Six Irish yachtsmen who hoped to be the first in the world to sail a small boat through ice-strewn arctic waters to the archipelago of Franz Josef Land have been forced to abandon the attempt following the refusal of the Russian authorities to grant them a visa.
"It's just badness. I don't know what the hell they are playing at," said the skipper, Mr John GoreGrimes, speaking from Norway yesterday. "All we want to do is go to a place where nobody lives that is just inhabited by 4,000 polar bears. I can't understand their refusal to help. We would have gone to one tiny little piece of land, walked on it and left again within 12 hours. It is a bitter disappointment."
They had made their application to the Russian authorities through the chairman of the Adventure Club, Mr Dimitri Fhparo, himself a well-known Russian arctic explorer. The deputy chief of the military's general head-quarters, Mr Yu Bogaevski, issued a one-line point blank refusal.
"Due to regime regulations, the foreigners are not allowed to enter the area of the archipelago," Mr Bogaevski said. No explanation for the refusal has been forthcoming.
The 191-island territory was discovered by an Austro-Hungarian expedition in 1873 and was annexed by the USSR in 1926. More than 100 observation stations were established there but all have been abandoned since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Mr Gore-Grimes said local people and diplomats had strongly advised against going ahead in defiance of the refusal to grant visas for him and the crew: Mr Nicholas Healy, Mr Robert Pendleton, Mr Reggie Reville, Mr Peter Culliton and Mr Kieran Jameson.
"We have been told we would be taking a very grave risk in going. We have to leave now if we are to use the weather window to get through the ice. We can't hang around hoping the Russians will change their mind. We have no choice but to abort the plan to reach Franz Josef Land.
"We can hear non-stop Russian radio traffic on the marine radio. If the Russian Navy arrested us we would be facing very serious trouble and charges."
They have been advised that the 44 foot yacht, Artic Fern, would be seized, they would be brought to Russian naval head-quarters in Murmansk, charged, and at the least, would also face a heavy fine.
"The risk is too high. It would be catastrophic for us. We spoke to the Irish embassy in Moscow and they said there would be little they could do once we had been prohibited from going there."
"In a sense it is like Dundalk here as it is very close to the border. There has been increased tension in the area as the Russians object to the development of a new Norwegian radar station at a place called Vardo.
"Norway have tried to be friendly towards Russia and things had been working very well until Putin came to power, but things have changed and local people say relations are at a low ebb."
Mr Gore-Grimes has a worldwide reputation as an expert arctic sailor. He has previously sailed to most of the world's wintry waters including Siberia, Alaska, Greenland, Iceland and the Antarctic Peninsula.
The crew now plan to sail up into the Arctic Ocean west of the Russian territory to see if they can go higher than a latitude of 81 degrees.
"We will be keeping outside the 50-miles Russian territorial limit. I am afraid it is the end of my ambitions to reach Franz Josef," he said.