Posted: Sep 14, 2007 10:00 am EST
(TheOceans.net) "Given the best available advice, Adrian decided to opt for the next option to pass through Proliv Vil'kitskogo. This option is a return along his old course for the Port of Tiksi," was the message from Adrian's home crew this week.

"There Barrabas will be lifted onto a large ice-hardened merchant ship which will enable Adrian to continue his expedition westabout."

To Tiksi in early winter ice despite of Global Warming

Plan B - Adrian joining a caravan of Russian boats that would follow an icebreaker fell trough - and now instead Adrian is heading for Tiksi, keeping close in to the coast to avoid the drift ice that is moving South.

Once he arrives in Tiksi ice watching continues to be important to the expedition because the ice-hardened merchant ship that is due to carry Barrabas through the Strait will have to cut through thickening ice and is not expected to be ready to sail until September 23, the expedition website reports.

The expedition writes that the ice is arriving early this year. "Given all the claims for Global Warming this may seem confusing," they note, and offer the following explanation:

"The last two years - shorter summer - ice receding slowly and closer to the coast"

"The wildest claims are that we are about to see the permanent removal of ice in the Arctic through a long summer. Climate has been in a continual state of change since the Earth and its surrounding atmosphere formed. The last few thousand years have been unusually stable."

"Today we do not know whether the change is progressing to higher temperatures, or to a rapid heating. We also do not know whether the change is still going to remain within the band of relatively stable temperatures or return to the older patterns of wild fluctuations."

"In dealing with short term forecasting, small temperature changes can produce some dramatic effects. Looking back over the last seven years of Arctic weather and ice movement along the Russian Northern Sea Route, the last two years have demonstrated a shorter summer with ice receding slowly to a point closer to the coast. Indications are that the trend is to shorter summers, but that could reverse again in later years."

In October 28, 2005 British sailor Adrian Flanagan set out from Hamble Point marina on England's south coast in an attempt to sail the first ever non-stop, single-handed vertical circumnavigation of the globe via the Russian Arctic.

The boat suffered damage around the Cape Horn, requiring repairs in Honolulu. Flanagan put into Nome on Alaska's west coast on October, 2006 and waited until July (2007) to attempt the second and final phase of the Alpha Global Expedition, a transit of Russia's Arctic coast. Adrian was stranded on an island, pondered to make it through behind an icebreaker and finally opted for a lift on a ship from Tiksi.

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