Soon the departure
Published on 28.06.2011 - Crossing the Arctic Ocean
A part of the team of the '2011 la voie du pôle" expedition has arrived finnally in Deadhorse, a small and remote city located close to the shore of the Alaskan coast and mainly dedicated to the oil extraction business.
Although the preparation of the adventure has been completed in time, Roubinet and his men have had quite a lot of problems to get the authorization to put T- Babouche in the water. People up there are mainly working in oil compagnies; as the oil fields are quire numerous in the area and because of the wordlwide sensibilization of the green environmentalists who want to keep this virgin region as untouched as possible, the authorities do not like to let the tourists sniffing too much around the oil fields. Hence the difficulties for them to get the right papers.
Here is what Roubinet has written lately about the subject : "... Indeed, we have had some difficulties as far as the access to the sea is concerned in North Alaslka. First our initial plan to start the sailing from Prudhoe Bay had to be abandonned. Prudhoe Bay is the only village located on the Alaskan shore and accessible by the famous Dalton Highway. But the BP oil company is too well implanted around this place : BP has decided that in a certain defined perimeter around Prudhoe Bay, no one is allowed to enter.
"... We had then to find another solution. If it well exists other points of access to the sea in the neighbourhood, not too far away from Deadhorse (the last village before the "oil" zone, 15 km south of Prudhoe Bay), they are all accessible only by air. Not a single presence of tracks of roads in that remote region of the world ! The only way we have to bring Ti Babouche to these places, is hiring an helicopter ready to fly with our small catamaran suspended in the air!..."
".. If we do not succeed to convince the local flying companies, we then will be obliged to go back to Canada and choose the smal port of Inuvk to put Ti Babouche in water and start our sailing..."
Here visit the pages telling all the stories about the preparation of this adventure
