Annals Of Underwater Archaeology–Saving Titanic: Undersea ubermensch Robert Ballard, who discovered the location of Titanic in 1985, went back to the wreck last spring and didn’t like what he saw. Minisubs bringing tourists to view the sunken icon had damaged the deck, the bell and light on the mast are missing, and there is a gash on the bow where the name Titanic is written. More than 6,000 artifacts have been removed from the wreck, prompting Ballard to call for restrictions that will help prevent further damage and looting. “You don’t go to Gettysburg with a shovel,” he told the local Mystic newspaper, which has a provocative feature on Ballard’s views. For example, Ballard wants to use underwater robots to repaint the hull, to combat rust. And he’d like to install remote cameras throughout the wreck, to allow web surfers to take a virtual tour. Ballard has just released a new National Geographic book, with stunning photos of the wreck then and now. And his return visit will be featured in a special on the National Geographic channel December 16. Balllard has profited more than anyone from the discovery and public interest in the Titanic, so his outrage has to be taken with a grain of salt. But the Old Girl deserves maximum protection and respect, so it doesn’t matter a damn who the messenger is…
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Category: Uncategorized
Vendee Globe Update–Doldrums Lineup: King Jean Le Cam is still leading the fleet, and the top boats are all diving toward a Doldrums gate at about 26 degrees West longitude. Daily report here. Position report here. Feature of the day comes from Alex Thomson’s Hugo Boss team. It’s called “A Day In The Life Of A Vendee Racer,” and it’s for everyone who thinks the racers are having a nice cruise through the trade winds:
“Just before darkness set in last night, Alex was enjoying 20 – 25 knots of wind with spinnaker and full main flying. All of a sudden everything on board, including Alex was propelled from one side to the other as the pilots gybed the boat, leaving it completely on its side. Alex was left grabbing onto a winch as he realised the main sail was pinned down by the vang, and he considered how to right his boat. Fortunately he was quickly able to gybe the boat again and get it back upright. “It’s very extreme”, he commented calmly.”Everything crashes over to the opposite side and it takes a second or two to realise what’s happening”. Having righted the boat, Alex switched the pilots back on and did a quick inspection to ensure no obvious damage. But just moments later, the boat gybed again, this time leaving the kite wrapped around the mast. By this stage he was really having to hang on and began to worry about the miles he would be losing but somehow he managed to untangle the kite and right the boat once again. Determined to keep panic at bay, but with legs trembling all the same, Alex spoke with the shore crew and got the back-up pilots up and running.
With his confidence a little shot and the boat in chaos, Thomson decided that a cuppa and some food would be in order before tackling the tasks that faced him.He went below, boiled the kettle and then just as he was pouring the hot water into his delicious freeze-dried culinary delight of the day, the first squall hit, with gusts of 30 knots and upwards. The sudden jolt of the boat caused the boiling water to spill, scalding Alex’s left hand. “It was really painful but I realised that was a lot going on outside and so my first priority had to be to sort the boat out.” Alex came on deck to find HUGO BOSS not just in the middle of a huge squall with increasing winds, but also in the middle of an electrical storm which sent his wind instruments crazy. With his left hand pretty much useless, he rushed to the foredeck and pulled the spinnaker down. By this time, it was about 4am, and exhausted from the previous 9 hours adventure, Alex finally made it down below to get some well earned rest.
At 6.30am, having slept through his alarm, he awoke to find himself in 30 knots of wind but within a few minutes of being on deck, the wind speeds had leapt to 45 knots! Though the sleep had left him feeling a lot calmer, Alex decided to stay on deck and monitor the back-up pilots, his confidence in his equipment not yet fully restored. When asked about the condition of his hand, he said, “I have no doubt that the doctor at home would say with a burn of this nature, ‘keep it clean, don’t use the hand but most importantly don’t get it wet’.”
