ØRN

ØRN came to Great Slave Lake via Vancouver, on a truck to Hay River Northwest Territories in July 2005. Prior to that her home port was Port Townsend, Washington, where she had undergone an extensive rebuild under the direction and ownership of Laingdon Schmitt. Laingdon owned the vessel since the late 1990’s when he purchased her from Lance Schoenberger of the San Francisco Bay area and the Master Mariners club there.

ØRN was built in 1924 at Skovshoved, Denmark, just north of Copenhagen, by the V.H. Nielsen shipyard. Evidently the name at launch was NEPTUN. The current owners, the Olesen family, who live on the far northeast end of Great Slave Lake at Hoarfrost River, travelled to Denmark in 2014 and at Skovshoved met and talked with Peter Nielsen, whose grandfather built ØRN.

ØRN sails in the far northeast bay of the deepest and fifth-largest lake in North America, Great Slave Lake. She has been in the far north for 11 winters, and has wintered in the ice for 10, and one year out of the lake. In the winter of 2016-17 she will winter at a haulout site on the wilderness shoreline just west of the Olesen homestead.