Russ Roberts Speaks in Orange, Virginia

News report from the Orange County Review:  Come to the Orange Historical Society's Research Center, 130 Caroline Street, at 7 p.m. April 25 to hear Russ Roberts' presentation:  The Inner Reaches of the Northwest Passage.


For well over a century, the Holy Grail of explorers was the Northwest Passage, an imagined sea route around North America to the riches of the Orient. A few even hoped to reach the passage through areas once within the bounds of Orange County.  

For ships of those times, the passage did not exist-but in recent years, melting ice has opened up some perilous travel routes along the fabled Passage. Come to the Orange Historical Society on April 25 as Russ Roberts tells us what it was like to sail across the top of the world during the summer of 2009.  Roberts, an airline pilot, sailor, and former WJMA announcer and music director, will talk about the voyage of the Fiona, a 42-foot fiberglass pleasure boat with a 77-year-old skipper, its navigation  and  icy travails, the arctic weather, the lives of  its people and animals, and  the condition of the arctic ice amid all the news about climate change.