Gosh, this is becoming a theme. Intrepid sailors/hikers/tourists/scientists/ecologists head for the Arctic with intent to show the world how the Arctic is melting, get stuck in/on the ice, or hopelessly battered, and end up needing rescue by those evil fossil fuel belching rescue ships, helicopters, and planes.
Our latest episode: Yatch Fiona
Last night, 16 Aug, we got hopelessly trapped by the ice. Despite a favorable ice report we encountered 8/10ths ice, with many old, i.e. large, bergs. We spent the night tied to one of them but had to leave this morning when another ‘berg collided with us and tipped Fiona over. We got away but the space around us is shrinking. I called the Canadian Coast Guard at noon and they are sending an icebreaker, due here tomorrow. We are NOT in immediate danger.
I hate it when that happens.
Reading this guy’s website http://www.yachtfiona.com/
I’m not really sure what his mission is, except perhaps publicity, boat funding, and selling DVD’s.
His current shtick does seem to be connected to the Green Ocean Race. They write:
The purpose of the GOR is to publicize two things:
1. Within a generation or two the world will have to learn how to get by without fossil fuels.
2. The result need not be the social and political chaos predicted by some thinkers and writers, technical solutions are in sight.
The means to achieve the publicity will be a transoceanic race for sailboats, possibly power boats, in which all energy consumed on board will be generated on board. The publicity surrounding the race will emphasize that the boats are alone in the vastness of the ocean, rather like the earth sailing through space in a few decades. The crew will enjoy all the comforts of home by utilizing the energy available from the ocean and the sun. The preparation for the race will require ingenuity to harvest the energy most efficiently and design the most energy-miserly ways to cook, communicate and operate the boat. These preparatory stages will also be a rich area for pre-race publicity.
GOR, heh.
Check out Al Gore’s houseboat. Ben-Hur couldn’t row this thing:
Well, I think publicizing that the Arctic has beaten one of the GOR participants is probably unintentional.
h/t to WUWT reader Mike Odin
More frozen Fiona fun–
http://fiona2009northwestpassage.blogspot.com/2009/08/ice-everywhere.html
For those interested in the situation Fiona faces have a look at
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/prods/WIS38CT/20090819180000_WIS38CT_0004528694.pdf
Fiona is located somewhere near 70N 96W. They’ve been working their way to the south through the green patches of 4/10s ice market “N” and “P”. They’re only 30 or 40 miles from ice free water to the south and from the looks of the ice extent along the rest of the route to Alaska, if they can cover those 40 miles they will be well on their way to the west coast.
My hypothesis is that the red-orange blobs to their west have been driven east by the wind and have pinned them temporarily against the coast. What was forecast to be 4/10s (green) turned into 8/10ths (orange). That happens sometimes in the Arctic — wind driven ice floes push you ashore. If this is what has happened, their challenge is to keep water out of the boat and once the ice is blown back to the west (not likely to happen in the next few days if the Canadian wx reports are correct), get Fiona floating again. In this case all Fiona needs from the Canadian ice breaker is a tow off the beach and, perhaps, a hole in the patch of ice market “H” to their south.
Fiona is only a couple of days behind schedule (see http://www.yachtfiona.com/fnn.htm at the bottom of the page) and I surmise Forsyth is well provisioned so he’s not going to starve anytime soon.
Many boats attempting the NW passage do not make it through in a single year and are forced to winter over. If they are able to make it to one of the settlements along the route, they will secure the boat for the winter and fly home. If they’re not, and they need to winter over in the “bush” the prospects for saving the boat are not as good.
Fiona’s crew is in all probably NOT looking for someone to rescue them in the sense implied in the original post and many of the comments above. My guess is that all they want at this point is someone who can pull them off the beach so they can be on their way.
@ur momisugly John Galt at 10:21
“Gorons” just love it! I hope it catches on.
This is way off topic so feel free to delete this comment moderator 🙂
Apropos the earlier post about my yacht delivery (Nola) the purpose of which was to transport some of these young people up into the Pacific Islands for a very worthy cause. I feel more worthwhile and considerably more unsung than the typical Catlin or Fiona venture.
http://www.sustainablecoastlines.com/Kia_Ora/Welcome.html
Well, im not sure on the politics of these expeditions. But i admire anyone with the gumption to get out there and push the limits… I ice climb, but ill never climb K2 or Everest! But i admire the people who do have the courage to put it all on the line.
