An Australian adventurer will use a replica whaling boat in an attempt to create a perilous voyage by Sir Ernest Shackleton in the Southern Ocean in 1916.
Tim Jarvis, 46, of Adelaide, will be farewelled from Sydney on Sunday morning.
He and a crew of five sailors and mountain climbers will sail on an replica of the James Caird, a 6.9-metre whaler, across 800 nautical miles from Elephant Island in the South Shetland Islands to South Georgia Island in the Southern Atlantic.
AAP reports the replica boat is named the Alexandra Shackleton after the explorer's granddaughter.
The crew will then traverse the interior of South Georgia using traditional gear.
The original voyage took 17 days and then three days to cross South Georgia.
Jarvis said a few things have changed since Shackleton's day.
"The winds may be a bit stronger," he told AAP. "The winds could be in our favour, but they will also make for bigger seas.
"And a lot of crevasses have less snow than they used to, so the chances of a crevasse fall are greater than when (Shackleton) did it.
"It's going to be a dangerous expedition."
Shackleton left Elephant Island in April 1916 in the small lifeboat after members of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition had become stranded on an ice floe.
He made it to South Georgia and raised the alarm at a whaling station, and rescuers were eventually able to save the stranded party without any loss of life.
Jarvis will depart from South America next month.