Over the past few years, it has seemed the NWP was on the way to becoming the next ICW... Well, not so, this summer...

Evans Starzinger has been helping route boats up there, with ice and weather information... He has a thread about it over on Cruising Anarchy, I find it to be fascinating stuff:

http://forums.sailinganarchy.com/index.php?showtopic=149387#entry4272910

Here's a link to an article providing a bit more info, might be interesting to track down some of the blogs from any of these boats... If anyone has any luck, you might post links to the thread...

From Sail World:

http://sail-world.com/index.cfm?Nid=113788&refre=y&ntid=0&rid=4

It will certainly be interesting to see how this plays out, and whether or not the Canadian CG may have to mount somewhat of a 'rescue' operation with icebreakers... If that turns out to be necessary, I imagine it will change transiting the NWP in the future bigtime... I think Evans is spot on with his take on this, and the few boats who have turned back earlier last week definitely made the right call... It's starting to get awfully late in the summer in the Arctic, and most of those boats still have a LOT of ground to cover, whether they're westbound, or eastbound...

I'm raising a glass to those sailors tonight, hope they all come through OK, those boats are all seriously on their own in that part of the world...

best regards,

Jon