Here in New Zealand, if they deem a rescue is due to stupidity, they will bill the responsible party, and that makes sense to me.
From the blog on Monday – “In big open pool of water approximately 1 mile offshore. Ice all around.”
Reminds me of this video: http://failblog.org/2009/07/08/rescue-fail-2/
AndrewWH (09:35:50) :
“The best wooden ship design for polar exploring would, to me, be a nice chunky hulled whaling ship with round bilges which would pop up out of the ice when squeezed.”
It already exists. It is called “Fram” was built in 1892, was arguably the most successful arctic exploration vessel in history (used by Nansen across the Arctic Ocean 1893-96, by Sverdrup in the Sverdrup Archipelago 1898-1900 and by Amundsen to the South Pole in1911-12). It is now in a museum at Bygdöy, Oslo, Norway.
Anybody have any idea why this Fiona does not have her sails hoisted if she wants to make any headway getting out of the ice.
Hoist the main; plus a jib or maybe a big spinnaker (I’d fly the Whomper myself), and just sail right out of that ice trap (head south).
It’s getting just a bit too close to that September refreeze to be heading north.
Anybody notice the second harmonic distortion of that roughly sinusoidal ice coverage graph. Clearly the melting process that starts around March or so is somewhat more gentle than the refreeze that starts mid september and then goes like crazy.
My theory says that since the ice is basically fresh water, it starts to metl as soon as the temperature gets above zero (C), and proceeds slowly because of all the latent heat it has to absorb from the ocean waters. But in order to refreeze, the sea water is now salty, so it has to get down to -2.5 or lower (C), before it can begin to freeze, and when it does that, it expels a lot of salt, sot he sea water adjacent to the forming ice gets even saltier, which further reduces its freezing temperature. Eventually the temperature is too far below zero for any amount of salt to stop, freezing, and then the temperature gradient between the air and the water is so great that is freezes almost explosively; well it goes PDQ once it starts.
Just a theory though; never tried it out in a lab; but that would result in the assymmetrical curve that we see from NSIDC
They are darned lucky the Canadian Coast Guard was both willing and able to resuce them. One of these days, there are going to be casualties, to either or both brave rescuers and stranded foolhearty.
Indeed. If you are going to deliberately sail into and perhaps get stuck in ice there is a very great deal to be said for a well found copper fastened wooden vessel of traditional lines.
I think modern technology could do better, indeed I am sure it could, but nobody has built one or it seems wants to do so.
Instead they want to sail small cruise liners which were never designed or built for such conditions into Antarctic waters to see whatever it is.
And sink. Unsurprisingly since many don’t even have double skinned hulls let alone adequate life saving provision for such conditions.
No wonder the poor Chilean Navy gets a ten aspirin headache whenever the Antarctic visiting season comes round.
Kindest Regards
“”” MikeE (15:49:28) :
Well, im not sure on the politics of these expeditions. But i admire anyone with the gumption to get out there and push the limits… I ice climb, but ill never climb K2 or Everest! But i admire the people who do have the courage to put it all on the line.
Here in New Zealand, if they deem a rescue is due to stupidity, they will bill the responsible party, and that makes sense to me. “””
Well it is one thing to do it on your own for “sport”; but when you do it for political effect; then you deserve whatever happens to you; and you shouldn’t expect someone else to put their life on the line to come after you.
People who want to climb Everest of K2, should be required to sign a waver saying they alone are responsible for whatever happens to them, and they will have to get themselves out of whatever they get into. Hillary showed it was possible; someone else showed it is possible to climb up all the stairs in the Empire State Building. So why others want to waste everyone’s time and energy doing what has already been done is beyond me; should be counted as plagiarism.
My boss pays me now and then, when I do something that nobody else ever did before. Then he pays me to write it up for publication and peer review; nearly everything like that I have done, is published in the United States Patent Office publications. That really opens your stuff up to falsification scrutiny.
George
“”” Stoic (14:16:25) :
George E. Smith (13:40:20) : “OOoops ! er; um, Hillary never ever said any such thing. That once famous observation was made by Mallory; not Hillary; and way back in 1924 or thereabouts; long before Hillary was born.”
