Global Warming Opens Up Antarctic Waterways

[jackdale]

On February 13, a yachting crew from Poland sailed its 67-foot sloop, Selma, to a latitude in Antarctica's Bay of Whales that's traditionally frozen solid, and only navigable by icebreaker. It was a hundred miles farther south than anyone had ever taken a sailboat. Temperatures hovered around zero degrees Fahrenheit (it's the height of summer in the south pole) as the crew took turns hacking a heavy layer of frost that coated the ship's deck and rails. A storm briefly sent twenty-foot waves in their path, but the surface was calm when Selma finally ran out of sea. "We touched the ice of the Antarctic," skipper Piotr Kuniar told Radio Poland. "We cannot sail any further."

Read more: Global Warming Opens Up Antarctic Waterways - MensJournal.com
Follow us: @mensjournal on Twitter | MensJournal on Facebook