The Earthist Chronicles

Wondering whether the new Volvo Open 70 is a fast boat? Wonder no longer. Telefonica Movistar, skippered by Bouwe Bekking and on the way from Wellington towards Cape Horn, just broke the outright monohull 24-hour record. Their mark? 530 miles, which beats the old record held by Mari Cha IV (which is almost twice as long) by 5 miles. Equally impressive, they reportedly hit speeds of 36 knots at times, and were just 10 miles shy of the 1994 solo record set by Laurent Bourgnon in his Open 60 trimaran. We’ve come a long way in monohull design when we are comparing a sloop and an Open 60 tri. What can we conclude from all this? Well, it is complicated so pay attention: these boats are f*cking fast. Which will be great for the Volvo Ocean race which I’m reasonably certain starts sometime this decade (seems like forever since the last one).

If you want to slurp up more color about these new super-surfers, check out the transatlantic crossing diary from ABN AMRO. Here’s Sidney Gavignet’s account of what it’s like to drive these babies:

“Balaclavas and gloves of all kind appeared on deck. Last night the atmosphere was not the same. No wool hats, but true diving balaclavas with helmets with an attached visor. 30 to 35 knots of wind, and the bridge turns into a waterfall. 25, 28, 30, 32 knots: the speedometer goes up relentlessly.

One can only guess what the digital instruments are reading while the boat attacks another wave! We don’t know anymore, is it better to surf it or to go through it? In one of these waves, doing over 30 knots, the bow pulpit (that stainless steel tube structure) did not resist the encounter between the boat’s speed and the sea water resistance. It ended up completely bent.

In this specific wave I had totally eased the spinnaker to alleviate the pressure on the mast. At the wheel, constantly doing close to 25 knots, with small decreases to 20 knots, the accelerations are enormous. The amplitudes to turn the wheel have to be very brief: any rotation is amplified by speed.

At these speeds we never use more than half a turn of the wheel,compared to its entire perimeter in normal conditions. The key momentis the change of the Helmsman. “All sails up” means you have to get into the rhythm in a split second in the black and referenceless night.”

Hmm, contrary to many expectation maybe this Volvo race thing is going to be a pretty good show…

“Heh-heh. Nice work, Bouwe. Now let’s call Bob Miller up and suggest that Mari-Cha will make a hell of a planter…”

Desk chair too hard? View lousy in your cubicle? Boss on your ass for not keeping track of paper clip inventory? Then kick back and do a little Hobie Tiger sailing. And not just any sailing, world championship sailing. All courtesy of an inspired competitor who thought to wear a head cam so all the deskbound losers in the world could fantasize for a minute or two (even the soundtrack–for once–is great). So clip onto the trapeze and click here. Incredibly relaxing, and mesmerizing…

“Sh*t! Of all the boats to foul while we’re on port tack, we have to foul that idiot with the head cam…”
(Photo: Sharon Green)

This is old(ish) news, seeing as it happened March 27 while I was taking my ease on the island of Culebra, but it definitely bears noting: on that day intrepid, indomitable, Quixotic, eccentric French ocean rower Maud Fontenoy hit “terre” in Tahiti, completing the first Pacific crossing by a woman. The numbers? 6898 klics (TWC refuses to do mileage conversions anymore, it’s time to join the rest of the world. Okay, I’m too lazy…) in a blazing fast 72 days. That makes Mad Maud the first woman to row both the Atlantic and the Pacific. What’s next? She’ll want to eat some steak frites and buy a new IPod. But it’s obvious that the Indian Ocean awaits…

Maud Finds Tahiti: “I’m buffed, bronzed and bra-less. Wonder if I’ll get any decent dates while I’m here…”

“That was fast…”

Who knew? You’d think that somewhere in the millions of words and images eulogizing good ol’ JP II that some enterprising reporter, some blow-dried TV correspondent with an eye for something more than the thoroughly predictable, would have come up with this critical nugget of biographical information. But no. Once again it is the much maligned Blogs (referred to as a “circle-jerk by a bunch of guys in pajamas” (or something to that effect) by a honcho at CNN who obviously had a very interesting adolescence), that produced the goods. In this case, it was the ever-interesting Horse’s Mouth, who came up with the photos of a much younger Karel Wojtyla dipping his paddle. Check it…

“And it was over here that I saw a bass that had a face like the Virgin Mary…”

“Damn, if all this praying ever takes me anywhere, I might have to give all this up…”

