Photos & Footage - The Polar Ocean Challenge

Will be posting a lot more over the next week or so; unreleased stories and footage so stay tuned in!

PHOTOS AND FOOTAGE

Latest entry first going back to the start of our expedition from Bristol on the 19th June 2016 Follow the link in the top menu to read the daily Ships Logs entries & the Crew (b)logs separately. And to listen to the audio blogs separately.

LEG 4 NUUK, GREENLAND TO BRISTOL, UK

Upernavik in Greenland 15 September 2016 crossed the Atlantic and arrived in Bristol, UK 20th October

20th October – Bristol homecoming

20th OCTOBER BRISTOL HOMECOMING!! 4 MONTHS AND ONE DAY SINCE WE LEFT.

Set off in the morning for Bristol, We were surprised to see quite a few people who had come out to wave at us. It was super sailing under the Clifton Suspension Bridge; it really felt like we were coming home then! And then when we got the the SS Great Britain there were a bunch of press and TV cameras there. It was super. Estella Tincknell the deputy mayor greeted us and welcomed us back to Bristol which was lovely. We hope you saw us on TV, those of you who couldn’t make it in person. We all went home very tired! Will be posting a lot more over the next week or so; unreleased stories and footage so stay tuned in!

19 October readying boat in Portishead

19 OCTOBER. Getting boat shipshape and BRISTOL fashion for arrival tomorrow!!

Tidying rope, taking remaining food to foodbank, cleaning, getting bags off etc. Making space for lots of people on the boat tomorrow who have been involved with this project either as crew or ground support. And the all important Court Marshall for Rob for spilling coffee on the log book. See previous crew-logs for context on this ongoing story.

18th October Celtic Sea to Portishead

18th October Across the Celtic Sea heading for Portishead. 24hour stopover. Bristol Harbour Thursday morning !

View out of our ‘office’ window this morning 🙂

14-15 October Westport to Dingle

13-14 October depart Westport, sail south to arrive in Dingle

We said goodbye to Andrew. Tom had done our laundry and brought it back to us! And set sail for Dingle. We were greeted by Steve (Ben’s Dad), replacing Andrew, so that we were not short handed. Bumped into the crew of Eagles Quest II in Dingle! And lovely Kate and Aidan who’d been following us twitter came to visit the boat.

13 October Westport arrival

13 October. Amazing welcome in Westport, Ireland.

We left Blacksod in gorgeous morning light. Bound for our official arrival into Ireland at Westport (we couldn’t make it there, too late). A rib came out with RTE news cameraman on boat and escorted us to some lovely members of the public who had heard about us in the Irish Times paper that day. And some press. And we did some TV interviews. We were on the 6pm national news!

Morning departure Blacksod

We were on RTE (Irish national TV) 6pm evening news! The cameraman greeted us as we came near Westport, on a rib and then when we docked they interviewed us and the previous Irish crew who had taken Northabout around the Arctic 15 years previously. Due to more sea ice then, it took them 2 seasons. The report really nicely contrasts their experience with our experience from a sea ice difference point of view.

Afternoon arrival Westport

12 October Blacksod

12th October. Arrival 20.00 UTC into Blacksod Bay, Ireland.

After a long and challenging North Atlantic crossing, exhausted and in complete darkness with no navigation lights and a bowman with a torch to keep lookout of lobster pots. Greeted by Northabout’s previous owners/ crew; Jarlath, Michael and Tom. We couldn’t believe there were smiling faces waiting for us. Never met these guys before! It was emotional for both sides. Frances was there too. She reckoned we all lost about a stone each. Oops. We went for Guinness the local pub while the Irish guys played music. Perfect. Exactly what we needed.

The Irish guys looking out for us. They tried to reach us on the radio and were looking for us on the tracking on their phone. That’s what we look like from the shore when we were quite close. It was a pitch black night.

3-12 October Atlantic

3 – 12 October Continuing North Atlantic big weather

First a decaying hurricane, massive swells. Since 7 Oct headwinds. Engine trouble, comms unplugged, heating playing up, leaking windows. Keeping up spirits with great food and trying to sleep without getting thrown out of bunk

2nd October Journey to Remote Weather Station at far east of Prins Christian Sund

…our jumping off point for our dash across the Atlantic intended for tomorrow (3 Oct). Passing on the way remote fishing village of Aappilattoq where a family came out on their boat to wave at us! presumably they don’t get many yachts passing by.

1/2 Oct Fjord anchorage by Tuviligssuaq peak Stordalens Havn

1 Oct Uunartoq to Tuviligssuaq, Stordalens Havn

30 Sept QAQORTOQ to Uunartoq

Incredible Iceberg with blue lines through it. It cracked sounding like a pistol shot; made us all jump!

