Browsing: Northwest Passage

Cruising Life
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New Safety Measures Proposed for Northwest Passage

I’ve been following boating traffic on the harrowing Northwest Passage ever since my friend Sprague Theobald cruised 8,500 miles from Newport, Rhode Island, to Seattle, on his Nordhavn 57 Bagan in 2009 (see photo above). Theobald, an award-winning documentary film maker, wrote about that trip in his gripping book, The Other Side of the Ice. His crew included his son, stepson and stepdaughter. At one point, when Bagan was trapped in ice that threatened to crush the hull, Theobald asked himself, “Have I brought my family together only to lead them to their deaths?” Since then, with global warming and…

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Divers Find More Artifacts from Doomed Franklin Expedition

Archeologists and divers working with Parks Canada and the Inuit population have found new artifacts from one of British explorer John Hope Franklin’s ships that may help them understand what happened to Franklin and his 128 men when they were trapped in the Arctic and disappeared in 1846. Working in 37-degree water, divers found some 350 artifacts from the HMS Erebus, one of Franklin’s ships, in about 40 feet of water off King William Island. On 93 dives, the divers were able to reach only three cabins on the Erebus last fall, with 17 more to explore. The deck of…

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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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All-Time Great Video of Cruising Through the Arctic’s Northwest Passage

We usually don’t cover superyachts, but I’ve been fascinated by the Northwest Passage ever since my friend Sprague Theobald cruised across it on his Nordhavn 57 with his family in 2009. (Theobald wrote a great book about his adventure, transiting some of the most dangerous – and often frozen – waters on the planet, called “The Other Side of the Ice.”) Here’s a great you-are-there video about two trips through the Passage on Latitude, a 148-foot Vripack, in the summers of 2014 and 2015, complete with polar bears, whales, icebergs, glaciers and even a trip to the memorial to the…

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David Cowper Conquers Most Dangerous Spot in Northwest Passage

There’s little doubt that David Cowper is one of the most accomplished blue-water adventurers in the world today. Back in 1982, he became the fastest person to sail single-handed around the world. He’s sailed around the world both ways. He’s also sailed around the world, single-handed, through the Northwest Passage, which has almost become a second home for  Cowper, since he’s actually transited it five times. Now, in his 48-foot aluminum powerboat named Polar Bound, Cowper and his son transited one of the Northwest Passage’s most dangerous areas, the Hecla and Fiury Straits. They were the first people to…

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One of Franklin’s Doomed Ships Found In Northwest Passage: Incredible Video

A British research vessel has found the HMS Terror, one of Sir John Franklin’s two doomed vessels  with 129 men on board that were lost searching for the Northwest Passage in 1848. The video with the story is incredible, going into the ship to show the captain’s quarters, the double-wheel helm, even the mess hall table. Incredibly enough, the Terror was found some 60 miles south of where it was presumed to have been crushed by ice. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/12/hms-terror-wreck-found-arctic-nearly-170-years-northwest-passage-attempt