Canadian immigration officials decided Thursday to deport two members of the Norwegian Wild Vikings, after their captain admitted to hiding a crew member from RCMP in two Nunavut communities.

Wild Vikings captain Jarle Andhoy and fellow adventurer Jeffrey Kane were ordered deported by Immigration Canada officials at a hearing Thursday in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut.

Wild Vikings captain Jarle Andhoy, who appeared at an immigration hearing Thursday in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, said he didn't feel he had to register his crew with officials.
(Matthew Illaszewicz/CBC)

The Wild Vikings — a five-man crew best known for their wild antics at sea, as documented on Norwegian television — had been trying to sail through the Northwest Passage on Andhoy's sailboat, the Beserk II.

RCMP arrested them in the western Nunavut hamlet on Aug. 24 while disembarking the Beserk II, after they failed to register their presence in Cambridge Bay and Gjoa Haven.

But Andhoy, 29, told CBC News Thursday that he did not feel they had to register.

"We are not here to visit Canada. We are here to do a transit to the Pacific," Andhoy said. "We're sailing the Northwest Passage and as far as I'm concerned the Northwest Passage is international."

An immigration official at Thursday's hearing concluded that Andhoy had misled RCMP in Nunavut about his crew, as he was hiding a member who had been ordered deported when the Wild Vikings stopped in Halifax earlier this year.

Canadian officials had found that crew member, along with another, to be a Norwegian associate of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang.

Andhoy then sailed to Greenland, where he picked up the deported crew member and began sailing through the Northwest Passage. Andhoy admitted that he dropped off the illegal member on land before arriving at Gjoa Haven and Cambridge Bay.

"I wanted to avoid a confrontation," he said. "That didn't really work out."

But Kane, who plans to fly back to his home in the U.S., said Andhoy should have registered the Wild Vikings crew with immigration officials.

"I think it was a major error on the captain's part," Kane said. "I'm a captain myself and I do not make those mistakes."

The remaining three crew members are scheduled to appear at immigration hearings Friday in Cambridge Bay.

Immigration officials say Andhoy also did not disclose an illegal handgun to police. An official with the Canada Border Services Agency says criminal charges are pending.