All language subtitles for The.Polar.Sea.S01E02.720p.WEB.x264-CRiMSON Eng

PINSENT: Last time on
The Polar Sea...

The Arctic has arrived
under the midnight sun

and the great seasonal melt
has begun.

The Northwest Passage has
become the new Everest,

drawing a growing crowd
of unlikely explorers.

RICHARD:
I wouldn't consider
myself adventurous.

PINSENT:
Aboard the tiny ship Dax,

three middle-aged Swedes

have sailed
from Iceland to Greenland

to discover a fusion of
European and Inuit culture

INUNNGUAQ:
Every year it's expanding

with the tourists

and they are coming more
and more and more.

PINSENT:
As scientists explore
the unprecedented warming,

artists worry
about its consequences

while sailors test themselves
on a changing sea.

PINSENT:
The Swedish yacht, Dax,

en route to the
Northwest Passage,

has taken shelter in
the busy port of Ilulissat.

It took 24 days and
some 3,000 kilometers

to reach here from Iceland.

Her captain is 60-year-old
retired salesman,

Martin Sigge.

MARTIN: The only bad thing,
so far is that

we have this problem
with the forestay

which also has cost
a lot of concern and time.

PINSENT: With Martin is
his old army buddy,
Bengt Norvik.

BENGT:
What you have to do now,
is to bring it on the...

The, uh, quay here

to examine it, and to fix it,
and then put it back.

But it's very dirty,

so to speak, up here
so we don't want to have any

sand in the mechanism.

We wrap it in plastic bags
or something

so we can prevent it
from being damaged.

PINSENT: Completing the crew
is Richard Tegner,

the ship's cook and diarist.

We have had
some conflicts aboard

and we have
solved them together

and it feels
very nice now

because it's like maintaining
the things on board,

machines and equipment.

Even relations
have to be maintained.

Hand it here,
the other end of that rope.

Okay.

PINSENT: Martin has been
sailing his whole life.

He has spent the last
18 months preparing
for this voyage.

(SPEAKING SWEDISH)

PINSENT: Dax is one
of more than 30 yachts

that will attempt the
Northwest Passage this summer.

She is moored to one of
them, Libellule,

a Swiss-flagged catamaran.

Libellule is sailed by
Yves German
and Sylvain Martineau,

French sailors from the
storied port of La Rochelle.

They await the family
that owns the ship,

with whom they will challenge
the notorious Passage.

(SYLVAIN SPEAKING FRENCH)

PINSENT:
The Arctic Ocean's ice cap

begins to melt
in mid-March.

Beneath the midnight sun
that shines all summer,

more than 130,000
square kilometers of ice
melt every day.

By mid-July, seven million
square kilometers
of the ice cap,

almost the area of Australia,

have melted.

But passage
through the narrow
channels between

Arctic islands
is still blocked.

Sailors attempting the
passage from the east

gather to wait in Greenland.

If the Northwest Passage
is the new Everest,

Ilulissat is base camp.

Europeans have been traveling
to Greenland for 1,000 years,

but only with global warming
has it become
a tourist hot spot.

Twenty thousand visitors
come to Ilulissat annually

to see its melting glacier
chip ice into the sea.

And for the select few,

that is just the beginning
of the adventure.

Anchored off Ilulissat,
the luxury liner Le Boreal

is taking on passengers bound
for the Northwest Passage.

(MAN AND WOMAN
SPEAKING FRENCH)

(WOMAN SPEAKING FRENCH
OVER PA)

PINSENT:
As they arrive,
groups of passengers

are briefed by
Captain Patrick Marchesseau.

(IN ENGLISH)
Good morning, everybody,

we start with the Greenland.

It will be much more
oriented about culture

so we will go
to different village

and to meet the Inuit.

Don't expect to see
too much wildlife

on the Greenland side.

The second part
of the itinerary,

the Baffin territory,
Nunavut,

then it will be very
oriented about wildlife.

If we have the opportunity
to spot a whale,

if we have the opportunity
to spot a polar bear,

narwhal or bird
or I don't know what...

Uh...

We will stop the ship
and chase

the animal to
give you a good...

MAN:
Uh, captain.
Yes?

We should say
follow the whales, not chase.

PATRICK:
Ah, okay.
Okay, okay, okay.

Okay, okay.
We don't hunt.

Not to worry!

(PATRICK SPEAKING FRENCH)

PINSENT: Boarding Libellule
are the youngest explorers

to sail the Northwest Passage
this year.

(PHILIPP SPEAKING FRENCH)

(WOMEN SPEAKING FRENCH)

PINSENT:
The yacht is owned

by Swiss financier
Philipp Cottier.