British sailor Sam Davies is doing alright. She’s got sponsorship from Skandia, and she’s a thoroughbred in Ellen’s Offshore Challenges stable. And right now she’s racing solo across the Atlantic from St. Nazaire in France to Cienfuegos in Cuba. The race is called the Trophee BPE, and it’s a novel 4,265 mile track. The twelve skippers set sail on Sunday, and TWC will be following Sam, who is the only Anglo and one of two women in the race. Right now she’s in 5th, about a dozen miles from race leader Jeanne Gregoire (the other dame). Sam’s site can be found here, and it’s got all the usual Offshore Challenges bells and whistles, like an extensive photo gallery and an audio/visual page. The breeze is picking up now, but here’s Sam’s report after a slow night:

How do you manage to sleep in these light winds?
“It’s difficult to sleep in these conditions – spinnaker, genoa, tack, tack, jibe – tacking everything but the opposite way in the boat and every few minute the wind shifts around.”

When do you expect to see more breeze?
“I can see some horrible looking clouds ahead which hopefully will signify the beginning of the shift and the change to the north – but at the moment it is an Easterly which is not what was forecasted.”

How was your first night of freeze dried food?
“It wasn’t freeze dried, it was fresh pasta. Fresh pasta lasts for ages! I haven’t eaten very much so i think I’ve got enough for at least another 2 nights which is pretty good. For lunch I’ve got carrot salad and tomatoes, fresh aswell so I’m benefitting from the fresh food. It’s very important to be happy especially when it’s like this – when everythings pretty stressful and the sails are flapping around and there’s nothing you can do to make the boat go any faster. It’s good to make sure you’re happy and I’m happy so that’s good”

Yes, it’s good to be happy…and racing…and headed toward a tropical isle…

Delirious Davies: “Of course I’m happy. This is really gin…”

Not surfing. I repeat: not surfing. But that didn’t stop this unfortunate skipper from testing the cutback capabilities of his little sloop in the white water under San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. The result is an unbelievable sequence of pictures, snapped by a guy named Wayne Lambright (who normally writes restaurant reviews). Here’s Lambright’s brief description of the action: “I was at Fort Point today, finishing up an eleven part photo essay on the surfers of San Francisco, and then I saw this sailboat, I said to the crowd, “LOOK, this sailboat is going to surf the waves!” Then it capsized, The surfers came to the rescue, and saved the two sailors.” I’ve posted a few of Lambright’s key photos below, but if you have the time (and the stomach), check out Wayne’s whopping 113 image slide show, which documents both the disaster and the rescue (thanks to reader Scott Dreier for making sure I didn’t miss this in my post-Caribbean rum punch haze)…

TWC has been, umm, sporadic, at best. But that’s what happens when you try to post while vacationing with little kids, on an iffy wireless connection, with the sun and sea beckoning out the window, and the rum drinks always close by, and a sailboat down at the dock, and perfect beaches just minutes away, and…you get the picture.

I’ll be back in action, for real, on April 5th….

“I can’t believe Tim is missing all the crazy sh*t we’re up to. Lazy bastard…!”
(Photo thanks to TWC reader Shawn)

He spends his days in bed, needs help walking, and is a century old. But that isn’t stopping Norman Vaughan, a veteran of Admiral Richard Byrd’s 1928 South Pole expedition, from laying on a major birthday plan. What’s his idea? This December he plans to climb Mount Vaughan, the 10,300 foot bump on Antarctica that Byrd named after him. Vaughan has already walked up the thing as an 89-year old. This time he plans to ride a sledge–dubbed the Norm Hauler–until he reaches the top. And once he gets there he’ll crack open a bottle of champagne and take his first real sip of alcohol. ”I told my mother I wouldn’t drink until I was 100,” Vaughan tells the Chicago Sun Times, which has a nice profile of the teetotaling old geezer. Hope he’s got some good swill. The bad stuff might just finish him off…

Admiral BRRR..D: “Harrump! I can’t believe ol’ Normie is still alive. Though maybe I would have survived longer if I wasn’t so damn lazy about scraping snow off my head…”

Here he is: The Birdman Of Verbier. Not sure how to classify what this guy is up to. Is it flying? Is it parachuting? Who knows. I can say, however, that it looks pretty damn cool. So click here to watch the man fly in Quicktime. And here to watch him in Bill Gates-vision…

“Hmm. Should I fly down a Black Diamond run, or stick to the easy stuff…”