Schoolboy, 14, aiming to be youngest person to ever sail around the North Pole is a week away from the ice

At 14, Benji Edwards from Cambridge is hoping to become the youngest person to ever sail around the North Pole and break a world record in the process.

The mission is also personal. Benji lives with a painful long-term condition affecting his gut. He aims to raise thousands of pounds for charity.

Here he writes for ITV News about his incredible journey so far.

• Friday 22 July

Sorry I haven’t written for a while, it’s been hectic. Now I'm in Murmansk in Russia.

We had a safety briefing at about 12pm and left at six ion in the evening because the immigration people had to come onboard and get us all to promise we weren’t smuggling vodka.

On the way out of Murmansk we passed the dock that houses a portion of Russia’s nuclear ships, the Atom Fleet. Because of where we were all of them were icebreakers. They were huge ships, larger than most cross sea ferries.

Russia has several ports that have nuclear vessels. The only ones I know are Murmansk and one in the black sea.

Because of how nice it was during my watch I was prepared for some truly awful weather just down the road. It hasn’t arrived yet, maybe we’re just lucky. I hope so.

This afternoon I looked outside and the sea was like glass. Completely smooth with no wind, that’s barely changed. My mother and I put on sea sickness patches before we left.

We also got to see two dolphins. No one has been sick yet, I call that a result.

At the moment we’re heading for the top of a very long island who’s name I can’t remember.

After that is when we expect to see ice. If we’re very luck indeed this might all take less that 25 days.

We’re managing to go along fairly quickly and I’ve got my watch in not too long so I’ll leave you now, Bye. I’ll write tomorrow.

• Track Benji's journey through the Wicked Weather website here