Browsing: Arctic

Cruising Life
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Explorers Find Northernmost Island Off Greenland

A team of polar explorers just found a new island off the coast of Greenland that they say is the world’s northernmost point of land. And they named it Qeqertaq Avannarleq. No, that’s not a typo. It means “the northernmost island” in Greenlandic. QA, for short, is not very big. It’s only 30 meters across, but it’s big enough. “It meets the criteria of an island,” said Rene Forsberg, head of geo dynamics at Denmark’s National Space Institute. “This is currently the world’s northernmost land.” Read about it in this story from the BBC. In July, the scientists flew to…

Cruising Life
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Expedition Yacht Cruises 500 Miles Through Arctic

Pioneer, a 151-foot-long expedition yacht with a rich history, just cruised 500 nautical miles through the Canadian Arctic for ten days, a voyage filled with icebergs, narwhals, whales, walruses, bears, and potential peril at every turn. The trip took the boat, designed by Vripack and built by Palmer Johnson in 1996, through the Canadian province of Nunavut, which is the size of western Europe but with only 29,000 people. The voyage started at the top of Baffin Island, basically across from Greenland and the start of the Northwest Passage, and then continued around glaciers and icebergs past Devon Island,…

Charter
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Now: Cruise the Arctic Circle on a Luxurious Charter Yacht

If you’re tired of feeling hemmed in, think about taking a charter to the Arctic Circle this summer on a luxurious 253-foot, ice-breaking yacht, fully equipped with a helicopter, a submarine and a 16-person Jacuzzi. Ariodante Travel has just announced Arctic Circle tours on Legend, an expedition yacht with a Lloyds 1A ice-class hull. The tours start in the Svalbard archipelago (pop: 2,642), midway between mainland Norway and Iceland. From there, Legend can go just about anywhere in the Arctic Circle, including the North Pole, Greenland, the North Cape and Spitsbergen. We have to wait for international travel restrictions to…

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Cruising the Arctic in a Converted Lifeboat: See Video

Two British architects bought an old lifeboat, refurbished it, painted it yellow, and then cruised 3,100 miles through eight countries and ended up in Tromsø, Norway, the largest city inside the Arctic Circle. They wintered over there, and now are getting ready to finish cruising the coast of Norway this spring and summer. Guylee Simmonds and David Schnabel, both 28, bought the decommissioned lifeboat in February, 2018. They had dreamed of a big adventure, and they spent a year making it what they called “the supreme adventure craft.” Built in Norway in 1997, the vessel served as a lifeboat for…

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Climate Change Causing Chaos in Arctic Fisheries: NOAA

WASHINGTON/ANCHORAGE (Reuters) – Climate change is causing chaos in the Bering Sea, home to one of America’s largest fisheries, an example of how rising temperatures can rapidly change ecosystems important to the economy, U.S. federal government scientists said in a report on Tuesday. Rising temperatures in the Arctic have led to decreases in sea ice, record warm temperatures at the bottom of the Bering Sea and the northward migration of fish species such as Pacific cod, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, said in its 2019 Arctic Report Card. While the changes are widespread in the Arctic,…

Cruising Life
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6,000 Miles to the Arctic on a C-Dory 22 with twin 40-hp Honda Outboards

From The C-Dory WHEELHOUSE: Some people dream of a cruise around the Mediterranean. Others want to bask in the Jamaican sun while sipping something fruity with an umbrella in it. Not Paul Souders. Not this time, anyway. What started out as a, perhaps, fleeting thought, turned into an adventure that would reward him exponentially. A professional wildlife photographer by trade, Souders dreamed of an excursion that would take him all the way to the Canadian Arctic to capture images of the elusive polar bear in its natural habitat. At this point, Souders had been to over 65 countries shooting the…

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Coast Guard Cutter Polar Star, 42-years-old, Reaches Antarctica, but with Problems

The aging Cutter Polar Star, the Coast Guard’s only heavy icebreaker, just reached Antarctica, cutting through ice up to 31 feet deep, but it ran into some problems along the way. The 399-feet long, 42-year-old ship with a crew of 150, completed its mission, leading a support vessel with 400 containers to resupply McMurdo Station, the main U.S. logistics center in Antarctica. But the Polar Star developed a leak from the prop shaft, and it also experienced several electrical problems while in deep ice. The crew had to halt icebreaking operations to send a scuba diver in the water to repair…

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Magnetic North Pole Moving 31 Miles a Year. Scientists Rush To Update Charts

The magnetic North Pole is moving so fast that scientists are issuing an emergency update to maps used by electronic navigation systems. Magnetic north has crept from the coast of northern Canada a century ago to the middle of the Arctic Ocean now, and it’s moving at what scientists say is “an unusually high speed” of about 31 miles a year. As a result they are making an unprecedented early update of the World Magnetic Model, which fixes the pole and is responsible for the accuracy of GPS and all modern navigation on everything from nuclear submarines to your latest…

Cruising Life
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New Study: Ship Traffic and Fishing Boats Moving Closer to North Pole Every Year. Now Transiting Treacherous Northwest Passage in February

Melting sea ice in the Arctic means that the fabled Northwest Passage, the sea route over the top of the world linking the Atlantic and the Pacific that has trapped explorers and frustrated mariners for hundreds of years, is opening up. Now a new study using 120 million data points tracking ship traffic there over seven years shows exactly how much and how fast the area is changing. Indeed, it found that the center of ship activity in the Arctic moved 186 miles closer to the North Pole from 2009 to 2016. Researchers from Tufts University and the Woods Hole…

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Two U.S. Navy Subs Surface in the Arctic, Join Temporary Camp on a Moving Ice Floe

Here’s something we haven’t seen before: Pictures of two U.S. Navy submarines that broke through the ice and surfaced below the Arctic Circle. The fast-attack subs, the USS Hartford (SSN 768) and the USS Connecticut (SSN 22), were taking part in a multi-national training exercise in the Beaufort Sea. They were joined by the Royal Navy sub HMS Trenchant. After the surfacing, the crews joined a temporary ice camp on a moving ice floe about 150 miles off the northern slope of Alaska in international waters. The exercise is designed to train submarine crews how to operate in extreme cold…

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