The Blue Pole Project
Launching from the UK and sailing via Madeira and the Azores archipelago, the Turner twins are on a mission to reach the Atlantic “Point of Inaccessibility '' — the area in the Atlantic Ocean which is the furthest away from land in any direction. Sailing a 40ft yacht, the twins are aiming to reach this geographic location with the support of two additional crew members – one of which will be capturing the action through videos and images.
The Turner Twins’
Professional adventurers, twin brothers and best friends, Hugo and Ross Turner are currently on the expedition of a lifetime. Sailing to the most remote point of the Atlantic – the pole of inaccessibility, they will spend the next six weeks on a 100% emission-free yacht, conducting a plastic survey to support Plymouth University’s, International Marine Litter Research Unit, to support a long term clean-up strategy of the oceans.
Building a zero-emission boat
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London
Start / Finish
Atlantic Pole
6,500 miles
atlantic ocean
We’re taking adventure back to its core essence of finding knowledge and understanding. So when people hear about a trip or read something about us they learn something new that has a positive impact.
The plastic problem
The science behind the adventure
5.25
trillion pieces of plastic debris exists in the ocean
269,000
tons of microplastic floats on the surface
4
billion plastic microfibers per square kilometre litter the deep sea
10
1,300
million tonnes of microplastics find its way into the ocean each year
2050
the year that if we reach Net Zero by, some of the most devastating effects of global warming can be avoided - including slowing the heating and reducing the acidity of the oceans
Feature Coming this Fall
Atlantic Adventure
The Blue Pole Project
A mission to save the ocean requires an eco-conscious form of transport. The twins have replaced the diesel engine of their Class40 yacht with a fully electric motor, which will be charged by hydrogen fuel cell generators — zero emission energy source. This technology enables a lower impact on the yacht’s emissions and allows the twins to power their adventure with 100% greener energy.
The Turner twins will be collecting crucial information during their journey, providing unique insights and evidence as to the build-up and whereabouts of ocean plastics. “We’re born and bred Devon boys and Plymouth University has a world class marine litter research centre so supporting their work was an obvious choice,” says Hugo. “This is a great way to support their work to understand ocean plastic and help towards creating a long term clean up strategy.”
With the help of the university’s International Marine Litter Research Unit, the twins are collecting much-needed data for a research study aiming to identify macro plastics in the Atlantic ocean. Their data will then be validated through the Sentinel satellites operated by the European Space Agency (ESA).
Along with their at-sea research, the twins are also on a retrieval mission — working with OceanOPS to deploy ARGO buoys and collect retired buoys to be reused, repaired or recycled.
Taking the diesel engine out and replacing it with a 10 kilowatt electric motor.
The anti-foul paint is being replaced with a new alternative which is kinder to the environment called Finsulate.
Solar panels and a watermaker are also being installed to allow the crew to have enough energy and water for the six weeks.
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The Adventure Diary
Every aspect of the boat from the mast, stations, rigging, spars, ballast system, keel, transom are all being overhauled and made seaworthy.
New chart plotters and navigation is being installed from B&G including radar and wind instruments.
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Meet the Turner twins
After the Atlantic sail, the twins will be sailing the yacht around major UK coastal cities, to promote ocean advocacy and hydrogen fuel technology.
Feel inspired by the twins’ ocean adventure? Come say hello and get involved in beach cleans and sailing experiences, and learn more about how we can all contribute to the clean up of the ocean!
Adventure is all about making as many visceral and surreal moments happen during a trip. Moments that you’ll remember forever, not just remembered for a few months after. It shapes your life.
UK TOUR: SAILING PASSAGES
Leg 1 - St Katharine's Dock, London – Portsmouth Marina [227 miles]
Leg 2 – Portsmouth Marina – Plymouth QAB [165 miles]
Leg 3 – Plymouth QAB – Cardiff Bay Yacht Club [290 miles]
Leg 4 – Cardiff Bay Yacht Club - Poolbeg Yacht Club, Dublin [250 miles]
Leg 5 – Poolbeg Yacht Club, Dublin – Belfast Harbour Marina [130 miles]
Leg 6 – Belfast Harbour Marina – Liverpool Marina [170 miles]
Leg 7 – Liverpool Marina – Science Centre, Glasgow [260 miles]
Leg 8 – Science Centre, Glasgow – Royal Forth Yacht Club [550 miles]
Leg 9 – Royal Forth Yacht Club – Royal Quays, Newcastle [130 miles]
Leg 10 – Royal Quays, Newcastle - St Katherine's Dock, London [442 miles]
years - how long a lego brick could survive in the ocean for
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Hugo and Ross Turner, 33 years old.