Amazingly, through all this Thomson actually managed to hold his third place, and even gain miles on the leaders. That hand could get very, very ugly though…
“Hmm. Don’t think my burns will dry out anytime soon…”
Tuesday Trash Dump: The special of the day is fantastic feats caught on video. Check ’em out…
Event 1: Rollerblade Tow And Launch
Event 3: World’s Most Unorthodox Soccer Save
“You guys are toast. Wait ’til you see the little scoring play we’ve worked up…”
Kickass Hall Of Fame–Takeru Kobayashi: He’s slight of build, just 132 pounds, and looks as if he could use a good meal. But Kobayashi is a freak of nature, capable of shovelling food into his mouth and down his gullet at simply astounding speeds. He has won the Coney Island hot dog eating contest four years in a row (his current record: 53 and a half dogs), he has eaten 17.7 pounds of cow brains in 15 minutes, and he has consumed 20 pounds of rice balls in a mere 30 minutes. Pardon me a minute, I have to hurl. Okay, I’m back. Kobayashi’s latest feat: this week he won a contest by eating 69 hamburgers in just eight minutes (and pocketing $10,000). For his eating prowess Kobayashi is a certified celebrity in his home country of Japan. In fact, Kobayashi has turned speed eating into a craze there, a controversial one because Kobayashi wannabes keep choking–and even dying–in their attempts to Be Like Takeru. So how does Kobayashi compare to all the other gorge maniacs out there? David Baer, of the International Federation of Competitive Eating, puts it bluntly: “Kobayashi is, without a doubt, the greatest eater ever to live upon planet Earth.” What can I say? We have the pleasure of watching a living legend in action…
“Oh man, there’s got to be a better way to get a Maalox endorsement deal…”
Vendee Monday…: King Jean (Le Cam) and the other leading boats (PRB, Hugo Boss, VMI, Sill) are lining up for the squally, wind-hole pocked Doldrums, which sit just north of the Equator. Best Doldrum passage looks to be at 24/25 degrees west. Daily report here. Position board here. Race favorite Mike Golding went west early to line up for the Doldrums, and paid a massive price as the Trade Winds filled slowly from east to west, dropping him into 6th place as all the boats to his east rocketed ahead. He’s got the better sailing angle going south now, and is gaining some back. But he admits that Le Cam and Vincent Riou have sailed a perfect race so far. The key question is: what will the fleet order be across the Equator. This is the first real “gate” of the course, and is a critical snapshot of where the competitors are relative to one another. The next leg, following the Equator, is the race down the South Atlantic to the Roaring Forties. Whoever gets into the Southern Ocean first will have a big advantage. The Southern Ocean leader frequently wins this race, as long as the boat survives…
Leading Le Cam: “Heh-heh. It’s easy to snag the lead when you’ve snuck some extra crew on board…”
Joyon Halfway, Ellen On Ready To Be On Her Way: Solo sailor Francis Joyon is about halfway across the Atlantic in his attempt to break PlayStation’s outright east/west Transatlantic record. You can find Joyon’s positions here. Joyon has been speeding along nicely, keeping pace (sort of) with PlayStation, but the second half of the voyage will be tricky. Joyon is north of PlayStation’s route, and a low pressure cell is about to cross his path, threatening light winds in the center or headwinds if he gets caught south of it. On the other hand, the backside of the system will bring strong north/northwesterlies, which could give Joyon a strong finishing kick on a route that normally sees light winds near the finish (PlayStation had light winds for the final hundred miles). We’ll see what happens, and right now Joyon is projecting an arrival outside PlayStation’s record time but inside Club Med’s previous record time of 10 days 9 hours. Which would still be very impressive…
While Joyon is again out demolishing solo record times, and beating many a crewed time, Ellen MacArthur is now officially on standby to chase Joyon’s superhuman solo round-the-world record of 72 days 22 hours. MacArthur’s 75-foot trimaran B&Q is in Falmouth, waiting for a favorable weather window to set out from the English Channel. The best system for a slingshot across the Bay Of Biscay, and down into the Trade Winds on northerly winds, is a well-established high pressure system out in the Atlantic, and right now there’s nothing obvious in the offing. But it will come.
Here’s a little background on this record from MacArthur’s site, which is the biggest, baddest solo sailing mark out there:
WHY IS THIS RECORD SO EXCEPTIONAL:
1800+ people have reached the summit of Everest…
450+ people have been in space…
12 astronauts have stepped on the moon…
5 solo sailors have attempted to race around the globe NON-STOP on MULTIHULLS (the fastest and most extreme boats to traverse the oceans)…
Only 1 succeeded to go the distance non-stop…
Francis Joyon, current solo round the world record holder, set off on 22.11.03 and finished 72 days, 22 hours, 54 minutes and 22 seconds later on 3.2.04 to set a new world record. This is the time MacArthur has to beat [see below for other 5 solo round the world attempts on multihulls].
