Ann Bancroft is an American author, teacher, adventurer, and public speaker. She was the first woman to finish a number of expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1995.
A pole of inaccessibility with respect to a geographical criterion of inaccessibility marks a location that is the most challenging to reach according to that criterion. Often it refers to the most distant point from the coastline, implying a maximum degree of continentality or oceanity. In these cases, a pole of inaccessibility can be defined as the center of the largest circle that can be drawn within an area of interest without encountering a coast. Where a coast is imprecisely defined, the pole will be similarly imprecise.
Ocean rowing is the sport of rowing across oceans. Some ocean rowing boats can hold as many as fourteen rowers; however, the most common ocean rowboats are designed for singles, doubles, and fours.
Alistair Forbes Mackay was a Scottish physician, biologist, and polar explorer known for being the first, along with Australians Douglas Mawson and Edgeworth David, to reach the South Magnetic Pole on 16 January 1909, during the British Antarctic Expedition of 1907–1909.
Colin Angus is a Canadian author and adventurer who is the first person to make a self-propelled global circumnavigation. Due to varying definitions of the term "circumnavigation", debate has arisen as to whether or not the route travelled fulfilled the strictest criteria. As part of the circumnavigation, Angus and his then fiancé Julie Wafaei made the first rowboat crossing of the Atlantic Ocean from mainland Europe to mainland North America, and Wafaei became the first Canadian woman to row across any ocean. Colin and Julie have two sons: Leif, born September 2010, and Oliver, born June 2014.
Fyodor Filippovich Konyukhov is a Russian survivalist, voyager, aerial and marine explorer. In December 2010 he became an Eastern Orthodox priest in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
Erden Eruç is a Turkish-American adventurer who became the first person in history to complete an entirely solo and entirely human-powered circumnavigation of the Earth on 21 July 2012 in Bodega Bay, California, United States. The journey had started from Bodega Bay a little more than five years earlier on 10 July 2007. The modes of transport included a rowboat to cross the oceans, a sea kayak for shorelines, a bicycle on the roads and hiking on trails, along with canoes for a few river crossings. The route he followed was 66,299 km (41,196 mi) long, crossed the equator twice and all lines of longitude, and passed over twelve pairs of antipodal points, meeting all the requirements for a true circumnavigation of the globe. Guinness World Records has officially recognized Eruç for the "First solo circumnavigation of the globe using human power" on a journey that lasted 5 years 11 days 12 hours and 22 minutes.
Charles Hedrich is a French sportsman, alpinist, rower and skipper. He is known for his achievements on all terrains of the world: Ocean, climbing, pole, desert, and forest.
Thomas Avery, FRGS is a British explorer, author and motivational speaker. He made record-breaking journeys to the South Pole in 2002 and to the North Pole in 2005. He is one of fewer than ten people throughout history to have completed the Polar Trilogy; full length expeditions to the South Pole and North Pole and a coast to coast crossing of Greenland. Avery and his teammates hold two Guinness World Records; the fastest surface journey to the North Pole and the fastest coast-to-coast crossing of Greenland. He is also the youngest Briton to have reached both the North and South Poles on foot.
Jock Wishart is a maritime and polar adventurer, sportsman and explorer. Until his successful 2011 Old Pulteney Row to the Pole, he was best known for his circumnavigation of the globe in a powered vessel, setting a new world record in the Cable & Wireless Adventurer and for organising and leading the Polar Race.
Sarah Dilys Outen is a British athlete and adventurer. She is also a motivational speaker in the UK and internationally. Outen was the first woman and the youngest person to row solo across the Indian Ocean and also the Pacific Ocean from Japan to Alaska. She completed a round-the-world journey, mostly under her own power, by rowing boat, bicycle and kayak, on 3 November 2015.
Henry John R Cookson, FRGS is a British polar explorer and adventurer. On 19 January 2007 he, alongside fellow Britons Rory Sweet and Rupert Longsdon, and their Canadian polar guide Paul Landry, became the first team to reach the southern pole of Inaccessibility (POI) by foot, the last visitors being a research team using tracked vehicles & planes in 1965.
Debra Louise Searle MVO MBE, née Newbury, later Veal, is a British adventurer, businesswoman, author and keynote speaker. Searle is famous for having rowed across the Atlantic alone after her then husband and rowing partner, Andrew Veal, was rescued from their plywood rowing boat.
The Row To The Pole was a major expedition, which navigated a rowing boat to the North Magnetic Pole at 78°35.7N 104°11.9W, the position certified in 1996. Its mission was to highlight the scale and pace of the retreat of the Arctic Ocean's floating sea ice. It is believed to be the only polar expedition to feature rowing boats since the crew of Sir Ernest Shackleton's row to Elephant Island off South Georgia in 1916, after his aborted attempt to cross Antarctica. The 450-mile journey took almost four weeks.
Nabil Al Busaidi is an Omani adventurer. Al Busaidi is considered to be the first Arab to walk to the magnetic North Pole, climb Mount Vinson in Antarctica, and row across the Atlantic Ocean.
Maria Leijerstam is a British polar adventurer. In 2013 she became the first person to cycle to the South Pole from the edge of the continent. Leijerstam started her expedition on the Ross Ice Shelf at the edge of the Antarctic continent, and cycled for 10 to 17 hours each day with no rest days, and the total distance cycled was 638 km (396 mi). Leijerstam's cycle was a three wheeled design, and she reached the pole faster than any previous skiing expedition.
James Ketchell is a British adventurer. On 1 February 2014, Ketchell became the first person to complete the triathlon of rowing across the Atlantic Ocean, summiting Mount Everest and cycling around the world. On 22 September 2019, Ketchell landed his gyrocopter in Basingstoke, England, becoming the first person to circumnavigate the globe in an autogyro, flying for 175 successive days.
Colin Timothy O'Brady is an American professional endurance athlete, motivational speaker and adventurer. He is a former professional triathlete, representing the United States on the ITU Triathlon World Cup circuit, racing in 25 countries on six continents from 2009 to 2015.
