End of the try for Ti Babouche

Published on 06.08.2011 - Crossing the Arctic Ocean

They stayed only 13 days on the Arctic Ocean

Sébastien Roubinet and Rodolphe André had to give up their try to cross the entire Arctic Ocean during the summer months. Too many technical setbacks on the way.

29 July : after only sixteen days on the Arctic Ocean, the two frenchmen Sébastien Roubinet and André Rodolphe have taken a tough decision. Because of too many technical setbacks, they've decided to make a 180° turn, to go back to Point Barrow and, hence, to abandon their expedition.

Here is the excerpt of their logbook (29 July) explaining why they choose to abandon their try : "Since several days, we experience a lot of problems with the charging of our batteries. and last night, all of our navigation instruments broke down. We have analysed the situation with the marine electrictiy expert François de Teem who gave us a quite fatal diagnostic : the battery is giving up the ghost. In a dew days, this problem could lead to a complete lack of communication : no more scientific instruments, no more sailing instruments, no more camera, no more photos either... This setback added to other ones like ski midsection damaged for instance and still some other like the malfunctionning of Ti-Babouche rudder blades, forced us to tale the decision of an abandon.

"We will come back..."

" In the same time, because we are not too far away from the coast, we have decided to go back to Alaskan coasts sailing aboard Ti-Babouche without calling for an exterior assistance. Without any means of communication, it would have been quite dangerous to proceed with our expedition. Of course we are quite disappointed but in the same time we are quite confident in the future of this kind of small sailing boat because, during these few days,on the ocean, we could realize in every kind of field situation (open waters, thin ices, heavy icepack ect.) that she was reacting in the most optimistic way. Of course, we are proud to say that this is not the end of our project because we intend to try once more, probably next year or the year after. And also because we are 100% convinced that this Arctic crossing will one day be successfull...."

Ti-Babouche's adventure is not over yet though. Because both sailors decided to do the return sailing trip without any outside assistance, they still have to cover about 160 nautical miles to reach land.