Despite the impact of fines dealt out by Transport Canada, the Transglobal Automobile Expedition from the grounded Russian plane will continue on as planned as the crew is geared for the next stage of their journey: Resolute, Nunavut.
“Any fine has an effect,” said Andrew Comrie-Picard, one of the main members of the expedition team. “Those fines, in terms of their scale, don’t make it ‘no go’ for our expedition.”
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“We totally understand the reasoning behind the fines and they’re not going to really affect the expedition, we’re hopeful that it helps address the issues,” he said.
Comrie-Picard said tensions arising from the fines were “frustrating” but the expedition group comprised of Icelandic, Ukrainian, Russian, German, British and American crew members remains focused.
“We have people from the Ukraine working together with people from Russia on the team — they’re literally bolting wheels on two vehicles together right now,” he said.
Beyond Comrie-Picard, the crew also includes Emil Grimsson, expedition planner and founder of Arctic Trucks; Vasily Elagin, a Russian explorer; and Vasily Shakhnovsky, a Russian billionaire.
According to Comrie-Picard, the individual who was fined arrived on the plane from Geneva and returned to the Swiss city by flying commercial. After it was released by Transport Canada the plane was flown back to Geneva without passengers.
“We know from where we’re sitting that there is no tension inside our group or no tension with Canada,” he said. “Everybody has been so welcoming in Yellowknife,” he said. “We haven’t found any resistance or any anyone being upset with our presence.”
The overall message of this expedition is also one of unity, but the crew says they also have their eyes on a new world-record.
“Nobody has ever taken wheeled vehicles around the whole surface of the planet [this] way,” he said.
The expedition isn’t just just for bragging rights, part of the project includes transporting necessary items — like technology and clean drinking water — to different parts of the world.
The crew is currently doing a test run of the expedition which will cover over 40,000 km over about 16 months — the official tour will kick off in September this year.
The teams plans to pass through Yellowknife in Feb. 2023.
To help achieve their goal in the test phase, the crew is using three F-150s (provided by Arctic trucks fitted with 44-inch tires (provided by Arctic Trucks) and four, six wheel, amphibious Russian vehicles with 51 inch tires, called Yemelya’s, which Elagin designed himself.
“How it will develop?” Elagin said. “Nobody knows for sure. I hope we will be successful. Team is good. It’s very interesting to go especially with such beautiful cars, beautiful vehicles, but they will go together with us. Just until Resolute.”
The plan is for the team to make it all the way to Resolute in Nunavut with the seven vehicles before leaving the F-150’s behind and continuing only with the Russian amphibious vehicles travelling across the Arctic Ocean and making it to the geographic North Pole.
Grimsson said the ‘Yemelya’s’ were the option of choice after other flotation-based vehicles wouldn’t fit the bill.
“We needed other vehicles,” he said. “The Yemelya’s, they’re the only one that has proven capabilities to do this, we looked at number of other options, vehicles that can float, but normally they are not really good for expedition.”
As for funding, this is done as a combination of assisted costs and out of pocket purchases.
“We have a central fund that pays the hotel bill,” said Comrie-Picard. “[Vehicles] have been mostly on the shoulders of the people who engineered them, because we have the creators of the vehicles here.”
“A lot of us have been buying our own meals,” he said.
Through Covid and factors like harsh weather, the completion of this test expedition has been a long time coming, fighting through various delays.
“Obviously, we’re taking on a lot of challenges and hardships, we don’t know what the weather will do going forward,” said Comrie-Picard. “All you can do when you do an expedition is make your best plan, bring your best experience, and then use your experience when you see new things to try to innovate new solutions.”
