Weather permitting, the Irish sailors who have completed a 6,000-mile circumnavigation of the North Pole will sail into Westport, Co Mayo, today. The Northabout is expected to berth between noon and 1pm, four years after it left Irish waters.
The crew completed their westward polar circumnavigation last month when they traversed the North-East Passage and docked in Murmansk, Russia. Skipper Jarlath Cunnane and crew Paddy Barry, Dr Mick Brogan, Colm Brogan, Rory Casey, Kevin Cronin and Garry Finnegan were the first non-Russian crew to do so.
Northabout left Westport in 2001 for the North-West Passage and reached Alaska via Greenland and Arctic Canada in one season. The second section of the journey via the North-East Passage began in Alaska in July 2004, when they sailed across the top of Siberia before running into pack ice shortly before Cape Chelyuskin. The crew won an award for rescuing a Dutch yacht while en route south to shelter in Khatanga in September 2004. Northabout was put into storage in Khatanga and the seven men returned last August to finish the route.