While most travelers hope to reach ancient sites or historic monuments, one British explorer tries to get as far away from them as possible.
Chris Brown hopes to reach Point Nemo, the most remote place on Earth and the graveyard of hundreds of pieces of space debris.
In the center of the Pacific Ocean, Point Nemo is so far from land that the nearest humans are on the International Space Station, 250 miles (408 km) above.
If successful, the 62-year-old entrepreneur from Harrogate will become the first Briton to complete a specific expedition to completion.
“I’m going to try to get in the water if it’s possible… I also hope I’ll open a bottle of champagne when I get there,” he said.
Chris Brown hopes to reach Point Nemo, the most remote place on Earth and graveyard for hundreds of pieces of space debris
Mr Brown and his son Mika, 32, set out on the chartered expedition yacht, Hanse Explorer, from Puerto Montt, Chile, on March 12.
The two men hope to be able to reach Point Nemo by March 20 or 21 if all goes according to plan.
While Mr Brown says he considered using a racing yacht to get to the goal as quickly as possible, he ultimately opted for the safer option of a sturdier vessel.
The luxury yacht usually takes tourist expeditions to Antarctica and was scheduled to pass quite close to Point Nemo.
Mr. Brown said that “after some negotiation, the owners agreed to our slight detour.”
Point Némo is the oceanic point furthest from land. The closest landmass is Ducie Island, located more than 1,000 miles to the north.
The crew’s destination is the so-called oceanic pole of inaccessibility, meaning it is the farthest point from earth.
From Point Nemo, the nearest land is Ducie Island, part of the Pitcairn Islands, 2,688 km away.
Besides a few small islands, the nearest large inhabited areas are Wellington, New Zealand, and Concepción, Chile, both more than 4,000 km away.
This region of the world is so isolated that it has become the most popular place for international space agencies to drop space debris.
Since 1971, more than 260 pieces of space debris have found their final resting place in the waters around Point Nemo, including the Russian space station Mir.
Over the next decade, it is also in this remote part of the Pacific that the International Space Station will be destroyed.
When the ISS lands at Point Nemo, it will actually be seven times further from any human settlement than it is in orbit.
This point has been known since 1992, when a surveying engineer calculated the farthest point from Earth, taking into account the ellipsoid shape of the Earth.
Since its discovery, several ships have approached this point, including Ocean Race competitors traveling between Auckland, New Zealand, and Itajaí, Brazil.
Point Nemo’s remote location has made it the ideal place for space agencies to remove space debris from orbit, as the chances of hitting anyone are incredibly low.
Mr Brown travels to the point aboard a chartered exploration yacht called the Hanse Explorer
However, maritime experts said “it is possible that no human being has ever crossed these specific coordinates.”
However, Mr. Brown does not seem intimidated by the extreme remoteness of the location.
Ultimately, he hopes to become the first person to reach all eight of Earth’s inaccessible continental poles.
These are the points on each continent farthest from any ocean, making them one of the most remote places on Earth.
Mr Brown has already reached five of the eight poles, reaching the poles of Antarctica, Oceania, Africa, North America and South America.
Mr Brown and his son Mika, 30, are expected to reach that point by March 21 after leaving Chile last Tuesday.
“I don’t consider this as dangerous as my expeditions to Africa or Antarctica,” he said.
“The obvious danger is that you are miles from anywhere on the sea and you are going to be very far from any shipping lanes, so if there was a problem with the boat, help would long time to arrive.’
During the expedition to Antarctica’s Pole of Inaccessibility, Mr. Brown and his son were briefly stranded in temperatures of -18°F (-28°C) after their plane broke down.
But even though Mr. Brown is adventurous, he also seems to have a keen sense of danger.
Last year he attracted media attention after it was revealed he had turned down a place on the ill-fated Titanic underwater expedition.
Mr Brown said he even paid a deposit for a seat on the OceanGate ship.
However, he withdrew from the trip after discovering the submarine would be piloted with game console controllers, saying it looked “poor quality”.
Although Point Nemo has been known since the 1990s, maritime experts say it’s possible no one has ever crossed these exact coordinates before.
Mr. Brown’s ultimate goal is to reach the eight continental poles of inaccessibility, of which Point Nemo is one.
Mr Brown plans to take water samples at Point Nemo to test the density of microplastics en route to the world’s most remote oceans.
In addition to being a dumping ground for space junk, Point Nemo also lies within a complex network of circular currents that trap large quantities of waste.
The South Pacific Gyre in which Point Nemo is located is a confluence of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, the Humboldt Current and the westerly wind drift.
As a result, this region of the Pacific has become something of an ocean dump.
Fortunately, this area is also one of the least biologically active regions of the world’s oceans.
In waters 4,000 meters deep, nutrients are so scarce that almost no life can exist.
Scientists only found bacteria and tiny crabs living in vents on the ocean floor near the point.