Adventure
Jock Wishart is both a polar and maritime adventurer. In a single year, Jock circumnavigated the world on the Cable & Wireless power boat to set multiple records, before rowing the Atlantic with teammate Duncan Nicholl.
He has been to the Arctic many times on expeditions and was a member of Sir David Hempelman-Adams expedition to record and measure the 1996 position of the Magnetic North Pole. He has since organised the Polar Race and other expeditions in the Arctic.
In 2010 Wishart announced his intention to take a rowing boat to the certified 1996 position of the Geomagnetic North Pole (The position is 78°35.7N 104°11.9W). Jock judged the increased seasonal sea ice melt caused by climate change made it conceivable he would succeed.
The team completed their 450 mile voyage on August 25th 2011 after 28 days rowing from Resolute Bay in northern Canada to the 96 position (78°35.7N 104°11.9W). The timing of the expedition as being crucial because the final section of the journey is only navigable for a few weeks of the year before refreezing. The expedition was captured in a documentary fillmed by Mark Beaum,ont for the BBC – Rowing the Arctic.
Jock returned to the 96 MNP in 2015 for the children’s charity of rugby – Wooden Spoon. He took teams of rugby players skippered by ex-Lion Tim Stimpson and former England 37 captain Ollie Phillips on the Arctic Rugby Challenge – which played the ‘most northerly rugby match in the world’ once they arrived.
In 2000 he led the BT Lumina sponsored expedition “Shackleton’s Steps”, which replicated, for a TV documentary, Sir Ernest Shackleton’s traverse of South Georgia in May 1916.