Category: Uncategorized

After a day of moderately fast sailing, Sodebo and Hydroptere are 500-plus miles down the track. You can watch a video of Sodebo’s departure here (Just asking: Why would you shoot a departure video that didn’t include footage of the boat crossing the damn start line? Possible answer: French cinema has always been famously non-conformist…). Both boats are gybing their way toward the Canaries, with the wind up the tailpipe. Sodebo logged a 473-mile 24-hour run, and has 3362 miles to go. She’s averaged 19.8 knots so far (Fossett’s outright record run averaged 16.92 but they were very fast over this portion of the course). Hydroptere logged a 441-mile 24-hour run and has 3396.4 miles to go (averaging 18.6 knots so far). I’m impressed Hydroptere is hanging in there…

“Mon Dieu, Alain! We might as well be on a beach cat…”

Just feeeel the alliteration. Sometimes fate, weather and human ambition present the rest of us with a grand spectacle, an unexpected diversion…an excellent excuse (I’m really rolling with this alliteration thing….) to travel via computer to a time and place that is far, far from our cloistered cubicles (he scores again…). And today we have the happy coincidence that two extraordinary sailing machines have left Cadiz, Spain and set out on Route Of Discovery in search of speed, satisfaction and, possibly, a world record for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic, east to west. They are bound for San Salvador in the Bahamas, and machine #1 was introduced to you last week: the ever-interesting, ever-fragile, foil-freak known as Hydroptere. (In case you missed it, click here for an awesome video of Hydroptere at speed). Machine #2 is a more traditional, yet still awe-inspiring, ORMA 60 trimaran, one Sodebo, skippered by world-class French skipper Thomas Coville. Coville is after Francis Joyon’s solo crossing record of 11 days, 3 hours, seventeen minutes. Hydroptere is after the outright record of 9 days, 13 hours, 30 minutes. Sodebo appears to be averaging about 20 knots, and Hydroptere looks to be doing about 15. This should be a spectacular match race (though my money is on Sodebo). Some web wizard out there should do us all a favor and set up a chart that tracks both these boats together…

Sizzling Sodebo: “Forget it, Hydroptere. Real records require real boats…”

Are you tired of your suburban hamster wheel life? Do you yearn for the open road, the funk of roadside bars and motels, the crash of thunder, and the chaos of big weather? Well, there is a group of crazed storm chasers out there, living life on the road and always in search of The Big One. And you can ride along with them via this great LA Times profile of Mark Svenvold, author of “Big Weather: Chasing Tornadoes in the Heart of America.” It’s a wild, crowded ride, with storm junkies from all over the world racing around the American Midwest hoping to get sucked into a massive funnel cloud. Here’s the scene:

By 3 p.m., storms are collecting to the left and right of us. A big anvil shape, white flat-bottomed with a puffy soft top, looms over the windshield. It begins a ghostlike spiraling and then fades. Suddenly, it’s as if all the clouds are spiraling. Outside the car, the wind changes. The air is slightly warmer, pouring along at 60 mph, feeding the storm ahead.

The Dopplers are deployed and spinning and triangulating. Gusts tear through tall grass as we pass through Akron, Colo., population 4,662, about 100 miles east of Denver. Every nerve cell has been activated.

“SLCs,” says Svenvold. “Scary Looking Clouds.”

But the storm is having trouble organizing. The convoy stops on the side of the road to watch.

“Just do it,” yells a student, a yellow bandanna tied around his neck. A deep aquamarine section forms within the dark grayness of the clouds, a beckoning, seductive place. The storm is a little more than one mile away. Lightning strikes seem immaterial to the bigger purpose. Someone spots a new base, a new cell forming from the old cell. It’s coming in from the north on a storm moving east. High winds are blowing slushy hail.

“We’re gonna get smacked by outflow in a second,” yells Wurman, and sure enough, a gust of rapidly cooling air swirls around him. It’s not a promising sign.

“It’s a weak rotation,” someone yells.

“Do it! Just do it!” yells the guy in the yellow bandanna, frustration edging into his voice.

And then there is silence.

These guys should try following my 3-year-old daughter, a creator of epic storms and shocking chaos…

The Hunted: A tornado spins toward the ground in Claflin, Kansas…

The Hunter: “Heh-heh. Too bad the grunts in Iraq don’t have armor like this…”
(Photo 1: Patrick Richardson / AP – Great Bend Tribune; Photo 2: George Wilhelm / LAT)

Act V of the Louis Vuitton Cup is now finished with the win going to Italy’s Luna Rossa thanks to a technical protest against the boat that actually won on the water, Sweden’s Victory Challenge. Hey, it’s the America’s Cup. The protest room is always part of the action. But forget about the details, and instead enjoy the sight of America’s Cup class boats going at each other in some fleet racing. Click here, and then here. Good vids, but bad, bad, ultra-pretentious soundtrack (at least isn’t Euro techno-pop). Nice to be able to watch from 3000 miles away…

“Uh-oh. A crowded leeward mark rounding could get very expensive…”

In honor of the A Cat Worlds, currently being dominated by TWC friend Pete Melvin…

Give this guy credit for guts (“Life’s too short not to go big. You gotta go big”)…and hubris…and stupidity. Big cliff, plus mountain bike equals, well, click here to watch…

“Looks great. Hey, I think I’ll jump my bike off it…”

Hold on tight. Alan Thebault’s wild design–a cross between a trimaran, a hydrofoil, and a waterbug–will set out tomorrow from Cadiz, Spain for San Salvador in the Bahamas in an attempt to break the east-west transatlantic record. The current record is held by Steve Fossett’s PlayStation at 9 days, 13 hours, 30 minutes and Hydroptere certainly has the legs to beat the required average speed of 16.2 knots if–and it’s a huge IF–the spindly thing can stay together for the passage. I’m skeptical, but you never know. Regardless of what happens, Hydroptere is a spectacular machine, and if you want to see what she looks like at speed, go to the updated and much-improved website and click on the movie. This is going to be a good one…

Want to be the first one on your block to fly into space, to experience zero gravity, to puke your guts out? You’re in luck. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, the first commercial space airline, is now open for reservations. You can sign up to discuss your booking (and whether you need to update your will) here. And if you are welcomed aboard it will only cost you a cool, umm, $200,000. If you are not sure mortgaging your entire life will be worth a brief fling into space, you can watch this very slick simulation to get your rockets running. Will I be signing up? Nope. If NASA can’t fly people safely into space and back, I’m not sure I think Virgin Galactic can either. This thing has Titanic written all over it…

“Now, remember, make sure you hand out the barf bags before you pass the champagne…”

Well, thanks to an innovative satellite tag tracking program we now know the answer. Early this month, Bermudiana, a wild dolphin fitted with a tag, went down to almost 2000 feet. That’s pretty damn deep. No wonder the U.S. Navy has long been interested in trained dolphins for rescue and recon work. You can read all about Bermudiana and the tagging program here. And here’s a cool website, devoted entirely to, you guessed it: dolphins…

“I could have gone deeper, but I ran into a mean-ass sperm whale…”