Yeva, Well Rested

What little Arctic Sea ice remains plays a crucial role in stabilizing our climate. The potential "blue ocean event" is when the last remaining sea ice in the Arctic is lost, resulting in rapid warming of the water. Think of how a drink with ice cubes in it stays cold on a hot day, but once all the ice melts, it then heats up rapidly. 

Ella Hibbert's trip around the Arctic is not merely to set a record or for personal glorification, but to call attention to the diminished ice cover. She calls it "a trip that shouldn't be possible."

Shortly after leaving Qaqortoq yesterday, she piloted the Yeva northward along the western shore of Greenland. But, after only a few hours at sea and exhausted after the stressful days in Qaqortoq trying to repair her shipboard navigation equipment, she steered into a narrow fjord behind the uninhabited island of Nunarsuit for a good night's sleep. With a thick sea-fog cover creeping in, making navigation in the iceberg-filled waters challenging, she needed more alertness than her tired brain could provide and wisely reset her mental circuits before continuing on to Nuuk this morning.  

But meanwhile, economic concerns and nationalism continues to triumph over having a habitable planet. The US, Canada, Russia, and China are all building fleets of new ice-breaker ships to carve paths in what remains of the Arctic Sea ice in a mad dash to see who can establish dominance in the Arctic Sea. They each are trying to gain geopolitical leverage in the form of controlling shipping routes, access to minerals (oil/gas/rare earths) and establish military/naval power in the Arctic. That's the real reason behind the Stable Genius' threats to annex Greenland "one way or another" and talk of buying ice-breakers from Norway - he's aware of the strategic, if short-sighted, advantage in dominating the Arctic.

Update: As of 2:00 pm Eastern Time, Hibbert's tracker page shows she's pulled into the Greenland port of  Paamiut. The reasons are not yet known, but she's stated that there's no reason to rush to Nuuk as her replacement heater and AIS have not yet arrived. Reasons for the Paamiut stopover include additional sleep, or avoiding the fog cover or a storm forecast to hit western Greenland sometime this weekend.