from the other answers i guess this is common knowledge, but i didn't know about it - this article (first google hit for "brilliant earth scam") includes details of the cease and desist brought against him.
IANA sailor, but if I understand correctly you can sail against the wind. Also, the Vikings were island hopping via at least Iceland and Greenland before reaching Canada (Leiv Eiriksson started from Greenland, but of course they needed to make it across the North Atlantic to discover and settle Iceland and Greenland first). Looking at this wind map the wind while I'm writing this is crosswind (an awfully cold one from the Arctic) from over to Iceland, then you'd have the wind more or less at your back over to and down the coast of Greenland, same from Greenland over to Canada.
And I guess it is sort of an after the loop question, just an awfully long time after the loop...
Well, this kind of thing continually happens. That's why things like Pixelfed (and a live site here) will be the future. Decentralized tech is the only way to ensure you won't get screwed -- its always only going to be a matter of time before anything centralized gets corrupted or pressured into something.
ActivityPub and the Fediverse are the only sane options for this kind of thing.