A group of Irish coast adventurers set off from Dublin today to try and navigate the hazardous North-East Passage across the roof of Asia.
The group travels to Moscow, and ultimately the Russian Federation, to board the 47ft ice-strengthened and Irish-built vessel, Northabout.
The 7,000-mile journey includes 3,000 through ice from the Russian Federation to Norway.
The vessel's skipper, Paddy Barry, has just sailed the vessel some 1,300 miles across the Gulf of Alaska and will meet the team in the Russian harbour of Anadyr. Barry, a Dublin engineer, skippered the Northabout two years ago from Rosmoney, Co Mayo, up to Greenland and Arctic Canada on the first successful Irish navigation of the North-West Passage to Alaska.
With him were members of this current expedition, including a Clare-born doctor, Mick Brogan, a Mayo boatbuilder, Jarlath Cunnane, and a Dublin accountant and seasoned sailor, Kevin Cronin. The group will take an ice pilot as part of their permit conditions from the Russian federal authorities and will also carry guns for "bear protection".
Just as the legendary North-West Passage to the east proved to be a sailor's challenge for centuries - and led to the loss of the entire Franklin expedition of 1845 - so the North-East Passage has also tantalised explorers. It was first navigated by the Swedish sailor, Nordenskold, over two seasons from 1878 to 1880, and Roald Amundsen also completed it after his historic trek to the South Pole.
Several Soviet ice-breakers navigated parts of it in the 1930s in an attempt to make new supply routes on the northern coast, but only a handful of yachts - including several sailed by Russians, French sailor Eric Brossier and the German Arved Fuchs - have completed the circumnavigation successfully.
The Northabout will carry two summers' worth of food for eight men over three months and will also be equipped with shore survival gear, pulks and crampons for walking across the sea ice.
The group will call into small harbours en route and hope to trade for reindeer meat. With the crew will be a cameraman, Gary Finnegan, who will make a documentary on the adventure for Crossing the Line Films.
The expedition has a very short weather window, as ice closes in at the end of September. Ultimately, the plan is to bring the boat home to Mayo, via the White Sea to St Petersburg and through the Baltic.
Permission for the expedition had to be sought from the Russian Department of Tourism, with sanction from the Russian navy, the military and KGB, the Murmansk Shipping Company and the Northern Sea Route Administration.
Paddy Barry,skipper of the first Galway hooker to cross the Atlantic, has already sailed to the edge of the polar ice pack. He was a participant with Jarlath Cunnane in the 1997 South Aris re-creation of Sir Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic rescue from Elephant Island to South Georgia. His crew member, Kevin Cronin, was part of the recent international effort to find the wrecks of Sir John Franklin's two ships, Erebus and Terror which were lost on the 1845-47 expedition in search of the North-West Passage. Unfortunately, the search was unsuccessful, but Cronin and Irish film-maker, John Murray, hope to return.
The Irish North-East Passage Expedition's progress can be followed on www.northabout.com