Majestic towering steep mountains rising up out of the sea. Speechless. And as if we’re not international enough an expedition already new skipper Mike, a Kiwi who lives in Spain raises a Basque flag.

28 Sept Davis Strait/ Labrador Sea arriving into QAQORTOQ

Anchorage this morning at 60d 48.6N 047d09.7W IVNARSSUÁNGÛP NUNÀ We flew the drone as you can see 🙂

Arrived into QAQORTOQ in the evening in order to allow Steve, Ben’s father to depart for home. Here we will recharge our personal and ships batteries. Eagles Quest II alongside us again!

27 Sept closer to south Greenland

27 Sept closer to the bottom of Greenland

“The best day by far says Ben!’ Pleasant weather, calm seas, beautiful scenery, aurora, wildlife, cooking, housework.

26 Sept Qeqertarsuatsiaat

26 Sept dipping round the bottom of Greenland

Leaving Qeqertarsuatsiaat. First 24 hour sailing with new crew members. Another sunny warm day to an aurora filled night on night watch for Rob and DavidWD

25-26 Sept Faeringehavn to Fiskenaesset

25-26 September abandoned port of FAERINGEHAVN to inhabited village of Fiskenæsset/ AKA Qeqertarsuatsiaat

We took the dingy ashore to Qeqertarsuatsiaat to find a wonderful village of just 280 people with church, school and a hunting culture

We took the opportunity to interview Shaun Weng the skipper of the boat Eagles Quest II, as they were anchored next to us. They also had a relatively ice free experience through the NW passage. At approximately the same time as us. And here he shares his personal refections on what that means from a climate change perspective.

NORTH WEST PASSAGE

We left Point Barrow Alaska 0500 UTC 29th August 2016 to the Baffin Sea 12 September 2016

FEET ON DRY LAND!! IN UPERNAVIK

We arrived in Upernavik and celebrated, Johan fished out some glacier ice for celebratory drinks! Upernavik, Greenland 15 September 2016

APPROACHING UPERNAVIK

The arrival into Upernavik with huge icebergs and islands. Upernavik, Greenland 15 September 2016 10:34 UTC

12th Sept some FACTS and FIGURES

British led expedition.
Irish boat ‘Northabout’
The first British boat to do a circumnavigation of The North Pole anti-clockwise in one season
Nikolay Litau is the first Skipper in the world to complete both Passages twice
Barbara Fitzpatrick is the first Irish female to complete both Passages in one season
David Hempleman-Adams and Ben Edwards are the first Brits to complete both Passages in one season
Constance Difede is the first American female to complete both Passages in one season
Ben Edwards is the youngest at 14 to complete both passages.

PRESS RELEASE 12th Sept

PRESS RELEASE

19.18 UTC on 12th September

The Polar Ocean Challenge successfully completed their quest to sail the North East Passage and North West Passage in one season. The North West Passage was completed in an astonishing 14 days due to the fact that it was almost totally ice free. They encountered ice only twice in their 1800 mile NW Passage part of the voyage. This highlights an extraordinary loss of sea ice in the Arctic in the 30 years that David Hempleman-Adams has been coming to the area. He said, ‘ whilst we are all delighted to have succeeded, it is extremely worrying to see this lack of ice so starkly ‘ The objective of the expedition was to raise awareness of the change in the fragile climate in the Arctic. They left Lancaster Sound at the end of the NW Passage at 19.18 UTC on 12th September and are headed for Greenland.

The Bellot Strait 10th Sept NW Passage

Left Murmansk 20 July

Lancaster Sound 11th Sept NW Passage

David Hempleman-Adams

END OF PRESS RELEASE

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Some of the crew

11-12 September ICE lumps in Lancaster Sound, Baffin Island to the right

Sailing east through Lancaster Sound met with lumps of ice the size of cars. Day watch and night watch with torches on the bow. Winter sunset over Baffin Island; feels like winter is really setting in here. Note the wave splash at the right hand end of the flatter ice floe. These are sometimes called growlers because of the noise they make caused by the wave action. First light of an Arctic morning and a sunrise, (no colour adjustments made!)

This was the start of 24 hours of occasional fun with the ice. We managed to push through this narrow band after about an hour searching and it was only scattered pieces for the rest of the daylight hours. However much thicker bands appeared about 1 hour after my watch at about 21:00 and the various watch teams, supported all night by Nikolai, explored, pushed, shoved and nudged their way through various bands of ice until about 03:30 when they reached clear water again. Barbara spent a very cold 4 hours standing at the bow with a powerful light looking for the next ice and eventually the passage way through. My watch started at 04:00!

I’m not sure whether I have been lucky in avoiding a cold, tiring and stressful night or guilty of not coming to help or unlucky that I have not had one of the few serious ice encounters on the NW passage.