- Yvan Bourgnon broke records with his solo journey across the Arctic Ocean in 2017.
- He is now being accused of spending nights in a hotel and exaggerating about his adventures.
An adventurer who broke records by completing a solo voyage across the Arctic Ocean has been accused of spending nights in a hotel and exaggerating his adventures, The Times of London reported.
Yvan Bourgnon, a 51-year-old Franco-Swiss adventurer, was lauded as a hero after he completed a record-breaking 71-day solo journey along the Northwest Passage in 2017.
He returned with tales of having fought off a polar bear and traversing through icy, cold conditions.
Bourgnon is due to appear in court next week in a dispute over a documentary, where the court will hear allegations that his journey was not as adventurous as he had claimed.
The court is expected to hear allegations that he spent more than a week in a hotel in the Canadian Arctic was towed by a Dutch motorboat for around 90 miles, and received help from other sailors, per The Times.
The documentary production company, which had equipped his yacht with six cameras, is expected to tell the court that the footage did not capture some of Bourgnon's wilder claims, including that a polar bear climbed on board and had to be scared off by a gunshot.
Bourgnon has brushed off the allegations, stating that he never claimed to have broke records with his journey.
"I slept in a hotel. So what?" he told the French newspaper, Le Figaro, according to The Times. "Should I have abandoned [the adventure]?"
The website for the Sea Cleaners charity, of which Borurgnon is chairman and founder, states he is the "holder of several world records. He pushes sailing to the extreme by embarking on a series of unprecedented solo adventures on his uninhabitable catamaran, without instruments and without assistance, including a round-the-world race from 2013 to 2015 and the Northwest Passage linking Greenland to Alaska in 2017.
These exploits were unanimously acclaimed throughout the world."