Mega yachts don't just look pretty

Paul Allen, the bloke who set up Microsoft with Bill Gates but who tries to keep out of the limelight, is a boating nut. Ever since his shareholding in the computer software company made him one of the world's richest men, Allen has toodled about the globe in ever larger motor yachts.

His current plaything is the 414 foot Octopus, built by Lurssen in Germany, and one of the larger privately owned mega yachts on the water. Octopus has been a regular feature in the millionaires' playgrounds of the West Indies, the Med and the Pacific -- but now it is taking on a new role as the world's most comfortable expedition ship.

The Canadian media reported this week that Octopus was lying in the harbour at Baffin Island, in northern Canada, getting ready to undertake a transit of the fabled Northwest Passage. The Northwest Passage, a quick route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans via the Arctic Sea, has been a lure to explorers since back in the days of sail.

Roald Amundsen, the famed Norwegian explorer who achieved fame by racing to both the North and South Poles, became the first bloke successfully to make the voyage in the early 1900s. Before and after him, dozens of people died trying to make their way through the ice.

The transit of the Northwest Passage can only be made when the summer sun and warm currents melt the pack ice -- but over the years sudden storms have frozen the sea and trapped dozens of vessels. The route taken by most who try it takes them 800 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle and only about 2000 kms south of the North Pole.

Octopus has filed plans with the Canadian Coast Guard to transit the Northwest Passage this month. If Allen makes it, he won't be the first mega yacht owner to taste success. Former US Secretary of the Treasury, William Simon, made the trip in his giant gin palace Itasca in 1994.