Scot sets world record as part of team which kayaked Northwest passage

dailyrecord.co.uk:

An adventurer from Edinburgh has helped set two world records by kayaking the Arctic Ocean's treacherous Northwest Passage.

Mark Agnew was part of a team which became the first to kayak the entire 1,600 miles of the icy route. They were also the first people to complete the journey using only their own power - rather than sails or engines.It took them three months to complete the expedition, during which Mr Agnew had to deal with waves as big as 15ft high, becoming perilously trapped in ice and coming face to face with a polar bear.The team followed the same route taken by Sir John Franklin, whose 1845 expedition through the passage ended in disaster with the loss of two ships and the death of all 129 men who took part.Mr Agnew's voyage through the same waters was only made possible because so much of the ice has melted since then.

His team set out on their travels from Baffin Bay, Canada, on July 2 and reached the Beaufort Sea on October 8."I cannot believe we've done it," he said. "Every single day was hard."When the weather was bad, it was tough.

When the weather was good, we had to push our bodies to the max to take advantage of the conditions, covering ultra marathon distances day after day."And when the weather was so bad that we couldn't paddle, they were the toughest times as we counted the days to winter."When we crossed into the Beaufort Sea and completed the Northwest Passage, I burst into tears and cried and cried."The weather deteriorated at the end.