Author: timzimmermann

Annals of Invention–Personal Hovercraft: Meet the Hov Pod (the marketing department must be staffed by engineers…). It could be useful for anyone who wants to skim across really shallow water or over hard sand. Here are the vital stats:

Top Speed Water 40 mph – 60 km/h

Cruise Speed Water 25 mph – 50 km/h

Fuel tank 25 litre

Cruise fuel consumption 10 – 15 litre/hour.

Weight Payload (on water start) 250Kg.

Options include Intercom Kit Fast unload Trailer, Custom Cover.

The retail price of the Hov Pod is £14,750 plus VAT (about $23,000)

And it looks like it could even be fun. But there is only one real question to ask: is there any chance it could wipe out the most noxious, annoying, combustion-powered device ever invented….yes, the JetSki? If so, I love this thing.



“Sh*t, I thought this thing was supposed to attract good-looking women….”

Woodvale Transatlantic Rowing Race–Heating Up….Finally I knew this thing would stop being so boring if I just ignored it for a while. And for the first time in this event an unholy battle has broken out at the front of the fleet, with two boats–Team CRC and team Holiday Shoppe Challenge–dueling it out, stroke for stroke and blister for blister. Team CRC has been leading most of the way, but Holiday Shoppe must have been inspired by a desire to be home in time for Christmas and has rowed flat out to take the lead by a mere 28 miles. Further back in the fleet, light winds and a counter-current are making teams miserable (well, what did you expect, when you decided to ROW across the Atlantic?). Here’s what Atlantic Wholff had to say about things:

“Yes, we’re still in the treacle! As well as our sense of humour the last 10 days spent in this very unusual phenomenon has cost us about 15 miles per day in lost distance and will add 2/3 days to our crossing time…”Life within this current has been really strange. There have been no fish to see (or catch) and very little bird life, which is in complete contrast to previous weeks when there has been abundant wildlife and we have had to put up with a continuous nightime barrage of flying fish intent on knocking us out! Last night we witnessed from about 10 miles a most incredible electrical storm and as we were on the same track, were able to have our route illuminated for us throughout the hours of darkness.”

Atlantic Wholff Finds the Countercurrent: “Dammit, I told you we should ignore the advice of that stupid bear in the bow….”

(Photo: Challenge Business)

Sailing Update I–Bye, Bye Olivier!: Facing a forecast that was pleasingly pathetic, Olivier De Kersauson turned tail and is sailing back to Brest, abandoning his attempt to break my…sorry, I mean Steve Fossett’s east to west transatlantic record. From the boat:

“This Sunday morning, Geronimo is on course back to Brest. Wind conditions

have deteriorated even further for the French crew, with less than 10

knots of wind, which is backing easterly all the time. Worse still, the

24- and 36-hour forecasts leave no doubt of what would lie ahead: a gaping

windless hole opening up before the bows of Geronimo. The anticyclone will

extend as far as 15° south and no trade wind is forecast until next week.

With no chance left of beating the record set by Playstation, Geronimo’s

skipper has laid a course back to base.”

It makes sense, in a way. DeK cares more than anything about the round the world (RTW) record, which he lost last year, and is planning to make an attempt this winter. So if he sails the boat all the way to the American seaboard without even breaking a record, he’d have to rush back to France to get set up for an RTW departure without having anything to show for his troubles. The record breaking game is a tricky one, and De Kersauson has always been willing to pull the plug if he thinks things aren’t looking good. So my world record certificate can continue hanging, for the moment. There don’t seem to be any other pretenders setting up for a run at it. Phew…til next year…..



