"Here is high adventure in the high Arctic with the youngest conqueror of the Northwest passage. Jeff MacInnis has earned a pride of place alongside such worthy adventurers as Roald Amundsen and Jacques Cousteau."

- Peter C. Newman

"... it is important to emphasize that (Jeff MacInnis and Mike Beedell) did something that has never been done before."

- Pierre Berton
 
  From the Random House book Polar Passage:
  
This is the astounding personal account of history’s first sail-powered transit through Canada’s treacherous 4,000 km-long Northwest Passage. Starting in July 1986 at Inuvik at the mouth of the Mackenzie River, and ending in August 1988 at Pond Inlet on Baffin Bay,
  Jeff MacInnis, the 26-year-old son of deep-sea diver and explorer Dr. Joe MacInnis, and photographer Mike Beedell journeyed on a course that succeeded where so many had failed. In fact, no one has made such an attempt since Sir John Franklin’s 129-man expedition vanished without a trace in 1845.

MacInnis and Beedell staked their survival in the brutal environment of the high Arctic on hi-tech diving suits and mountaineering gear. Their vessel, PERCEPTION - was an improbable as their accomplishment - a specially-strengthened 18-foot, 450-pound Hobie catamaran. They pushed, hauled, and sailed their tiny boat through extremes of emotion, fatigue, and weather; battling sea conditions that would have threatened a fully-found yacht three times the size of PERCEPTION. Danger was always imminent: a prowling grizzly, blizzards, impenetrable fog, a sudden squall, and the inherent risk of sailing through 15-foot seas in subzero temperatures. And the beauty of the untouched Arctic was in part their payoff: drifting through towering glaciers, and reaching stunning waters that hold the world’s largest populations of whales, walrus and seals.

Polar Passage is the unforgettable story of how two men triumphed against incredible odds and the most severe tests of physical and mental endurance to fulfill one of history’s long-standing dreams.

From Polar Passage:
The wind had reached a howling 70 km/h, blasting snow at us almost horizontally. Together we lifted the bucking tent out of the rising water and fought it over to the boat and onto the tramp. While Mike struggled to lash it in place with the ice-stiffened ropes, I began loading gear back inside to weigh it down. It seemed to work, and the tent and our gear appeared to be safe, for the moment. But what were we to do now? We had no clear idea how far we were from land; certainly we couldn’t see it in the darkness, fog and swirling snow. Worse, the postage stamp of ice we were on was already awash and was being blown slowly but surely out in the open water of the sound, where the storm was at its full fury and where it would be impossible for us to survive for long. In that moment it occurred to me that we were experiencing the worst-case scenario; being blown offshore in a gale with no way of getting back. It was something we had decided must be avoided at all cost, because the consequences would in all likelihood be fatal.