- Hugo Turner
“The Sea is Rough”
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Week
Week
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“The Sea is Rough”
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Follow their live location below
The Turner twins current location
Reaching this pole won’t be the adventure’s only achievement. The crew will be carrying out important research which will be supporting a research study to identify macro plastic and ocean pollution — offering data that can only be collected by actually reaching these remote parts of the ocean. “Every trip we undertake has to ultimately have some discovery within it,” says Hugo Turner.
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The Adventure Diary
Follow their adventure below…
Entry 01:
Adventure Diary
Launch day
Click to play the video
Time to get our heads out the bottom of the boat and sail out of the harbour. We can’t wait to get on the water and enjoy being on the ocean. Away we go…
Launch day is finally here! At times we’ve felt like it would never arrive, but the adventure starts now.
From the boat build to funding and press coverage, organising this adventure to the Atlantic point of inaccessibility has been the biggest endeavour we’ve ever undertaken. From working on the boat (we'd never refitted a boat, installed an electric motor, or used eco-friendly Antifoul before!) to planning the foundations of the trip and running safety checks, over the last few months we’ve worked tirelessly.
Entry 07:
Adventure Diary
We’re home!
On the way home, we deployed a weather buoy. It has a biodegradable packaging that gets thrown over and dissolves in the water. This means that rather than having metres and metres of cable and bits and pieces getting tangled, the Met Office and Ocean OPS provide a nice little bundle that sailors can just throw over safely.
Finally, we approached the Isle of Wight and waited for the tide to turn and for some gentle winds to pick up then headed down towards Portsmouth and the
Hey Red Bulletin. We’re home! The sail back to the UK after leaving A Coruña was a very interesting one.
Firstly, we heard about a pod of orcas that were attacking the rudders of small sailing boats off the harbour. We couldn’t wait around for them to leave, so we ran the gauntlet while the weather was favourable and sailed anyway. Fortunately, we didn't come across any of the whales and we sailed all the way across the Biscay in reasonably lightish winds.
Entry 06:
Adventure Diary
“A really tough decision”
Click to play the video
So, now we find ourselves trying to get back to the UK to start the UK tour. Again, it’s the same story — we are trying to avoid areas of no weather and no wind so we don’t end up drifting aimlessly, while also trying to avoid weather that produces strong winds, which would reduce our chances of seeing plastic for our plastic survey.
We're all in good spirits. We've been chasing blue sharks and basking sharks and doing some underwater photography, and working on getting back to the UK.
Hey Red Bulletin! We are still in A Coruña in northern Spain. We've been waiting for a weather window to the Azores, but no window has opened up. It's been a really tough decision but we’ve decided not to head to the Azores, because we fear that we will be stuck out there.
This has been a frustrating outcome, but it's also been a very successful trip. It’s amazing that we've gotten as far as we have without any use of fossil fuels and that it's been a 100% emission free project so far.
Entry 05:
Adventure Diary
"A dramatic night"
Click to play the video
hour into port, arriving into A Coruña in the late hours, all in one piece.
This has highlighted how our electric engine does not have the distance that we would like it to and that it doesn’t have the range of a diesel. If we find ourselves in flat seas for days, then we're going to have to think very carefully about how we manage the boat and how we manage our power.
A dramatic night but we're now about 900 miles in,
Hey Red Bulletin — It’s the Turner Twins back with another update.
We had an eventful arrival into A Coruña… The wind completely dropped about 50 miles off the coast, we were drifting aimlessly with our limited power on board from the electric engine unable to get us into port.
Fortunately, in the thick fog and with no wind, we managed to intercept a French vessel using the AIS on our Chartplotter. The vessel towed us for just over an
Entry 04:
Adventure Diary
“Every day we see several pieces of large plastic”
Click to play the video
Chartplotters, and updating all the data capture forms that Plymouth University have given us. Every day we see several pieces of large plastic. What the survey is really focusing on is the macro plastics — anything we can see with our eyes — and there's been a huge amount of fishing gear, and floats and devices that we've seen on the surface.