PREVIOUS MULTIHULL SOLO CIRCUMNAVIGATIONS:
Previous attempts to race solo non-stop around the world on a multihull:
1968-69 Nigel Tetley on board Victress (Golden Globe competitor, sank 1100 miles from the finish line off the English coast but Tetley had already crossed his outbound track thereby technically completed the first solo circumnavigation in a multihull)
1973-74 Alain Colas on board Manureva finished in 169 days (stopped to make repairs)
1986-87 Philippe Monnet on board Kriter finished in 129 days (stopped to make repairs)
1988-89 Olivier de Kersauson on board Un Autre Regard finished in 125 days (stopped to make repairs)
2003-04 Francis Joyon on board IDEC finished in 72 days, 22 hours, 54 minutes, 22 seconds (non-stop)
If MacArthur makes it non-stop she’ll be guaranteed at least one record: fastest woman solo and non-stop. But anyone who knows MacArthur knows she doesn’t give a damn about setting a woman’s record. There’s only one thing she cares about: beating every other sailor–man or woman–out there…
MacArthur Set To Chase: “Francis is really making my life difficult with his insistence on rewriting the record books. But damn he’s good…”
(Photo: Benoit Stichelbaut/DPPI)
Masters Of Speed Follow-Up: The French Trench delivered big time over the weekend. Not only did Yellow Pages Endeavor’s outright 46.52 knot record fall (twice), four other national and assorted records were set. Click here for the report. But here’s the heart of it:
“What a fantastic but grueling two days of rugged and psychotic conditions that actually went unsailed a lot of the time because the wind was blowing too hard for the equipment that we all had. 5.0’s were huge just to give an idea of what we were facing and that is what the smallest sails were for the most part. In fact, a modern 4.0-4.4 would have been the preferable size for just about everyone as we got hit by afternoon stretches on both afternoons whereby there was a solid 50-knots gusting to 60 for literally two hours at a time.
Be jesus……….it was nuts and the lid literally flew off the top with the wind gods. Unfortunately the angle we were asking for was too much today (130-140) as big chop developed on the course making it very difficult to go fast.
Survival was the name of the game sometimes but breaking the record further requires calculated control, power and finesse, which is simply impossible to achieve in unison with the Mistral. The wind is far too irregular and twitchy to be super fast, fast enough for 50. We are looking for the big SE for that but it is clear that all the sailors were pretty happy with what we got and simply making it through the experience without injury!”
Finian and his boys are gunning for 50 knots next, and figure it will take a hard southeasterly to get there. Fifty. That I’d love to see.
Here are the times:
11 F. Maynard BVI 46.82 46.60 (Outright)
22 D. Garrel FRA 44.21 43.23
63 D. White GB 44.03 43.44 (British and production board)
57 B. v.d Steen NL 43.71 43.02 (Dutch)
10 S. Allen AUS 43.48 42.09 (Australian windsurfing)
62 M.v.Meurs NL 42.11
24 J.B. Gautier FRA 40.55 40.20
44 T. Bielak FRA 39.66
114 K. Jaggi SUI 39.80 38.04
26 F. D’Urso ITA 39.35 38.96
And here are the pics…
“I may look like a dork. But no one can deny I’m f*ckin’ fast…”
(Photos: Jean Souville)
BREAKING NEWS–Hail King Finian!: We interrupt your normal weekend wetassing to bring you the following news flash: Windsurfer Finian Maynard is now the fastest sailor on the planet (pending ratification from the World Sailing Speed Record Council. Yesterday, in a honkin’ Mistral that was blowing between 35 and 45 knots, Maynard ripped off a windsurfing run that averaged 46.82 knots, stealing the outright record back from Yellow Pages Endeavor, which put up a speed of 46.52 knots at Sandy Point in 1993. So score a huge victory for the windsurfers, and for the French Trench over Sandy Point. But .3 knots is not a revolution. The next major breakthrough in this sport of speed sailing is the Big Five Oh…
Finian’s Fastest: Want to know the secret of my speed? Surfin’ barefoot…”
Have A Wetass Weekend…:
(Photo Scott Markewitz; Location: Whistler, British Columbia)
Vendee Globe Update–Next Up, Cape Verde: The lead boats are south of the Canary islands and getting into lighter trade winds. They’re headed for the Cape Verde islands, which are the next waypoint on the sprint to the Equator. Big move in the fleet overnight came from Jean Le Cam (“King Jean” as he is known on the solo sailing circuit) on Bonduelle. Le Cam has rocketed his way into second place; see the latest standings here. There is now a distinct leading group of six boats, with about 70 miles separating first and sixth. Then there is a gap of 90 miles to seventh, which is a gap that will be hard to jump anytime soon. In his latest radio conversation Nick Moloney on Skandia provided some interesting insights into the stresses of solo racing, and the difficulty of sleeping in an Open 60 race boat rocketing through the seas, always on the edge of disaster:
“Bit of sleep during the night, it was tough though, with my inexperience its very stressful to rest…stressful when pushing, sails flapping, lot of water everywhere, sheets banging again the hull as chute collapse and refills. Every time you engage you pilot, go below and try to shut your eyes, boat goes deep [ie wind goes right behind the boat, with risk of an involuntary gybe, and resultant chaos/damage] down a wave, heart in throat, run on deck to try and stop the gybe…NOT CONDUCIVE TO SLEEP AS YOU CAN SEE!
I’m used to handing the helm over to someone else, not to an electronic box. I reckon I’ve slept only 9 hours since the start!”
The Vendee Globe website also has in interesting article about dealing with the noise of racing. Just one of the elements that makes the Vendee one of the world’s most extreme competitions…
“Goddamn, this tub is noisy. I might as well be in a subway car…”
The Earthist Chronicles 