Hi George. My information is that Sir Edmund Hillary was born in Auckland 19 July 1919. Let’s get our facts right!
Regards “””
Stoic; I’ll take your word for it; I’m sure you checked before posting; which I did not; I just assumed he was about my age; and I certainly missed the 1920s.
So I’ll take a few demerits for not checking; but hey that “because it’s there” thing; you can’t fool me on that; Mallory was one of my boyhood heroes, along with Robert Falcon Scott; neither one of them made good on their ventures into foolhardiness.
George; see that’s twice now I’ve been wrong.
Actually the first mention of Sir Edmund Hillary was in 1953; right around the time of the coronation of QE-II; I know because they interrupted the coronation ceremony news to tell us all about some beee keeper name Ed Hillary hving climbed Mt Everest, so officially in 1919 there wasn’t any Sir Edmund Hillary; and of course Sir Edmund Hillary never climbed Mt Everest; but Ed Hillary did.
But he was famous even before he climbed Mt Everest, as the future wife of the President of the United States was named after him. She’s not as old as me, but was born before 1953.
Nice picture you found there RichG (09:30:03). Yes, that looks like quite the vessel to be sailing into Arctic with (not). If you look carefully, in the background is a line of electrical power lines. Seems technology beat these greenies to the area. Hope they enjoy their boat ride back with the Coast Guard. Maybe a real sailor will tell them to just stay home. Love this line from their blog: “Ice Everywhere!
Sunday August 16, email from Russ, “FREEZING, sleet, wind, ice everywhere…” The ice not melting (like it SHOULD) but actually expanding and trapping them. Are they still convinced there is man-made global warming? Probably.
When someone asked Sir Edmund Hillary, whether he thought George Lee Mallory, and Andrew Irvine ever reached the summit of Everest, and perhaps fell on the return; following the discovery of Mallory’s body; Hillary is reported to have said in effect; who cares; it doesn’t count if you don’t come back.
I would have bet anything that Hillary of all people would have said, that he hoped they actually made it. If that story is true; then it is the only negative impulse I have ever had about Hillary; He was a true adventurere, and a great humanitarian to boot; and truly a National Hero.
I hope Mallory and Irvine made it to the top; but we’ll never know for sure; and it would change nothing in the Hillary Saga.
Does somebody could arrange a meeting of these people, after they return, with the “prophet” of melting ice himself, to tell HIM how nice a trip they had?
(Of course, no weapons allowed)
Ice, shmice. What I want to know is how the sea lion in the lead photo is clinging to the side of that rock. Since when do sea lions have spider powers?
This is what environmentalism was originally about – actually doing something useful. Now it’s been hijacked by activists who just try to force everybody else to do something useless.
I’m so disguted by the never ending line of worthless idealists embarking on these idiotic journeys, they need to be aware IN ADVANCE, that if they get in trouble, 2 things are going to result:
A) they get their like minded doofus friends to pull their feet out of the fire
B) they pru funds in escroe necessary to pay whatever government ageny for their rescue from stupidity.
If A or B don’t work, let them stay where they are and deal with rheir stupidity, even if fatal.
Rick Sharp (10:59:00) :
Got an e-mail from Sprague Theobald this morning. Not going much better for him.
Actually it’s gone much better for him, he’s clear of ice and entered Gjoa Havn last night and has clear sailing through the rest of the passage.
A lot of people here have commented that (at least some of) these folks are “true” adventurers.
Nonsense!
They all embark on these journeys knowing they have lifelines back to civilization, and they usually wind up using them.
“Despite a favorable ice report we encountered 8/10ths ice”
Who issued the forecast, Greenpeace?
Yeah, me too: I hate it when they’re not in immediate danger. 🙂
How many but the already convinced are actually following these stunts?
With many people struggling with their finances and out of a job, who is interested what rich people are doing in their boats “raising awareness of human-caused climate change”?
I was going to make a philosophical post on the sadness of these people but then I thought – no. Life’s too short.
Why doesn’t Al Gore sail his houseboat up the North West Passage? Maybe he could just stick his houseboat up his own North west Passage instead…