LONDON - A bunch of Arctic explorers have found a rather ’saucy’ tool to navigate their way to the North Pole-a pair of lacy underwear for the ladies.

The Catlin Arctic Survey are using a pair of lady’s knickers to help them with directions after compasses failed to work.

The explorers are trekking 700 miles to the North Pole to measure the thickness of the shrinking Arctic icecap.ut because of being very close to magnetic north, the compasses are “going haywire”.

And also, the freezing conditions have rendered the latest global positioning satellite or GPS equipment dysfunctional.

Thus, the team led by Pen Hadow needs to rely on navigating using the position of the sun.

But, when the weather turns cloudy, they follow the direction of the wind, as indicated by a pair of lacy knickers shredded and stuck to the end of a ski pole.

Hadow, who was the first person to trek solo to the North Pole, said a supporter of the expedition kindly donated the knickers.

“It an entirely genuine situation. If you can get gossamer thin material and attach it your ski pole it is particularly useful for this project because we can cannot use the compass as we are so close to magnetic north and it is too cold to use the GPS,” the Telegraph quoted him as saying on satellite phone from the Arctic.

He added: “The knickers have taken up a whole new value operationally.”

Navigator Ann Daniels explained why the knickers were so useful, saying: “Due to our proximity to the Magnetic North Pole, our compasses are currently going haywire.”

Daniels added: “The earth’s strong magnetic field on this part of the ocean means that the compass needle simply spins uselessly in its housing. As such, we’re currently relying on more traditional methods for day-to-day navigation, using the sun (for those few precious hours each day when it graces us with its presence), and using wind direction, as indicated by the panties…” (ANI)