The NSIDC update of September 4th speculates on the possibility of the North-East Passage opening this year. If it did, this would allow a very, very fast boat to circumnavigate the entire Arctic Ocean (no, it’s not really feasible, this year).
Will the NE Passage open? It looks like it’ll be a close-run thing.
CT’s image is a bit coarse to see in detail what’s going on, but the IWICOS/IOMASA/Polarview/Damocles site has excellent high definition images extracted from satellite data, and in the ‘interactive’ section, an opportunity to choose the satellite and date of your choice and view the actual images. the best seem to be yesterday’s MERIS images.
All depends on whether the ice clears in the Laptev Sea, close to the coastline. From the overview image you can see that there is a substantial amount of open water there already. TBH, it’s hard to tell from the satellite images how much there is. But going back to CT, if you select the Laptev sea button, you’ll notice that the sea ice area has gone up a fraction in the past few days, which would suggest, on first impression, that it ain’t gonna happen.
Luckily, the Russian Met has it’s own website (English version, too) which has some sea ice pages. Most usefully, there is a forecast of ice drift for the next six days. This shows a slight drift towards the coast for the next two days, followed by three days of strong drift Northward, parallel to the key area. If this forcast is accurate, the ice currently in the Laptev area of the passage could clear away from the coastline.
It’s hard to give odds on this, but I’d say that there’s a fair-to-middling chance that the North East Passage will open, if only for a few days, from Monday to Wednesday of next week.
Anyone got the boat ready?
Old man in a cave 
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September 9, 2007 at 3:49 pm
stewart
In SAIL magazine a year or two back was a profile of a gentleman preparing his sailboat for such a task. Unfortunately, he ran into ice and damaged his rudder near the start of his journey. However, we can look forward (?) to hearing of such a thing in the next several years, I’m sure I know of at least one recreational sailor who chose their boat with an eye to completing the Northwest Passage in the next 10 years. A quick look also finds the sailboat Vagabond, which appears to have crossed the NorthEast and Northwest passages in 2002-2003, a first and without assistance. Not a single year passage yet.
September 9, 2007 at 5:01 pm
fergusbrown
This rings a bell; on the Vagabond journey, they were incredibly lucky that the pattern of ice loss was opposite in the two years; one year the NW, the next the NE. Realistically, the two are far enough apart that a single-season passage of both is still a challenge (the window of opportunity would be very short). However, if there is a month or so between the opening of the NWP and the NEP, a swift, strong boat could conceivably traverse the centre of the Arctic Ocean, just beyond the periphery of the ice pack. Remembering also that weather condition are generally not ideal for sailing (or motoring), it would take a hell of an effort and a lot of luck to do this.
What are the odds that it won’t be achieved in the next five years?
September 10, 2007 at 2:00 pm
fergusbrown
Here’s the boat; http://www.mustangmarine.com/ribworker/portfolio/artic-challenge.htm
now all we need is the loon to do the journey. Anyone got Bear Ghryll’s number?