Expedition Mind, Season 4 Expeditions 014 and 015 Begin

Expedition Mind and Big Picture Mind. The challenges of integrating the Expedition Mind with the Big Picture Mind are never as acute as in the months just before departure. Expeditioning requires TO DO checklists and timelines. Big Picture thinking requires perspective and strategy, purpose and the occasional need to say “to hell with timelines!” 

Integrating the two is a job of constantly jumping back and forth from the dance floor to the balcony, from the local to the global. This is similar to the narrative back-and-forth in our expeditioners’ stories from ArcticEarth (from the Arctic to the Earth).

The vessel headed out May 3. The 2024 ArcticEarth NORTH season begins!   

Captain Magnus Day tests a new 2024 stowable addition as a backup to the ArcticEarth tender.  This 15-foot kayak can be configured as a single or tandem.
Veteran mechanic Mike Richardson (Lyman-Morse) installs high-output alternator and regulator spec'd by Nigel Calder and Bruce Schwab of Ocean Planet Energy.
Dave Witherill is a retired Master mariner (Unlimited - 18 years). He helps ArcticEarth meet the rigorous Category 0 safety coding for our annual UK safety inspections.
Pathfinder Compass Service defines local deviation for ArcticEarth's magnetic compasses. Onboard operations use "True" rather than "Magnetic" directional readings, since planetary polarity causes compasses to point straight down in the north.

Starlink now has a place onboard, with promising reports that it will link us to the stars -and beyond- at over 100 megabytes per second even when we are on the coasts of Maine and Greenland. 

Wendell Berry once observed that you cannot see your own neighborhood from space… meaning you cannot truly see -and be seen- at both a local and a global scale at the same time. This was his thinking behind the idea of radical local living. Can we see our own neighborhood of the Northwest Atlantic from space?

Will Starlink technology allow us to bridge the gap between the dance floor and the balcony? This 2024 season might tell. 

Science and environmental journalist Andy Revkin covered the environment for the New York Times for 14 years, including the first Times story filed from the North Pole. He visited ArcticEarth last month, and is interested in leading a 2025 expedition on the topic of "connecting the Arctic to the planet."  (check out his substack: Sustain What?)