First person to row in open waters of both Polar Regions
Who
Fiann Paul
What
first first
Where
Antarctica ()
When

First person to row in open waters of bothPolar Regions is Fiann Paul (Iceland), who rowed the open waters of the Arctic Ocean south to north from Tromsø to Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway, in a crew of five (20–30 July 2017),and then north to south from Longyearbyen, Svalbard, to Jan Mayen Island, Norway,in a crew of six on board Polar Row (8–21 August 2017), and two years later of the Southern Ocean from Cape Horn, Chile to Charles Point, mainland Antarctic Peninsula (13–25 December 2019) in a crew of six on board Ohana.


As of 2020, Fiann Paul was the captain of the only three successful human-powered pioneering expeditions into the open-waters of both polar regions.

The definition "Ocean crossing on the Polar Open Waters" applies to pure human-powered expeditions across major water basins above the Polar Circle in the Arctic or within the actual boundaries of the Southern Ocean, from land to land, excluding any use of sail as well as the expeditions around islands, within archipelagos and coastal routes, i.e. within vicinity of land and possibility to get ashore.