Sailor Set For Non-Stop Solo Loop of Arctic Circle
- Editor OGN Daily
- 13 hours ago
- 1 min read
A British woman has set sail on a solo loop of the Arctic Circle to complete a challenge made potentially possible by melting sea ice.
Ella Hibbert, a 28-year-old sailing instructor from Portsmouth on England's south coast, has just departed on her epic journey. She will travel towards Iceland and Norway, where she will officially begin the 10,000-mile (16,093km) journey alone on her boat Yeva.
The route, expected to take five months, passes over the north of Iceland, down around southern Greenland, up through Canada and across the north of Alaska before a long leg through Russian waters back to Norway. She is thought to be the first ever person to attempt a solo circumnavigation of the Arctic Circle, completing both the north-west and north-east passages in a single trip.
While she said the prospect of making history is "exciting", it goes hand-in-hand with the disturbing reality that the journey should not be feasible. "It will be a bittersweet record to achieve because if I make it all the way round in a single season, it will prove that the Arctic no longer has the ice covering that it is supposed to," she said.
Ms Hibbert plans to auction off the boat once she finishes the trip, donating proceeds to conservation charities as a way to give back to the Arctic for the time she spent there.
To showcase the impact of climate change, the trip is also being used as a research opportunity - with endorsements from the British Scientific Exploration Society and the International Seakeepers Society.