Posts Tagged ‘Atlantic Ocean’
Vendee Globe leaders round Cape Horn and head for home
We have not reported on the Vendee Globe sine December 21st, a long time in the world of round the world ocean racing but now with little more than 6,000 miles to the winning tape the leaders can feel they are on the final leg.
Michel Desjoyeaux on board Foncia has slightly increased his lead over Roland Jourdain in Veolia Environment to approximately 100 miles and they have both now sailed into the Atlantic and are heading north east of Argentina before crossing the Atlantic from the Brazilian coast to the African coast, passing Cape Verde, the Canaries and finally north to France and the finishing line at Les Sables d’Olonne.
But behind them there has been drama – when we last reported Jean Le Cam in VM Materiaux was in third place but on Tuesday his boat capsized as he approached Cape Horn and Le Cam was stuck in the hull. Vincent Riou on board PRB turned to help and in a dramatic and daring rescue was able to throw a rope to Le Cam who on the fourth pass was able to grab hold.
The two skippers carried on round Cape Horn but in a cruel twist of fate PRB was dismasted having passed Cape Horn and is now under tow of a Chilean vessel on its way to port.
This has enabled Armel le Cleac’h in Brit Ait to take third position as he rounded Cape Horn quaffing champagne and he now lies approximately 750 miles behind the race leader.
In the video below from acvor you can watch some of the action from the 2006/07 Vendee Globe which has some frames from rounding Cape Horn – this has to be an extreme past time demanding extreme respect to those individuals who challenge themselves against such extreme elements.
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Full speed ahead for Cape Horn
The leading boats in the 2008 Vendee Globe are now passing to the south of New Zealand and heading out into the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean.
The next land to be seen will no doubt be the sothern tip of South America where the Pacific and Atlantic oceans meet at Cape Horn which has a fearsome reputation.
And there is still about 12,000 miles to race so there is plenty of time – another 30 to 40 days at sea – for events to unfold. Heading toward the New Zealand gate Michel Desjoyeaux in Foncia has a 60 mile lead over Roland Jourdain in Veolia Environment with Sebastian Josse – BT – a further 100 miles (approximately) behind Veolia Environment and Jean le Cam in VM Materiaux in fourth place.
Of the 30 boats that started the race 12 have now had to retire leaving only eighteen still in the race. For those that don’t know the Vendee Globe is a solo trans global race for open 60s – and what is an open 60? Read on:
Open 60s are one of the fastest boats in sailing — built in carbon fibre using the latest hi-tech structures, they are designed to be as light as possible (for speed) but strong enough to withstand the worst the seas can throw at them.
They are designed from the outset to be sailed by just one person. There are very few comforts aboard, and the skipper will spend most of the time in the ‘crash’ seats in a cuddy that separates the open cockpit and deck from the navigation work station. This is the nerve system, packed with electronics and computer equipment to help navigate, check performance, and communicate.
The boat has a number of different sails to suit various conditions — not as many sails as a boat designed to be sailed by a 12 strong crew, but enough to keep the solo skipper working hard all the time matching sailplan to wind and sea conditions. There are three types of sails — a mainsail, headsails on furlers (rolled up around the stays) and a spinnaker — although alone, the spinnaker is only used in very stable conditions (to be caught in a squall with this huge balloon of sail could mean disaster — end of race).
The boats also have to prove their ability to turn themselves the right way up if they become knocked down or turn upside down. This is part of the latest IMOCA safety rules which require the boat to right without the assistance of waves by the skipper taking some action to turn the boat over.
The video below from yachtpals will give you an idea of what can be expected in the southern oceans – kind of tough.
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Tragedy for scuba diver challenging the Mount Everest of diving
It really saddens me to report on yet another tragedy from the oceans. Believe me we do not talk many of them but here is another case of a scuba diving trip going horribly wrong. We have had people suggest that scuba is not extreme – purveying an air that it is just like a stroll in the park. IT IS NOT. And it doesn’t matter whether its 20 feet or 200 feet you just must take into account that when scuba diving you are in an environment where you do not belong – it thereby invites tragedy, as in this case, if something goes wrong. Do not be complacent, always err on the side of caution and respect that you are in an alien environment – please.
To get a true picture of what Houston diver Terry DeWolf was trying to do when he lost his life exploring the wreck of the Andrea Doria this week, think of touring a museum at least 230 feet from the nearest breathable oxygen and at least 50 miles by water from the nearest hospital.
The site, deep in the Atlantic Ocean south of Nantucket, Mass., is the grave of 51 people who lost their lives when the luxury liner collided with another ship and went down more than 50 years ago.
It is also considered the Mount Everest of diving, a perilous plunge of more than 200 feet to the seabed that now, with DeWolf’s death, has claimed the lives of 15 divers.
“It’s a pretty dangerous dive,” said Capt. Ed Ecker of the East Hampton Town Police Department. “I don’t want to speculate, but what generally happens is that they either get the bends or something goes wrong with the equipment.”
On Monday, the dive boat John Jack sailed out of Sportsman’s Dock in Montauk, N.Y., ferrying DeWolf and nine other divers to the site of the wreck as part of the 2008 Andrea Doria Expedition, a charter led by Richard Kohler, a famous diver and television personality who gained fame on The History Channel’s Deep Sea Detectives program.
The first divers hit the water Tuesday at noon. DeWolf went in Wednesday around 7:50 a.m. CDT with the day’s divers, but didn’t return as expected about four hours later.
“Some of the divers went back down and ended up recovering his body,” said U.S. Coast Guard 1st District public affairs officer Connie Terrell.
