JUNE 28, 2022
The start of a 4 month National Geographic and Disney+ assignment with the M 0.8’s covering full frame, super light, with tons of flare character, low light monsters and last but not least - tack sharp. Such an honor!
“I didn’t want to say anything until we were officially underway—for fear of jinxing what I hope will be the trip of a lifetime—but since we just left the dock at Rumery’s Boat Yard in Biddeford, Maine, I think it’s time to say a few words about the voyage which has just begun.
In some respects our goal is straight forward: to sail Polar Sun, my Stevens 47, from Maine to Alaska via the Northwest Passage. But Renan Ozturk (@renan_ozturk) and I are also on assignment for Nationel Geographic to tell a story about the Franklin expedition, which disappeared in the Northwest Passage in the late 1840s.
There is a lot that has gone into getting us to this point, and I will try to fill in some gaps along the way, but for now we are heading into the Gulf of Maine en route to the Davis straight and eventually Nuuk Greenland around July 1st.” - Mark Synnott, Captain (@m_synnott)
The goal of the 2022 National Geographic Northwest Passage expedition is to follow in the wake of the historic Franklin expedition to try and solve one of the greatest mysteries in exploration:
What happened to sir John Franklin and his crew of 128 men. 177 years earlier, Franklin and his two ships, the Erebus and the Terror, set sail from England with the goal of being the first to find a route through the Northwest Passage, a fabled sea way connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The British Royal Navy expedition was last seen off the west coast of Greenland in July of 1845. Aboard his 47’ sailboat Polar Sun, Mark Synnott and his team will attempt to recreate Franklin’s route through the icy waters of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, meeting with Inuit along the way who will share oral history about what befell Franklin and his men, as well as first person testimony about life in a fast melting Arctic. Following an old Inuit story, Mark’s team, led by Franklin researcher Tom Gross, will conduct an overland expedition on King William Island in search of a stone vault where Franklin and his papers are believed to have been buried in 1847.
For anyone who might be interested in following our progress stayed tuned for the next 4 months @renan_ozturk
