Something Worth Doing: The Sub-Arctic Voyage of Aqua Star
by By Chopra, Judith Wright
Category: Sports & Recreation , Boating

On May 18, 1985, pursued by a heavy spring rain, Leslie Sike's meticulously crafted steel cutter, Aqua Star, slipped out of Toronto's harbor on the first leg of the voyage to Churchill, Manitoba, on the western shore of the treacherous Hudson Bay. Sike, an adventurer with a yearning to make the record books, had discovered that since Hudson himself, only oceangoing tankers and fishing trawlers had plowed through the bay's wind-whipped and iceberg-studded expanses. He vowed to be the first to sail across the bay, and so began Aqua Star's sub-Arctic adventure.Sike and his wife, Carolann, whose sailing experiences went no further than dinghy lessons on Calgary's Glenmore Reservoir and correspondence courses on navigation, dedicated all of their energy and resources to making their unlikely dream come true. As Sike completed the building of the 41-foot steel yacht, Carolann set out to attract media attention and sponsorship. They found an eager crew in Gay Currie, an experienced sailor who signed on as cook, and David Farr, a nonsailor who undertook to photograph the voyage.For the outdoor enthusiast, Something Worth Doing is an exciting and unusually candid adventure story that records, in the sailors' own words, their exceptional journey, and captures, in vivid full-color photographs, the remote beauty of northern Canada.