Swiss yachtsman accused of sleeping in hotel during Northwest Passage ‘record’

The Franco-Swiss sailor Yvan Bourgnon has appeared before a Paris court, amid claims that he cheated and exaggerated during his record-breaking solo sail along the Northwest Passage.

Bourgnon attracted media attention after making the arduous 71-day crossing in 2017, with intrepid tales of fighting off polar bears and battling sub-zero temperatures as he made the crossing alone on a small catamaran sailboat without a motor and without help.

However, a lawsuit now rumbling through the French courts, revolving around a dispute over a documentary, alleges that the adventurer actually spent numerous nights in a hotel in the Canadian Arctic, received assistance from other seafarers, and was even towed by a motorboat during parts of the ‘record-breaking’ passage.

Doubts were cast on Bourgnan’s claims one year after he returned. A media story published by German outlet NZZ in 2018 claims that Dutch boat towed Bourgnon for over 150 kilometres, and gave him onboard shelter and food for six days during a period of inclement weather.

The story also features quotes from a sailor who claims she supplied Bourgnon with an anchor chain, and that he asked her to keep it a secret.

Bourgnon has strongly denied receiving any assistance during the voyage. Swiss outlet SWI reports that he told one German sailing magazine he was towed for a couple of hundred metres “on one occasion,” in order to leave a bay.

The Times reports that the documentary production company, which had fitted six cameras to Bourgnon’s yacht during the voyage, has told the court that the footage failed to capture evidence of some of Bourgnon’s most extreme tales, including that he fought off a polar bear with a gunshot after it boarded his catamaran.

While it’s reported the sailor has previously insisted that he spent the entire trip solely onboard his catamaran, Bourgnon is brushing off the allegations by denying he claimed to have broken any records.

“I slept in a hotel. So what?” Bourgnon told the French newspaper, Le Figaro, according to The Times. “Should I have abandoned [the adventure]?”

Bourgnon is the chairman and founder of environmental charity the Sea Cleaners. His profile on the charity’s website states that “he is the “holder of several world records”, and that he has “pushed sailing to the extreme by embarking on a series of unprecedented solo adventures on his uninhabitable catamaran, without instruments and without assistance, including … the Northwest Passage linking Greenland to Alaska in 2017.

“These exploits were unanimously acclaimed throughout the world.”

The court decision is reportedly expected on 6 December 2022.