Heading Home: “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass……”

Sailing Update II–“Right Way” Joyon: It’s raining round the world sailing record attempts. Last Friday, French multihullista Francois Joyon set off from the English channel, sailing solo in a trimaran (French only). He’s attempting to break the solo round the world record, and unlike our friend VDH is going the right way around (west to east), so the winds in the Southern Ocean will be behind him. Joyon’s trimaran, sponsored by IDEC, is none other than Olivier De Kersauson’s old steed. DeK set a crewed round the world record in the old girl, in 1997, and has attempted at solo circumnavigations in the boat as well. His best solo time was 125 days, but he stopped at least once (and maybe twice) and did not go out of his way to admit that–which is one of the reasons he annoys people. I believe, in fact (based on research I did for my book), that no one has ever managed to solo a multihull around the world non-stop, so that is one first that Joyon can try to put on the board. In terms of time, interestingly, the fastest solo RTW voyage is 93 days, in a monohull. With a full crew, multihulls leave monohulls over the horizon (the crewed RTW record is about 30 days faster). But when one tired wretch is responsible for keeping everything going (and in the case of multihulls, responsible for keeping the boat upright) the performance difference between multis and monos shrinks fast. So it will be very interesting to see how Joyon does, and if he sails safely he will have the probable pleasure of waving to VDH somewhere off Antarctica as he skims downwind and VDH slogs upwind. Bon chance, Francois…..



“25 knots boatspeed, and downwind in the Southern Ocean. What’s Van Den Heede thinking, the poor bastard…..”

Sailing Update III–VDH in the Southern Hemisphere : “Wrong Way” VDH’s GPS went from positive latitude to negative latitude last Friday, as he crossed the Equator, the first big milestone in any around the world voyage. The next part of the trip involves sailing south along the coast of South America, toward the dreaded Cape Horn. Once VDH gets there, the sh*t starts hitting the fan, as he has to pound his way west, into the teeth of Southern Ocean gales that can blow 60-knots plus. Oh yeah, and the temperature will be in the 30s. Can you say “MASOCHIST.” Anyhow, for the moment VDH is enjoying warm trade wind weather, and Cape Horn is a long, long way ahead. He’s 16 days in and almost two days ahead of the existing record. Here’s his latest report:

“Since crossing the Equator at 11 minutes past 5 CET on Friday night, everything has been going well!

I have picked up the fine SE trade winds. With my ballast tanks filled with 3 tonnes of water, I should manage at least 250 miles per day without any problem, especially when the wind gradually comes around to the East. For the time being, I am sailing upwind but not too close-hauled, with the solent and the mainsail raised.

I have carried out some minor repairs. I managed to find the tiny fuel leak in the portside Volvo engine. It was just a screw, (which had worked loose because of the vibrations, I suppose) that needed tightening up a bit. Then, I patched up the mainsail, where it had been rubbing on the reefing point.

I’m keeping an eye on anything that rubs and frays all the time. Last night wasn’t the quietest of nights, as I was sailing along with a cargo ship on either side of me, and they were both on the same course as me and were hardly making any faster headway. I had them within sight for a large part of the night. Now they have moved off and I’m going to have a little nap!”

Mmm, nap. That sounds good……

Obsessive Geronimo Check-In–Day 3: The sailing tracks diverge….Geronimo is in lighter winds and sailing a more direct route to the Bahamas. On PlayStation, we had to take a southerly route to stay in the fresh breezes. Our boatspeed rarely dropped below 18 knots as a result. According to my calculations, after 3 days Geronimo is about 173 miles further from the finish in San Salvador than PlayStation at the same point in our voyage. That’s about 10 hours of sailing in these speed machines. Not bad….but not much of a cushion either. There’s a complicated weather picture ahead, so it’s going to get interesting…..(Mid-day update: Geronimo just checked in, reporting light winds and a 24-hour period of “calm” ahead. That will be torture, if true. I might start feeling sorry for these guys….)

“Bonjour, Olivier. May your vessel reek with the stench of rotting flying fish….”

