Position update 08.39 CEST: 69.99609 N, 176.1991 E
Note: Also “Peter 1” confirms problems with satellite coverage and reporting of Spot positions.
.
Expedition Report, 08.55 CEST:
“We started out just fine from Pevek, but some hours ago we again got a headwind – a stiff breeze straight in our faces. These hopeless wind conditions seem to haunt us and keep delaying our journey. Moreover, according to the weather forecast this is likely to last for several days. Big steel boats such as “Peter 1” can just start up their diesels and plough through. Our little outboard can do nothing in such waves; the propeller will be lifted out of the water for each wave and won’t provide any progress. We are forced to tack against the wind and waves, which takes twice the time.
We persist, as always, but right now it feels a bit frustrating!
The “Northern Passage” is charting a course along the coast toward Cape Schmidt (Mys Schmidta), a settlement due southeast from our present position.”
Best regards,
Børge
.
PS. I am told our position messages are not registering.
I assure you we are regularly sending Spot messages, every 4 hours.
.
Wrangel Island – the northernmost UNESCO World Heritage Site
Wrangel Island (Ostrov Vrangelya) is a breeding ground for polar bears (having the highest density of dens in the world), seals, Walrus, and lemmings. During the summer it is visited by many types of birds. Arctic fox also make their home on the island.
Woolly mammoths survived there until 1700 BC, the most recent survival of all known mammoth populations. However, due to limited food supply, they were much smaller in size than typical mammoths. Domestic Reindeer were introduced in the 1950s and their numbers are managed at around 1,000 in order to reduce their impact on nesting bird grounds. In 1975 musk ox were also introduced. The population has grown from 20 to about 200 animals. Recently, Arctic Wolf have been spotted on the island; wolves have lived on the island in historical times but previous packs were eradicated to reduce predation on reindeer and musk ox.
The flora includes 417 species of plants, double that of any other arctic tundra territory of comparable size and more than any other Arctic island. For these reasons, the island was proclaimed the northernmost UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004.
The rocky island has a weather station and two fishing settlements on its southern shore.
(Source and photo: Wikipedia)
Best of luck from Austria and may you always have a handwidth of water under your keel!
Lengdegraden viser vel at dere er ferdig med Norøstpassasjen nå og har tatt fatt på Nordvestpassasjen? Alle gode ønsker for hjemreisen.
He he, Steve – the draught of the “Northern Passage” is scarcely more than two handwidths. But there are times when they have really been tossed around by the waves!
Hi
i use the SPOT frequently and it seems very reliable. But you are on the edge of the coverage.
check here:
http://www.findmespot.eu/en/index.php?cid=109
The northwest passage seems to work fine as the messages from the RXII expedition are now working. They seemed to have the same issue last year in the northeast passage.
Keep up the spirit fighting those head winds! We are a lot of people checkin in twice the day and who cheer for you.
Kryss er gøy!
Turi,
If the definition of the Northwest Passage is the passages through the Arctic Archipelago, they have about 1000nm to go. 500nm across the Chukchi Sea and 500nm across the Beaufort Sea.
Lidesnes – N. Spain
Miami – NY
Sydney – New Zealand
The NW passage would then be:
Northern direct route: 800nm
Traditional/historical route: 1300nm
That’s an excellent point, Rikki.
I must confess I was not aware that the difference was all of 500 miles. That’s a lot!
The traditional route is the route of Amundsen & Co. in their small wessel Gjøa choose “some” years ago, right?!
Personally i think they`re to much delayed to make it the northern direct route, it will most likely refreeze before they get through.
But never say never, lets hope for fantastic windconditions and a WARM september, say 5 degrees above normal. The NW passage opened up VERY early this year, thanks to a VERY hot spring (as the link:http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20100817_Figure3.png , will show), so why not hope for an autumn in the same “track”!?
The shortest route through the Canadian Archipelago is around 950 NM, passing Banks Island on the Southeast side, via Prince of Wales Strait. It is the middle of the 3 alternate routes in this image:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Northwest_passage.jpg
Best wishes for a safe and swift voyage. Go mates!
Doesn’t that depend on ice conditions? If it were possible to chart an east-northeasterly course straight across the Beaufort Sea, rather than following the Alaskan coast, the surely the northerly route would be shorter? Or am I misreading the map?
Christoffer, I am not sure northern route of NWP is really wise decision. Yes, it has melted out early this year. But at the moment, a lot of ice has been exported from Arctic Basin into Canadian Archipelago and some amount of this ice now flows in the northern route. Check http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/subsets/?subset=Arctic_r04c02.2010242.terra
That’s a lot of ice, all right, even allowing for cloud cover.
I wish NASA would put a compass on their satellite images. It took me a while to figure out how much that image was rotated.
Patrice, i fully agree with you! BUT, if they had been 5-10 days ahead of planned schedule, they might have been able to go for the shortest route. In an earlier post, I tried to show the risk of the western part of the NW Passage getting refrozen around mid-September, and due to the facts in your map, the multiyear ice in the north Canadian archipelago, now seem too break up filling the straits with dangerous icy “chunk”.
Never the less, wind and low pressures will impact a lot upon the ice conditions until the “Northern Passage” will be in those areas!
The ice seems to be oozing through the islands at an alarming rate due to the pressure of the whole cap. Interesting and exciting indeed.
And of course when speed and progress is paramount, they experience the true definition of wind:
A mass of air moving from the direction in which they wish to proceed.
We are enjoying the technical discussion-exchanges, historical background information, plus images and video. And plan to learn (a bit) of Norwegian, over the next months. Thank you, everyone!
Vi nyter den tekniske diskusjonen-utveksling, historisk bakgrunnsinformasjon, samt bilder og video. Og planlegger å lære (litt) norsk, de neste månedene. Takk, alle sammen!
Chistoffer, the north in image I’ve linked is roughly to the right.
Heia Heia, enig med fadder Gus..Kryss er køy, motvind er mye bedre på sjøen enn på land:-). På så mange områder. Husk at turen er målet, ikke alltid slutten!!Så seil forsiktig. Masse tanker fra oss som følger dere hele tiden!!