Latest News
Voyage nearly at an end
30 Aug 2011
The Crew stand proudly by the 'Old Pulteney'
The crew approach the final stages of the trip and dream of home comforts.
To get from landfall to the extraction point, where a plane could collect the crew, many miles of hiking over rough terrain were needed. To make matters worse, due to the amount of kit, the hike would have to be done twice...
Watch this video to hear about the hardships of trekking over through the high Arctic.
The end is in sight
25 Aug 2011
The crew push closer to their goal as they are blessed with good weather at last.
Culmination of a Dream
25 Aug 2011
Another report from Jock with 6 miles to go. The real countdown begins!
Jock reflects on the wider journey with 18 miles to go.
50 miles to go, lets row
24 Aug 2011
Crew considers ice conditions and goes for it...
Jock and the crew review latest ice conditions and decide to press forward
We’re ready to go for. You could say, the beginning of the end. The plan is to push off towards the end of the day. Right now, the last weather is the same. The winds are still high (25 knots) and seas are rough. But intel from our UK weather and ice experts predict good conditions this evening. The winds are going to drop to under 10knots. From the OLD PULTENEY boat looking into Dome Bay, the ice has started to move away and is being pushed off shore by the gusty Easterlies.
What’s happening with the ice is less clear. Things can change so fast. The sea ice can move quickly when it breaks up. That’s what happened when we made our 70mile crossing to Ellef Ringnes Island. The ice was thick and unmovable, but changed rapidly in the space of only a few days.
In a matter of days the summer ice around Ellef Ringnes changed from a large fractured pack ice, to much more dispersed ROWABLE waters
Our UK team of ice experts at Polar Imaging Limited are doing tremendous work feeding the boat with the latest sat imagery. The problem is timing! Everything takes time. The remote images have to be taken by MDA’s Radarsat2 satellite, interpreted in the UK, then fed to us on our boat’s intermittent email access. But they are absolutely fundamental to me in planning the next vital leg of the journey.
So today we have decided it’s time to go. With the winds changing the ice rapidly and latest satellite images show an ice lead developing there is our first opportunity! So, we’re gearing up and pushing off from Thor Island. 50 miles, Noice Peninsula and then the 1996 Magnetic North Pole.