the Bering Strait where they had officially begun their circumnavigation attempt 11 months earlier.
In May of 2005, the Grays left their home in Dunvegan on the Peace River in northern Alberta on their 17-metre boat Idlewild.
After sailing through a network of northern rivers and lakes to the Arctic Ocean, they sailed west to the Diomede Islands in the Bering Strait. On July 31 they turned around and headed east through the Arctic and eventually the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans.
“It has been a long and exciting trip back here,” Gray wrote in an e-mail after returning to their starting point in the Bering Strait.
But their trip isn’t over yet. They will now spend the next month and a half leisurely cruising to Vancouver.
