Issuma: through the northwest passage!

Issuma has passed through the Arctic Sea, into the Chukchi Sea, and the Bering Strait.  They are now anchored on the Bay of Port Clarence (65° 15′ 58″ N, 166° 51′ 10″ W) an area on the Seward Peninsula, in the Nome Region.  They saw little ice.  No surprise since sea ice in the arctic has hit an historic low.  Dramatically different from circa 1845 - the time of the doomed Franklin expedition of the Royal Navy.
Richard reports today (9/11) that they were out of touch for a while - sat phone charging problems.  When time and conditions permit he'll put up the posts he could not transmit. Blogger showed me no new posts, but closer followers were getting position reports, so scroll down on Issuma's blog for more on the arctic passages.
Next stop may be Brevig Mission (pop. 276), then on down the Bering Sea to the Aleutian Islands, and...

Northwest Passage 2012 dot com: Arctic ice cover hits historic low - The Last Icy Arctic Northwest Passage in 2012 on M/V GREY GOOSE

Take that, Rick Perry!. - GWC
Northwest Passage 2012 dot com: Arctic ice cover hits historic low - The Last Icy Arctic Northwest Passage in 2012 on M/V GREY GOOSE: "The area covered by Arctic sea ice reached its lowest point this week since the start of satellite observations in 1972, German researchers announced on Saturday.
"On September 8, the extent of the Arctic sea ice was 4.240 million square kilometres (1.637 million square miles). This is a new historic minimum," said Georg Heygster, head of the Physical Analysis of Remote Sensing Images unit at the University of Bremen's Institute of Environmental Physics."

'via Blog this'