Open Water-Breaking Ice: The Polar Ocean Challenge. A Voyage of Exploration Around the North Pole. - Taschenbuch

What does an explorer do next, once he's climbed all the world's highest peaks, walked to both the North and South Poles, and ballooned alone across the Atlantic? If you're Sir David Hempleman-Adams the answer's simple. You find a small boat and sail it around the top of the world! Heaving the vessel through ice floes, facing bergs the size of blocks of flats, narrowly escaping polar bears and enduring one of the fiercest arctic storms ever recorded, Hempleman-Adams and his crew completed their hazardous voyage through the North-East and North West Passages in a single season, defeating all that nature could throw at them. Terra Incognita is the name engraved on early maps given to those regions on earth where no civilised man had yet trod. Such places were the undiscovered planets of their day and they drew early adventurers to them as moths to a flame. For many the attempts to conquer the North East and North West Passages did indeed bring death. Here, explorers, such as Sir John Franklin and his men, met their lonely end in the icebound arctic wilderness. Today, these once formidable barriers to routes west and east above the arctic circle are now open water, except in winter months, and as a result of global warming are likely to become passable all year in the not too distant future. This will change forever the lives of the people and wildlife who inhabit this once pristine environment, with commercial and political interests lining up to exploit the riches now on offer. It was to help bring these alarming events to the world's attention that, in 2016, the explorer and adventurer David Hempleman-Adams took a party of fellow adventurers aboard a small yacht, Northabout, in order to attempt to sail through both the North East and North West Passages in a single season.