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Northwest Passage The Northwest Passage is the marine route which connects Atlantic and Pacific Ocean to the North of Canada and Alaska, among the ice covered waters of the Arctic Ocean. The approximately 5.000 nautical miles have been described as the most difficult route in the world, because ice is present throughout the whole route, even in summer, and can also block the passage completely, even in this period of global warming. Some history The route has been travelled for the first time by Amundsen. It took him three years, from 1903 to 1906, in which he was also gathering a lot of scientific information. The first passage without overwintering occurred in 1944, when the schooner of the Canadian Mounted Police St Roch was sent to the North to assert the territoriality of those waters. The first sailing boat which travelled this route was the solo sailor Willy de Roos, in 1987. Eric Brossier, a Frenchman, managed to make a first circumnavigation of the Arctic with his sailing boat Vagabond, travelling both through the Northeast Passage, North of Russia, and the Northwest Passage in 2002 and 2003. To our knowledge no Italian boat has succeded in this quest. The essential outline of our plan Our future includes a radical environment change, the Pacific Ocean. When we started thinking about it seriously, we became more and more convinced that we simply had to take the shortest way to get there. Without knowing it, we were just retracing the footsteps of the great sailors of the past, as you read in the paragraphs above. Also because in Tromsø we have met people who have already sailed along this route and they have charged us with their stories. We have hence matured the wish to try this adventure ourselves, which we started planning at the beginning of 2010. We intend to leave from Tromsø, Norway in May 2012 and to arrive at the Aleutin Islands or in Vancouver, in British Columbia, in October 2012, ice conditions permitting. The total route is approximately 8.000 - 10.000 nautical miles. We are planning to stop over surely in Reykjavik in Iceland, in Nuuk in Greenland, and in Point Barrow, the Northernmost cape in the US, Unalaska in the Aleutin Islands and Sitka in Alaska. This adventure will be undertaken with our boat Best Explorer by an Association which is being formed presently and will probably have the name Arctic Sailing Club Italia. Ice conditions For what we are concerned, the pack moves, cracks and reassembles itself depending on factors like current and wind, and tends to accumulate around the Canadian Islands. To complicate the situation, observations taken in years of minimum coverage, in particular 2005, the ice has moved and has “clogged” the channels among the Canadian islands, making it really difficult for the boats to navigate through, to the extent that in 2004-2005 only one has managed to pass (in two seasons), in 2005 another one, and another one (in three seasons) in 2004-2006, while in 2006 only two have passed through. This winter’s (2010 - 2011) conditions are influenced by the repeting of a “strong negative phase of the Arctic Oscillation (see http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/). Easily put, some areas of the Arctic are warmer than the average temperature (up to 6-10°C in Eastern Siberia), while on the contrary some areas are colder than the average like the border Alaska-Yukon, the Central and Eastern Eurasia and in Scandinavia (last December month has been the coldest in Norway since 1941). This probably means a new minimum of the ice extension next summer. However, we will need to wait for next June’s Canadian Ice Service publication of the seasonal ice forecast, which will give a clearer idea of what we can expect to find, even taking into account the fact that forecasts so far ahead into the future cannot be too precise. Sure is that we won’t be able to know what conditions we will find in 2012 until June that year, when, if all goes as planned, we will already have left on our expedition.http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/shapeimage_2_link_0shapeimage_2_link_1

Contact

Please contact us,whether it is to receive further information or to let us know you are interested in this expedition:

nordovestitalia150@gmail.com

We would also like to know a little about yourself and your experience, and why you are so interested in this adventure.


Data from National Snow and Ice Data Center

 

Organization of the expedition

The segments in which we have logically divided the organisation are:

  1. •Formal and legal aspects

  2. •Financing

  3. •Finding and preparing the crew

  4. •Techical preparation of the boat

  5. •Safety

  6. •Logistics

  7. •Communications and media

  8. •Documentation of the expedition


We expect that all the segments of the expedition will in some way profit from the active participation of the members of the expedition and that this in particular will be one of the highlights of our project.

At this moment we can predict that during this year an Association will be formally set up on purpose for this expedition, which everybody participating in the expedition will necessarily have to become member of.


Crew

We are planning 5 to 8 crew members per leg. It will be possible to participate in more that one leg of the expedition.


Other than the founder and coordinator of the project, Nanni Acquarone, the management group members which by now plan to take part to at least some of the legs are Mario Acquarone, Cristina Lombardi, Nicoletta Martini, Filippo Mennuni and Roberto Oberti.


