This is our third boat named 'Gjoa'. Our first 'Gjoa' was originally named ‘Asma’ and was built by Dubbel & Jesse in Norderney, Germany, in 1989, specifically for a circumnavigation of the Americas by Clark Stede, a journalist and photographer. Published in 1994, Rund Amerika: Die erste Umseglung des amerikanischen Kontinents’ (only in German) documents his successful voyage along with Michelle Poncini.
After ‘Asma’ she became ‘Taonui’. As ‘Taonui’, she provided sixteen years and 100,000 miles of adventures for her owners Tony and Coryn Gooch, including visits to Antarctica, South Georgia and a single-handed, solo, non-stop circumnavigation in 2002/3.
We purchased the boat specifically for high latitude work as we were contemplating a North West Passage attempt. We'd long been admirers of Roald Amundsen, the famed Norwegian explorer who was first through the North West Passage, in 1903-1906, aboard ‘Gjøa’. His boat was named for the wife of the original owner/builder. There is a Kindle edition, in two volumes, of Amundsen's original account of this first transit "The North-West Passage" Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship Gjøa 1903-1907. It's an excellent read and highly recommended. Also recommended is a very good biography of Amundsen: The Last Viking: The Life of Roald Amundsen by Stephen R. Bown, 2013.
We wanted to make that historic link to Canada, Norway, Amundsen and the North West Passage and chose to rename our new boat 'Gjoa'. As a Canadian boat, we weren’t able to register the proper Norwegian spelling (the ø character doesn't exist in the English alphabet), so it is Gjoa. We hoped we wouldn't be offending any Norwegians with the English spelling, but, thought 'how many Norwegians will we be meeting in our travels anyway?' and weren't too bothered. As it turned out, we met a whole boatload of them on our very first voyage. The first words out of their mouths were 'you forgot the / on the o ' !!!
The correct pronunciation of the name is something like 'you-ah', but, we tend to say 'yo-ah' as it's closer to how it looks in English.
For further background on the original Gjøa see her wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gj%C3%B8a
We visited the original Gjøa at the Maritime Museum in Oslo in 2011. Unfortunately, she was still under a tarpaulin at that time. Our understanding is that she is now displayed properly indoors, along with Fram.
We purchased the boat specifically for high latitude work as we were contemplating a North West Passage attempt. We'd long been admirers of Roald Amundsen, the famed Norwegian explorer who was first through the North West Passage, in 1903-1906, aboard ‘Gjøa’. His boat was named for the wife of the original owner/builder. There is a Kindle edition, in two volumes, of Amundsen's original account of this first transit "The North-West Passage" Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship Gjøa 1903-1907. It's an excellent read and highly recommended. Also recommended is a very good biography of Amundsen: The Last Viking: The Life of Roald Amundsen by Stephen R. Bown, 2013.
The correct pronunciation of the name is something like 'you-ah', but, we tend to say 'yo-ah' as it's closer to how it looks in English.
For further background on the original Gjøa see her wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gj%C3%B8a
We visited the original Gjøa at the Maritime Museum in Oslo in 2011. Unfortunately, she was still under a tarpaulin at that time. Our understanding is that she is now displayed properly indoors, along with Fram.
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| The original Gjøa at the Maritime Museum in Oslo. |
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| The original Gjøa at the Maritime Museum in Oslo. |
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