September 15 arriving at the Geographic North Pole - an auspicious day

The Captain woke us this morning to witness this amazing phenomenon.  A sun dog (rather 2) or a parhelion. It is an atmospheric optical phenomenon caused by the refraction of sunlight off ice crystals in the atmosphere. It consists of a bright spot to one or both sides of the Sun usually when the sun is close to the horizon - we saw two flanking a sun pillar! The phenomenon persisted for over 4 hours. 

This is a sun pillar flanked by 2 sundogs

One of the sun dogs

Four and a half hours later

What a spectacular start to this auspicious day - we reached the North Pole, or more correctly the Geographic North Pole, the northernmost point on Earth.  The North Pole lies in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, directly above the polar abyssal plain, the ocean floor over 4km below, and is permanently covered by pack ice (probably thicker than we found today. And it’s snowing as well. This Captain, Etienne Garcia, is an absolute delight. His enthusiasm is infectious and he seems hell bent on making sure everyone has a wonderful and memorable time. He called us all on deck telling us that he was not going to go there, the Pole, without us.  He positioned the ship and did a count down to when the ship reached 90 N. There were flares lit and the ship's horn blared and the floor of the heli-deck opened up to allow a huge trestle table laden with champagne, caviar, together with staff to slowly rise out of the bowels of the ship. It was a huge celebrations - we were the first cruise ship to reach the North Pole in fact the first to transect the Arctic ocean! But we have also heard about the early explorers who have attempted to reach the Pole including in an airship, the Norge, in 1926 flying Svalbard to Alaska carrying Amundsen, Nobile, Ellsworth and others. They made it but the airship crashed in Alaska. 

This rose our of the deck accompanied by quite dramatic music

The Captain popped the cork off the champagne with a sword - great drama 

A crew shot with the two captains in from of the banners

These are two propeller blades from the ship. Each weighs 7 ton - more anon

After the morning celebrations and countless photographs, the Captain tethered the ship to a large ice floe and we disembarked on to the ice to continue the celebrations. 

Choux pastry puffs were arranged along this table to read 90o - very sweet!

Sweet spicy milk warmed us

The scientists were all out there taking samples or measurements

Taking equipment away from the ship and edge of the ice flow

What they call a buoy is being attached to the ice flow to monitor changes in pressure and temperature and the monitor the position of the ice floe as it makes its way around the top of Greenland.

The things you do!

The group shot!

This is where we reached. Quite something!

Another exciting event to keep the bubbles flowing,  yesterday we received confirmation from Dr Robert Headland of the Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, UK that we were in fact the first to reach the Pole of Inaccessibility on 12 September 85•80°N, 176•15°F

The entry read….. ‘The location on the surface of the Arctic Ocean, which is most distant from land; the most difficult location to attain, is about 1008 km from any coast. Drift stations and aircraft have come close to this pole from the 1950s. It was attained on 12 September 2024 by Le Commandant Charcot, commanded by Captain Etienne Garcia.’ Hooray for us!