Bear Grylls' RIB completes North West Passage

From Maritime Journal

A six man team led by adventurer Bear Grylls completed a successful transit through Canada’s notorious North West Passage earlier this month.

The team set out on 31 August to begin a 1,700 nautical mile westward journey from Pond Inlet on Canada’s north eastern arctic coast and fought ice and extreme sea conditions before arriving unscathed at Tuktoyaktuk on 9 September.

The expedition has drawn attention to the effects of climate change upon ocean temperatures and demonstrated that a voyage previously considered impossible can now be accomplished in a high performance RIB. Although there were occasions when the boat had to be carefully navigated through labyrinths of icebergs and frozen water, there were many expanses of open sea where the RIB could be driven by its three Mercury 300 hp outboard engines to maintain speeds of over 40 knots.

During the ten day voyage sea conditions ranged from mirror smooth to ferocious Arctic gales. The 11m Zodiac Hurricane MACH II RIB had been customised for the expedition by Shockwave Engineering and Zodiac Hurricane in Canada. This included installation of the first Shockwave ICE (Integrated Control Environment), which provided shock mitigation seating within an integral console area. This enabled the crew and their instrumentation to withstand the continuous pounding that the RIB sustained while travelling at speed across ice-free water.

In addition to Bear Grylls, the team consisted of Tim Levy, whose company Future Capital Partners was a principal sponsor of the expedition. Dave Pearce was a helmsman and medical officer, Ben Jones was the RIB’s engineer, David Segel was lead navigator and David Smith, owner of the RIB and president of Shockwave, was the main driver of the RIB.

Read more... 

Posted via email from