(PHILIPP SPEAKING FRENCH)

PINSENT:
His wife, Marielle Donze.

(SPEAKING FRENCH)

PINSENT: And their daughters
Naima, Line, and Anissa.

(SPEAKING GERMAN)

PINSENT:
The family has brought along

professional camera equipment
to record their adventure
for posterity.

(PHILIPP SPEAKING GERMAN)

PINSENT: There's a museum
in Ilulissat

dedicated to the Dane,
Knud Rasmussen,

where Arctic explorers
seek inspiration.

Rasmussen did the
Northwest Passage

on ice by dog team,
helped by Inuit.

He typified the Scandinavian
way of Arctic travel.

The Norwegian explorer,
Roald Amundsen,

also succeeded by hunting
and trading as he went.

Amundsen is
Martin Sigge's hero.

In 1903 he was the first
to sail the passage.

MARTIN:
Amundsen had small
crew, small boat,

that was an old fishing boat
that he converted.

PINSENT: At the time the
approach was revolutionary.

The British naval expeditions,

like John Franklin's in 1845,

always sailed in big ships

loaded down with supplies.

MARTIN: Franklin thought that
he could make it with...

With muscles, so to say.

Sailing up with two warships

equipped to the teeth
with everything.

Franklin was surely
a great guy,

though in
the Northwest Passage,

I think, he had
the wrong approach.

PINSENT:
The European instinct

was to bring
everything from home.

In 1930, the scientist
Alfred Wegener

complained bitterly about
his expedition's luggage.

MAN: (AS ALFRED)
We reckon that we have
2,500 packages to transfer,

a figure which
horrifies everybody.

The total weight?
Just under 100 tons.

PINSENT: Whether
they carried provisions

or hunted to survive,

Arctic explorers
expected to over winter.

They assumed
the Northwest Passage

would take at
least three years.

Today's mariners expect
to be home by summer's end.

(INDISTINCT TALKING)

(SPEAKING FRENCH)

(SPEAKING FRENCH)

RICHARD: I'm not particularly
interested in sailing.

I like to...

To visit places.

Especially places
like the Arctic

because it's like
the end of the world.

Interesting. Very interesting.

This is a

World Heritage,

so it's protected area.

The ice cap further
down the fjord

will release 20 million tons
of ice every day.

Some of
these icebergs, they...

They stay here
in the same position maybe

half a year, or year,

so people here get a sort of
a personal relationship to...

To their iceberg.

PINSENT:
For the tourists
waiting to depart

for the Northwest Passage,

the ice fields
are an attraction

and a playground.

(CRUISE GUIDE SPEAKING FRENCH)

(PHILIPP SPEAKING FRENCH)

(ENGINE REVVING)

Okay.

(IN ENGLISH)
Maybe in this cluster
over here?

PINSENT: Bill Covitz

has come to Greenland
from New York City.

This is the proverbial
candy store for Bill,

who is a
professional sculptor of ice.

BILL: Oh he got it!
This guy's an animal!

PINSENT: Bill is searching
the bergs to find
a particular kind of ice.

BILL: So as you
can see behind us,

we are amongst
a whole ice field here now.

We are searching
each individual piece

trying to look for the
clearest that we can find.

Wefound a really
nice piece here,

best that we've found so far.

PINSENT:
The fluffy white ice

floating above the surface
is relatively young.

Bill is after the
clear, hard, blue ice

that weighs down the bergs.

It can be
as much as 100,000 years old.

And it's the best
for making music.

That's an absolutely
beautiful piece of ice.

It's almost hard to
concentrate on
the small ice around you.

The surroundings are
absolutely beautiful

and the icebergs
that we're passing...

The scene changes
every little bit that we go.

It's a hard place to come to
and concentrate.

We found a piece with a really
long clear stripe in it.

It's the one we are going
to try to drag to shore.

PINSENT: Bill's job is
to carve ice instruments

for the avant-garde
Norwegian musician
Terje Isungset.

Well, hello there!

(LAUGHS)

(TERJE SPEAKING)

(GRUNTS)

Okay.

(TERJE SPEAKING)

Yeah.

Okay.

(TERJE SPEAKING)

Mmm-hmm.

(TERJE SPEAKING)

BILL: That sound that
you're hearing

is all the air bubbles that
my chisel is going through.

Clear ice is 10 times harder
than this is.

My concern now is...

You can hear it,
as my chisel is going through,

hitting those air bubbles
and when I make it thinner,

it's going to get
super fragile.

(MAKING TRUMPET-LIKE SOUNDS)

(HIGH-PITCHED NOISE)

(TERJE SPEAKING)

(HIGH-PITCHED SOUND)

(BLOWING)

PINSENT: Martin's repairs
have made Dax
seaworthy again,

just as satellite reports

show enough ice melted

to allow an approach
to the passage.

