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Arctic Passage in an open boat
Agu 13, 2004 11: 43 EST
Remember the "small boat" polar expedition that Henk De Velde encountered the other day up in Siberia? So who are these guys and what are they up to?
Well, the main objective of the Polar Passage Expedition is to make a first complete circumnavigation of the Arctic Ocean in an open boat with outboard engines.
The guys are doing it for the Arctic folks: "Vikings, the first Europeans, reached the shores of Greenland in 982 A.D. For some people the rigorous conditions of the North are real ordeal and a test of their courage and stamina, but for indigenous people it is a traditional place, where they live, hunt and survive, and they can not imagine the other way of life."
The Arctic communities are in trouble these days, modern life has brought on alcoholism and disappearance of the ancient original culture. The participants of the Polar Passage `2000 Expedition want to "register the modern state of environmental surroundings and the national culture of all people, living along the coastal line of the Arctic Ocean at the border of the third millennium."
The team have thus chosen the conditions of the sailing "close to the way indigenous people in the Arctic travel in the ancient times, as this would produce a certain emotional effect: to the maximum approach the perception of ancient explorers, to see the present-day reality with the eyes of Vikings."
The expedition started in 2000 and it hasn't been easy. They were shipwrecked last year and a couple of weeks ago, July 30, Henk De Velde aboard the Campina, met with them at a bank of the the Laptev Sea:
"They worked on their battered boat in which they had suffered shipwreck last year. Their travel lasts for years and is something that must be finished. They now have two new outboard engines and two thousand liters of petrol. It's 76 octane bad petrol, but that's all that's available around here.
They will therefore start to the east of where they have been stranded. That makes their return travel twelve hundred miles longer. After the first fifty miles they will enter thick ice. Their plan is different from mine, much because their small boat is five meters long and not a sea ship.
In the current circumstances they think they'll be able to travel at least a couple of hours daily. After the Indigirska river they will return to Tiksi to continue their travel to the west. The ice last longer in the middle of the Laptev sea. I bid Ole, Frederick and Serge a good voyage and an always ongoing adventure."
The expedition members are Ole Jorgen Hammeken, 45, citizen of Denmark, director of the Children's Home, lives in Uummannaq, Greenland. He traveled numerous times on boat and dog sleds along the northern Greenland. In 1998 he was the leader of the dog sled expedition with children along the east coast of Greenland.
Sergey Epishkin, 43, member of the Moscow Adventure Club. Retired naval officer. Geographer, historian. Experienced explorer. Expert of all Siberian aspects. Administrator and interpreter of the expedition, responsible for contacts with Russian authorities along the route.
Frederik Solberg Lynge, 1958, citizen of Denmark, a police officer, lives in Uummannaq in Greenland. He has an experience of boating on small boats in the Arctic waters. His hobby is to make high quality hand made knives. He is responsible for visual documentary of the whole course of the expedition.
Anders Bilgram, 41, is the leader of the expedition. Citizen of Denmark, an engineer and a teacher. He lives in north Jutland, Denmark. In 1985 he was a participant of an open boat expedition to east Greenland. In 1993-1995 he was a leader of the Danish Northwest Passage Expedition, boating around 3000 km from Thule, Greenland to Coppermine, Canada.
Image of the wrecked crew courtesy of Henk de Velde.
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