For what concerns technical abilities and proficiencies other than saling ones, at the moment we can say that one of the crew members should be an expert photographer/cameraman, all would ideally have completed the ISAF course on safety at sea, at least two members should have mastered the first aid course BLS (Basic Life Support) and one member should be a scuba diver able to dive with a thermic suite.


On land we plan to have:

  1. •a contact who will coordinate every potential piece of news and manage support in case of need (even if only supply wise) and

  2. •a doctor (who could be a SIRM member)


It is necessary that the participants will have already sailed with Nanni in Arctic waters. We recommend that whoever is interested will take advantage of this year’s trip to Svalbard to experiment sailing in these more favourable waters, especially the crossings.


Sponsor e supporters

We consider this project so exceptional that it could become a very interesting window for the Companies who would wish to support it.


We are preparing a communication plan which will satisfy eventual sponsors’ needs.


We are asking for the patronage of the President of the Italian Republic.


For the moment we are actively supported by Il Frangente editions, http://www.frangente.com/ilfrangente/index.php
which with Antonio Penati, are spurring us on and spreading our news.

We are also friends with Oceani 3000 Association.
http://www.oceani.org/


Bibliography on the Northwest Passage and on Polar navigation and exploration in icy waters

  1. •Bellot, J.-R., Journal d’un voyage aux mers polaires. Expédition du Prince-Albert 1851-1852 La Découvrance éditions, 2007

  2. •Cowper, David Scott, Northwest Passage Solo. Seafarer Books, 1993

  3. •De Roos, Willy, Il passaggio a Nord-Ovest. Dalla Groenlandia allo Stretto di Bering, 80 anni dopo Amundsen (Le passage du Nord-Ouest). Mursia, 1983

  4. •Dubois, Bertrand, Les Montagnes de l’Océan. Editions du Pen Duick, 1980

  5. •Fleming, Fergus, Deserto di ghiaccio (Ninety Degrees North. The Quest for the North Pole). Carocci, 2009

  6. •Garland, Joseph E., Lone Voyager. The Extraordinary Adventures of Howard Blackburn, Hero Fisherman of Gloucester. Touchstone, 2000.

  7. •Hansen, Thorkild, Il capitano Jens Munk (Jens Munk). Mondolibri, 2000.

  8. •Janichon, Gérard, Damien. 55.000 miglia dallo Spitsbergen ai mari australi (Damien). Mursia, 1980

  9. •Lewis, David, Ice Bird. Il primo viaggio in solitario nell’Antartico. (Ice Bird: The First Single Handed Voyage to Antarctica). Mursia, 1978

  10. •McClintock, F. L. –Amundsen, Roald, Le Passage du Nord-Ouest. 1847-1906. Phébus, 1992

  11. •Pinczon du Sel, France, Brossier, Eric, Circumpolaris. Vagabond dans l’Arctique. Glénat, 2007 (esiste l’edizione italiana a cura de Il Frangente)

  12. •Pitras, Olivier, La via dei Ghiacci. Il passaggio a Nord-Ovest a Vela. Interlinea, 2003

  13. •Poncet, Sally, Le grand hiver Damien II, base anctarctique. Arthaud, 1981

  14. •Raban, Jonathan, Passaggio in Alaska Da Seattle a Juneau. (Passage to Juneau. A Sea and Its Meanings). Einaudi, 2003

  15. •Simon, Alvah, A Nord verso la lunga notte L’odissea di un uomo solo tra i ghiacci dell’Artico (North to the Night – A Spiritual Odyssey in the Arctic). Sonzogno, 2001

  16. •Zavatti, Silvio, L’esplorazione dell’Antartide. Storia di un continente. Mursia, 1974


References

News on the Northwest Passage and on the Arctic, explorations and sailing can be found here:

  1. •Michele Pontrandolfo http://www.artiko.it/sb_template.php?pagina=multipagemaster_sel&id_nav=7&RECORD_KEY(multipage)=id_multipage&id_multipage(multipage)=9

  2. •Arctic Poles http://www.poliarctici.com/italian/index.htm

  3. •Polar travels http://www.viaggipolari.it/index.php?i_tree_id=13&plugin=news&i_category_id=8&i_news_id=29

  4. •Istituto Geografico Polare “Silvio Zavatti” http://www.museopolare.it/

  5. •Canadian Ice Service http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/App/WsvPageDsp.cfm?ID=1&Lang=eng&Clear=true

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