Posted on 08/20/2016 10:40:13 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Crystal Cruises has spent three years planning the Serenity’s voyage to prevent Titanic-like scenarios (and is requiring $50,000 in evacuation insurance for passengers). The Canadian and American coast guards and federal bodies including Transport Canada are also overseeing the trip.
Such preparation is “unprecedented,” Mr. Hutchinson said. “We’ve seen a level of planning that suggests to us the company is taking seriously the conditions they’re going to face.”
The British RRS Ernest Shackleton icebreaker is escorting the ship, along with two helicopters to assess ice conditions. The Serenity is outfitted with a forward-looking sonar, searchlights and a navigation system that displays near real-time satellite ice imagery.
Two veteran Canadian ice pilots will also accompany the captain and his team, who have been trained to navigate far-northern regions. Under regulations, the Serenity is required to debrief daily with the Canadian Coast Guard.
The Serenity’s sprawling month-long itinerary includes three Canadian stops: Ulukhaktok, a community of 400 mostly Inuit people in Northwest Territories, as well as Cambridge Bay and Pond Inlet in Nunavut. Vicki Aitaok, cruise-ship co-ordinator for Cambridge Bay, will see the population of her 1,600-person hamlet double when the Serenity docks on Aug. 29.
“This one is huge,” said Ms. Aitaok, who oversees five cruise-ship visits over a tight two-week window in late August. The hamlet typically welcomes 100 passengers from small cruises for an afternoon visit. But the Serenity’s stop will require a 13-hour block scheduled to military precision, with 100 passengers passing through each half hour.
(Excerpt) Read more at theglobeandmail.com ...
This time, don’t rescue them.
The world would be better off.
Sure!
Hope they do the trip in winter in order to prove globul worming once und fur all
I’m just hoping to make it through our ‘Re-Do Winter of 1976’ that’s predicted for Wisconsin this season!
And for another NW Passage attempt, examine Sir John Franklin (1786-1847).
This is one of those rare, non political threads that are really thought provoking, informative and fascinating.
My initial thought was the common cynical conditioned response, but very little thought brought me around.
It is a fascinating concept and that it aroused a little envy in me is embarrassing to admit, if I could only afford it...
It is truly a unique adventure, the only adventure more incredible to imagine is a brief trip to the moon, with a minuscule risk of comparable risk to life.
Here is a voyage previously only made by old adventurers, in primitive crafts, with most of them and their crews lost, warships, and commercial adventurers seeking wealth finding a shorter route to and from Asia markets and American continental markets.
That it should be constantly monitored via global television is a rare opportunity for vicarious participation, and I hope that is also a part of the plan.
As for the left wing crap?
Easy enough to ignore totally; like criminal politicians, the delusional Bugs & Bunnies, Climate Change imbeciles and other self-appointed Global Saviors of our world, it keeps them busy and spreads the wealth...
Finally I am hoping that going to the link will answer a question I hope is has been asked. It is inferred that there will be multiple trips, but the excerpt gives no hint as to how many passengers and crew are planned for each trip, if the trips are "round trips... nor what percentage of the total western passage is traveled.
What a petty thing to say!
Touchy-feely delusional but enthusiastic doofuses can't be expected to know everything!
< /s >
For someone here at FR for that long, that is a truly astonishing remark.
But that topic deserves a thread of its own.
The level of competence, in English, in FR has deteriorated steadily since 1998, when I joined as a lurker. Foreign visitors excepted.
Unfortunately it took me years to see the obvious: it's impossible to tell, from their Freeper name, which posters are natives from foreign counties.
I was tempted to write this entire response in typical "Freeperese" but that character deficiency is "too progressive" to succumb to the temptation.
.
Remember the Russian “research” vessel that went to the Antarctic to prove there was no ice?
It is crushed and permanently mounted in an ice island.
Look for more of the same.
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Do you have the latest forecast of Wisconsin and Northern Illinois? We were spoiled last winter.
.
Roast Pelican!
(an old polar bear favorite)
My bass teacher had a gig on that gorgeous ship!
Only his cruise was the Mediterranean...much nicer.
Maybe the bears can snag some long pig when the ship passes through and have an Arctic luau!
I think there’s supposed to be another entrance under Denver International Airport, or maybe that’s just an alien base; I forget which.
Rainbow City?
Those three outside cams are great! I hope they’re up and webcasting when they get into the ice. If they get stuck, it will be fun to watch the global warming types whine and moan.
They will have a very, very small window of opportunity to make it through (between) the hundreds of island across canada’s north coast before the straits freeze up again. The winds and currents tend to blow the drifting arctic sea ice up against these canadian island - so if they don’t get through on this publicity stunt, they are stuck until next August if they go so far across that they cannot back out.
Sea ice is much higher than last year, but year-to-year, the sea ice around individual islands blows back and forth.
No, IF they can get through - and the oil tanker SS Manhattan DID get through back in the 60’s! - the passage is open for one-two weeks (if not 1-2 days). It is NOT a “commercial” viable trip. That’s just mindless propaganda.
This is global warming agipropaganda only.
(Manhattan was also equipped with an ice-breaker-reinforced bow, and an icebreaker accompanied it.
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