Annals of Ambition–Round The World Swim!? It’s hard to know whether to take this seriously or not, but there is a 36-year old Brit named Robert Garside who has announced that starting next June he will start swimming…and will keep swimming, and swimming, and swimming, until he laps the planet. The total will be about 25, 000 miles and he plans to start in Greece, swim the Med, head down the coast of Africa to Morocco, across the Atlantic to Brazil, north to the Panama Canal, across to the Pacific (what will he put on his canal permit?), across the Pacific to the Galapagos, then Tahiti, and on to Australia and Indonesia–pause for breath–and finally back up to the Red Sea and into the Med via Suez (if he can get past the US Navy on the lookout for swimming terrorists). His plan is to sleep in an egg-shaped carbon fiber capsule that he will tow attached to his foot, and to swim about 6-7 hours a day–wearing a wetsuit, flippers, goggles and a snorkel. Garside expects the whole enchilada will take up to 6 years. Yup, that’s years. And he says he hopes various boats and national coast guards will help deliver food and water. Err, hopes? Okay, this thing is totally insane and I love it. The only reason to give Garside any credence at all is the following: he has already circumnavigated the globe once, running 35,000 miles and burning through 50 pairs of sneakers (he was jailed in China and mugged in Panama). Yes, some critics caught him flying 800 miles from Mexico City to the US border, but give the guy a break. This has to go down as the most ambitious, insane adventure EVER announced….so I hope to hell he goes through with it.



25,000 miles?: The prune factor alone will be off the charts…..

Obssessive Geronimo Check-In–Day 2: De Kersauson lags, and the wind has gone light for the next 24 hours, holding boatspeed to around 13 knots. Heh, heh. “I speet in yore general deerection….”

Shekhdar Southern Ocean Row–Postscript: Ever want to know what it is like to be rolled 3 times in a 26-foot rowboat, in the Southern Ocean? Jim Shekhdar got in touch with our friends at ExplorersWeb (face it…there’s no place on earlth that is truly isolated) to give them a brief account of the bloody end to his ambitious rowing marathon:

“I was involved in an enormously violent pitchpole which damaged my head, neck and most importantly, the front hatch. Apart from that, everything was wiped off the top of the boat apart from the anemometer and the iridium aerial, so to have gone on would have been a little bit foolish, I think. It was a long 4 hour. I took 2 of them in the proverbial washing machine position with four-point harness and a helmet and trying to stop the blood flow from my head. Basically just going around in circles, it was quite surreal, really. I was sitting upright, the world was going around me as the boat in and rolled over.”

Hard to blame the guy for calling it quits…..

Annals of Adventure–This Time It’s Personal!: Right now, somewhere off the coast of Africa, there is a large–you could even say chubby–Frenchman named Olivier De Kersauson, in a large–you could even say ugly–trimaran named Geronimo, traveling at 20-30 knots. DeK and his crew of grizzled misanthropes are trying to break the east-west transatlantic record, which runs from Cadiz, Spain to San Salvador, Bahamas. This record is called the Discovery Route because it supposedly mimics the course Columbus steered to the New World (navigator that he was he thought he had arrived in Asia). Normally, I would be cheering Geronimo on. De Kersauson is a veteran record breaker, a colorful character who loves to play mind games with the rest of the sailing world, and a genuinely funny guy. But in this instance I can’t. The current holder of this record is Steve Fossett and his 120-foot catamaran PlayStation, which took 9 days, 13 hours, 31 minutes and 18 seconds to make the crossing last February, at an average speed of 16,93 knots. And grinding winches, washing dishes, and trying to avoid any major injuries was yours truly. Fossett had a great crew and I rode their coattails all the way across, so the one and only world record I have–or ever will have–is the East-West Transatlantic Sailing Record (and Fossett was nice enough to send me a framed certificate in case anyone doubts it). Therefore, I sincerely hope that De Kersauson and his crew sail safely….but very, very slowly. If one of the floats fell off, or the mainsail blew up, I can’t say I would be entirely unhappy. They are a bit behind our run for the moment, but we blasted out of the blocks and then slowed down toward the finish. So I’m preparing the voodoo doll and any other bad weather juju I can for the middle part of the run. Let us pray…..



Big, Bad, Geronimo: Maybe that guy will fall off the bow…that should slow ’em up…..