MARTIN: It looks good
for Pond Inlet, I think.

The channel is opening up.

It's partly open already.

And it should take

four days over
to Pond Inlet,

unless we have bad luck
with the weather,

but that I don't know enough.

(PHILIPP SPEAKING GERMAN)

(ENGINE STARTING)

RICHARD:
I never felt afraid

because we had
the SAT phone, we had our GPS

and we had
all kinds of things to...

To help us.

But, of course,
getting stuck in the ice

in some isolated place
or just

falling into the water,

that would
be very dramatic and

a very quick death,
I suppose.

PINSENT:
As the adventurers
finally set sail,

the dreamy labyrinth of ice

becomes a
navigation nightmare.

(ELECTRONIC BEEP)

PATRICK: Starboard 20!
MAN: Starboard 20!

MARTIN: One could get
trapped in the pack ice.

We're not going to be able to

act as an ice-breaker,

we're just
going to have to wait.

You have to be so alert
and use all your senses

that you are in the
middle of something

and if you do the wrong thing,

you might...

You might die!

(PATRICK SPEAKING FRENCH)

(CONTINUES SPEAKING FRENCH)

Can you hold it
for one quick second?

Should have the dry ice.

(SCRAPING)

(ICE VIBRATING)

(VIBRATIONS ECHOING)

PINSENT: The ships sail
north and west for Canada.

It's a centuries-old route

through the Baffin Bay
ice pack

that bedeviled captains
in colder times.

In 1824,

the Briton
William Edward Parry

spent two months weaving,
pushing and chopping

his way through the pack.

Dax makes the journey
in a mere four days.

But she's no
sooner at sea

before her crew is struggling
with bad morale
in close quarters.

RICHARD:
Being on board the Dax,
it was not at all pleasant.

He was...

He pointed out

even small things.

MARTIN: We have decided
to have a little meeting
every day

and bring up all small
things on the table

immediately before
they get big things.

So if I feel that
you shouldn't

be putting your wet towel
on that place all the time,

then we're going
to talk about that.
"Let's not do that".

RICHARD: After a while
I got really pissed off
with this and I...

I...

We got into
a real conflict.

I told him,
"You have to stop doing this
because it's...

"I can't go anywhere
on this boat

"and it's not pleasant."

And he got...

He got really pissed with me,
I suppose,

because I raised my voice
and, um...

But I felt I had to

define the limit.

I wonder how

can anybody work
as an astronaut

being in a space shuttle
for half a year or even more

and deal with each other.

No matter how much you
train, you're...

It's amazing.

I mean...

And thinking about
these old expeditions,

like Amundsen and Franklin.

Franklin, they were 128
men on board...

Wow.

It's amazing that people can

go on and deal
with the problems.

(ENGINE CLICKING)

(SPEAKING FRENCH)

(ALARM BEEPING)
Ah!

(INDISTINCT TALKING)

(INDISTINCT CHATTERING)

(GALA HOST SPEAKING FRENCH)

(PATRICK SPEAKING FRENCH)

(MARIELLE SPEAKING FRENCH)

(SYLVAIN SPEAKING FRENCH)

RICHARD: I felt a bit lonely
on the boat.

On the other hand,
it sort of pushed me to, uh...

To think more and, uh,

I wrote a lot.

I wrote a lot about
my reflections and thoughts

and to my own surprise,

I composed a song.

I have never done that before

and it just came naturally

and it was...

It was a very nice experience

since we had this
little mini guitar on board

and I could strike some cords

and create a little melody
and the text

which I called Waltz...

Waltz in Baffin Bay.

Entering Canada,

the weather was kind of
a little bit rough,

and it was very cold
and windy

and really Arctic
feeling about it.

We came out of the fog

and we saw
this fantastic nature

which, in a way,
was welcoming us.

I think that's a really happy
moment for me.

(PLAYING FOLK MUSIC)

RICHARD:
# The sun it shines
on Baffin Bay

# There goes Upernavik

# Our jib is filled
the northern wind

# We're greeting Canada

# The sun it shines
on Baffin Bay

# My turn is over now

# Our course is straight on
westward ho!

# Say hello to Canada #

PINSENT: Canada greets
the modern explorers

with the cliffs
of Baffin Island,

and it's just
as their captain promised,

wildlife abounds.

They are finally at the gates
of the Northwest Passage,

entering the most beautiful,

and savage,
wilderness on Earth.

(SEALS SQUAWKING)

(ROARS)

ALL: Whoa!

(MARIELLE SPEAKING FRENCH)