PORT ANGELES — The North Olympic Library System will offer a free screening of the documentary film “The New Northwest Passage” at the Clallam Bay Library.

The Clallam Bay Library, 16990 state Highway 112, will show the film at 1 p.m. Saturday (July 11).

The film was seen last month at the Sequim and Port Angeles libraries.

Since the discovery of the New World, the Northwest Passage has been an elusive dream for explorers and mariners seeking a shortcut between Europe and Asia.

For centuries it remained an unattainable prize, luring men hungry for fame and fortune to sail north.

Their wooden sailing ships were crushed in the ice, leaving few clues to the suffering of their men.

Until now.

Climate change is causing temperatures in the Arctic to rise twice as fast as elsewhere on the globe.

The ice is melting, but the Northwest Passage remains an epic yachting challenge, attained by fewer people than have climbed Mount Everest.

“The New Northwest Passage” tells a tale of adventure as the crew of the 40-foot yacht Silent Sound pit their skills against this historic challenge.

Storms, deadly ice and mechanical failure threaten their progress through a harsh but beautiful corner of the earth.

The crew hunt caribou with three-generations of an Inuit family, and learn about challenges facing this way of life from an old woman skinning seals on the beach.

They follow field scientists testing climate change theories on an Arctic island.

Filmmaker Cameron Dueck grew up in a Mennonite family on a remote turkey farm in the Canadian Prairies.

He practiced journalism in Chicago and sailing on Lake Michigan before moving to New York City.

His next step was to join Reuters as a correspondent in Singapore.

Cameron eventually quit that job and jumped aboard a yacht to sail from Thailand to the Mediterranean, dodging pirates off the coast of Yemen and braving dust storms on the Red Sea.

He earned a Royal Yachting Association offshore yacht master qualification before setting off across the Atlantic Ocean.

Cameron lives in Hong Kong, where he is researching a book and film about Mennonite culture in the Americas, from Canada to Argentina.