We’re in the crystal blue Atlantic Ocean now. The
Hi Red Bulletin, Turner Twins here. We left Brest last week, and sailed directly west for about 100 miles, then tacked south to go with the wind on a direct line straight towards A Coruña, Northern Spain. More dolphins than you can count again but also, sadly, more plastic than we were hoping for.
We've been documenting the plastic by taking images, logging the position on our B&G plot
Entry 03:
Adventure Diary
So many dolphins!
Click to play the video
and there’s even a solitary bottlenose dolphin outside of the boat right now.
Tomorrow we'll be heading off to the Azores in Portugal. Everybody's in good spirits and we're all getting used to the boat and to life on the angle. From here it should be about six days to the Azores, which is a calculation roughly of 1000 Miles. Stay tuned and we’ll be back with a report of our progress next Friday…
Good morning Red Bulletin! It’s been a week of more boat repairs (the valves of our ballast tanks broke, and we ended up with half a tonne of water on one side of the boat!) so we had to pull into port again over the last few days, but happy to report that we have managed to do a lot more sailing too…
We just completed a beautiful sail over a day and a half from Brixton, South Devon, down to Brest in France. We saw so many dolphins along the way, it was ridiculous. Every couple of hours we saw more
Entry 02:
Adventure Diary
“The Sea is Rough”
Click to play the video
two headsails we have. We’re now running repairs and then our next port of call is to head further along the south coast of England and cut across. The window is closing but we should have a good favourable beam reach down to the corner of France and then across the Bay of Biscay down to Portugal. Not the start we wanted, but all part of an adventure! We’ll be back with more news next week. Wish us luck!
Hey everybody, the Turner twins here. We have left! Starting from MDL Marina in Saxon Wharf, Southampton, last week we headed out against the wind, testing our new electric motor. Unfortunately, all did not go to plan and because of some big seas and strong winds of up to 30 knots on the nose of the boat, we had to pull into Portsmouth on a Saturday night with a broken J2 sail.
It’s been very frustrating but pulling in was the safest option, and we can’t sail without J2 because it's the
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Coming soon
Coming soon
coastal green waters that we've been sailing in have now departed and left us, and the night skies have been incredible. We've navigated around and through some shipping channels and shipping separation channels and now there are 15 to 20 knots of wind pushing us south, which has been great for sailing. Fingers crossed it stays like this all the way into the next safety port…
The coastal green waters that we've been sailing in have now departed and left us, and the night skies have been incredible. We've navigated around and through some shipping channels and shipping separation channels and now there are 15 to 20 knots of wind pushing us south, which has been great for sailing. Fingers crossed it stays like this all the way into the next safety port…
waiting for the right weather to continue to the Azores…
hour into port, arriving into A Coruña in the late hours, all in
one piece.
This has highlighted how our electric engine does not have the distance that we would like it to and that it doesn’t have the range of a diesel. If we find ourselves in flat seas for days, then we're going to have to think very carefully about how we manage the boat and how we manage our power.
A dramatic night but we're now about 900 miles in, waiting for the
Click to play the video
Click to play the video
Click to play the video
Click to play the video
Click to play the video
We will have more updates when we can…
back to the UK. to start the UK tour. Again, it’s the same story — we are trying to avoid areas of no weather and no wind so we don’t end up drifting aimlessly, while also trying to avoid weather that produces strong winds, which would reduce our chances of seeing plastic for our plastic survey.
We're all in good spirits. We've been chasing blue sharks and basking sharks and doing some underwater photography, and working on getting back to the UK. We will have more updates when we can…
Click to play the video
end of our trip. A great sail back. Now we’re back, we'll be putting a hydrogen fuel cell on the boat and touring the UK…
weather buoy. It has a biodegradable packaging that gets thrown over and dissolves in the water. This means that rather than having metres and metres of cable and bits and pieces getting tangled, the Met Office and Ocean OPS provide a nice little bundle that sailors can just throw over safely.
Finally, we approached the Isle of Wight and waited for the tide to turn and for some gentle winds to pick up then headed down towards Portsmouth and the end of our trip. A great sail back. Now we’re back, we'll
Click to play the video
Click to play the video