<P> On July 18, 2003, a father - and - son team, Richard and Andrew Wood, with Zoe Birchenough, sailed the yacht Norwegian Blue into the Bering Strait . Two months later she sailed into the Davis Strait to become the first British yacht to transit the Northwest Passage from west to east . She also became the only British vessel to complete the Northwest Passage in one season, as well as the only British sailing yacht to return from there to British waters . </P> <P> In 2006 a scheduled cruise liner (the MS Bremen) successfully ran the Northwest Passage, helped by satellite images telling the location of sea ice . </P> <P> On May 19, 2007, a French sailor, Sébastien Roubinet, and one other crew member left Anchorage, Alaska, in Babouche, a 7.5 - metre (25 ft) ice catamaran designed to sail on water and slide over ice . The goal was to navigate west to east through the Northwest Passage by sail only . Following a journey of more than 7,200 km (4,474 mi), Roubinet reached Greenland on September 9, 2007, thereby completing the first Northwest Passage voyage made in one season without engine . </P> <P> In April 2009, planetary scientist Pascal Lee and a team of four on the Northwest Passage Drive Expedition drove the HMP Okarian Humvee rover a record - setting 496 km (308 mi) on sea - ice from Kugluktuk to Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, the longest distance driven on sea - ice in a road vehicle . The HMP Okarian was being ferried from the North American mainland to the Haughton--Mars Project (HMP) Research Station on Devon Island, where it would be used as a simulator of future pressurized rovers for astronauts on the Moon and Mars . The HMP Okarian was eventually flown from Cambridge Bay to Resolute Bay in May 2009, and then driven again on sea - ice by Lee and a team of five from Resolute to the West coast of Devon Island in May 2010 . The HMP Okarian reached the HMP Research Station in July 2011 . The Northwest Passage Drive Expedition is captured in the motion picture documentary film Passage To Mars (2016). </P>

Where did the explorers think the northwest passage was