Sailor Matt Rutherford has dreamed for several years of becoming the first person to circumnavigate the Arctic Ocean solo, nonstop and unassisted. He finally set out from western Greenland on June 25 to achieve this goal, but threatening encounters with Russia's security agency less than two months later forced him to reverse course.
Rutherford is the founder and executive director of the nonprofit environmental organization Ocean Research Project, which gathers and analyzes marine data from a sailboat. His route took him around the southern tip of Greenland, through the Denmark Strait and into the Greenland Sea. From there, he sailed through the Norwegian and Barents seas, and reached Russia's Novaya Zemlya archipelago in mid-August.
He was planning to continue to Canada and end his journey where it started, but Russian officials halted him in his tracks and ordered him to turn around.
On his way home, Rutherford told Live Science about his adventures a...
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