In Gjoa Haven harbor, my new French friends raised me in a bosun's chair, then hauled the sails--sheer bliss. Olivier Pitras is smiling up at me from the cockpit below. I would meet him again (a year later) after our journeys in a cafe in Paris, and during the unspoken pauses, it was clear to see that nothing else in our lives offered the possibilities and the joy that we had each found while crossing the Northwest Passage.   It was inexplicable good luck for me to hitch a ride across Rae Strait on the Ocean Search, the first schooner to cross the Northwest Passage in a decade. Paddling across the Rae Strait's 14 mile stretch of open water and treacherous currents--in such a recalcitrant and windy summer--had kept me awake many nights. Without this ride, I might have been tempted to try something foolish.