- Two young sailors leave the port of Saint-Malo on Monday for a four-month expedition to the Arctic.
- They will sail aboard the Northabout sailboat which belonged to the English adventurer Sir David Hempleman-Adams.
- The mission is both educational and scientific, to alert public opinion to global warming.
They will leave this Monday the tranquility of the port of Saint-Malo to set sail for the Arctic and its extreme conditions. Aged 28 and 31, Sophie and Tobias do not have the profile of old sea wolves. Both have been sailing for only three or four years, they met last year in Cape Town in South Africa while Sophie was looping a world tour by stop boat. From this was born a solid friendship and a mad desire to make a difference. "We both traveled by boat to avoid flying, so we could only get along," says Sophie.
Crossing the Atlantic later, the two adventurers have already sealed plans for an Arctic expedition. It will be called Uno Mondo and its mission will be to alert public opinion to the dangers of global warming in Greenland, "one of the most impacted places on the planet," according to Tobias.
Meet local people
To carry out their mission, the two navigators will be accompanied by seven other crew members, including three scientists. "It is a territory for which we still lack observation data," said the young man, originally from Jersey. On site, they will notably install weather stations and drifting buoys. They will also meet the communities living there to collect their testimonies. "We keep talking about global warming, so much the better, but we want to see what impact this has concretely on the lives of these populations," says Sophie.
The duo will not be content with an observer role and will also participate in the planting of a hundred trees with an association in Denmark to offset their own emissions. "We want to highlight positive actions and not just show that the ice is melting," warns Tobias.
Aboard a sailboat that has already completed two full Arctic tours
To reach Greenland, the crew will sail aboard the Northabout , a 15-meter-long sailboat that has already made two full tours of the Arctic. "It is a boat which belonged to the English adventurer Sir David Hempleman-Adams and we managed to convince him to sell it to us", specifies the young navigator, impatient to be at the helm but also a little stressed: " We have 14 days of navigation to reach Greenland but it does not look easy because it can blow very hard up there! "
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