Ice!

the long version

Retiring on a pension after being torpedoed in WWII, Tristan Jones embarks on a test of endurance that will last over two years, nearly killing him more than once. Attempting to sail farther North than anyone ever has, he embarks from Iceland on the Cresswell in the summer of 1959. His only companion? A three-legged, one-eyed Labrador named Nelson. He spends his first winter holed up near an Eskimo village in a Greenland fjord. After a violent snowstorm and without an adequate supply of food, he spends a full week digging himself out of enormous snow drifts until he is able to be seen and rescued. This incident kicks off a series of impossible adventures as he voyages to the treacherous waters of the North Pole. His second winter at sea finds him trapped in an enormous ice pack in the Arctic Ocean. For 366 days he is marooned on the craft. As he faces his loneliness and the possibility of his own death under the dazzling Northern lights, Tristan Jones's incomparable sailing adventure reaches an unimaginable climax. Ice! is a classic tale of adventure, its author acclaimed by Time magazine as "someone Lindbergh would have understood".