Coast Guard helps out
The John Jack’s crew was assisted by a detail from the U.S. Coast Guard’s Hammerhead, an 87-foot cutter dispatched when Joseph Terzuoli, captain of the John Jack, sent out a distress signal. From there, the John Jack brought DeWolf back to Montauk. Terzuoli’s wife, Susan, said he was unavailable for comment Friday as he helmed the John Jack back to its home port of Brick, N.J.
Ecker said there would be an autopsy at the Suffolk County Medical Examiner’s Office in Happauge, N.Y., and that the toxicology report would be forthcoming.
“They have to check his tanks and so forth, and with the tanks it could take a couple months,” Ecker said.
DeWolf headed Tri-Tek Communications Inc., which touts itself as “a full-service provider of turnkey solutions to the telecommunications, cable television and various other industries” on its Web site. He and his wife, Tammy, were married 18 years and had three daughters: Amanda, 17; Christina, 15; and Kaitlyn, 12.
Amanda said she is soldiering on because “the crying has all gone out of (her) system.” A family member said DeWolf had been diving for more than 20 years.
Ann Keibler of Houston-based dive shop Oceanic Ventures Inc., confirmed that she knew DeWolf but would not confirm that she had dived with him or comment further, citing the family’s wishes.
Interest in Andrea Doria
In October of last year, DeWolf went on a trip to the Cayman Islands and brought back an ornate glass chandelier that seems to have piqued his interest in the Andrea Doria.
The Italian luxury liner, which sank in 1956, is popular with divers not only because of the technical challenges it presents, but because it is considered a trophy dive: The wreck, now deteriorating rapidly, is dotted with relics such as embossed china cups and dishes.
“He liked really unique things that told a story by (themselves),” Amanda DeWolf said of her father.
Typically divers who make deep, dangerous dives to sites like the Andrea Doria are “technical” divers, who are more highly trained and use more advanced equipment than “nontechnical” divers, who seldom venture deeper than 130 feet.
DeWolf family photo
Terry Sean DeWolf, head of Tri-Tek Communications, died Wednesday after diving to the Andrea Doria shipwreck.
ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE
The Italian luxury liner Andrea Doria sank in 1956, claiming 51 lives. Today, the shipwreck is considered the Mount Everest of diving. Fifteen divers have died attempting to dive the shipwreck.
Our sincere condolences go out to the DeWolf family and my thanks to Neil Stratton of the chron.com who first reported this story
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Coast to coast on a mountain bike.
This great tale of a mountain biking adventure is brought to you by Rob Penn from The Guardian – it sounds like the kind of journey that you have to do to be able to call yourself a ‘mountain biker’. Pictured below is Rob at the head of Glen Cairn.
‘I have found a new place for my ashes to be scattered. It’s in heart of the Highlands, on the north-south watershed in the Cairngorms, at a glacial T-junction looking up towards the central massif. Such places may abound in the Australian Outback and Alaska, but on our busy little island they are rare. And this one’s a gem. The grid reference is NJ193026. Go there as soon as you can.
It’s not easy to get to, of course. Antony, Dave, Spencer and I arrived there under a lowering sky after two hard days in the saddle. We were a third of the way into a 200-mile, off-road, mountain biking ride from the North Sea to the Atlantic, across the broad waist of Scotland, an adventure billed by the influential American magazine Outside as one of its ‘10 trips of a lifetime’.
The Scottish coast-to-coast is an epic and deserves respect. We had assiduously planned our four-day ride from Aberdeen to Fort William following disused railway lines, Land Rover tracks, medieval drovers’ routes, forest footpaths, 18th-century military roads, canal towpaths and, inevitably, sections of road. We had carefully chosen the time of year (mid-May), plotted the route on a stack of OS maps, booked accommodation, serviced our bikes, bought the right kit and trained.
On the first morning, we sped out of Aberdeen along the old Deeside railway, lined with electric yellow broom. At Banchory, we crossed the tan-brown river Dee in sunshine. Climbing beside the Water of Feugh, we caught the first glimpses of the dark, heather-clad hills, burnt-back with rectangular shapes like a Rothko painting. The world seemed right; our progress was good.
But climbing into the Birse forest, there was a metallic crunch and Spencer’s bike stopped dead. The damage – a mangled chain and a shorn mech hanger – was beyond our limited tool kit. Salvation, however, came in the form of Moira Gray, a shepherd’s wife, who drove home to pick up the very tool we lacked. ‘Ah remember be-ann stuck ah Glenshee un a snowstorm wi’oot a chain tool,’ she said in her delightful brogue. ‘An ah heed ta help ya oot.’
But we were papering over cracks, and limping over the Hill of Duchery on the ‘Fungle Road’, an ancient drovers’ thoroughfare connecting Deeside with Glen Esk in Aberdeenshire, the bike seized again.
Next morning, the chef at the Loch Kinord Hotel drove Spencer into Ballater with the crippled bike. At Cyclehighlands, the excellent shop on the town square, Richard did his best, without success. He was, however, so keen for us continue on our adventure, he agreed to rent us a bike and drive to Fort William to collect it.
By midday, we were heading up Glen Gairn into the mountains. The gentrified scenery of the Dee valley gave way to rough farmland, stone walls and granite cottages with antlers above the porches. Beside the humpback bridge at Gairnshiel, we turned north-west onto the moors, passing flocks of plovers, curlews and oystercatchers on the flats beside the peaty river. Lapwings with their conspicuous, wavering flight, flapped and ducked overhead. Further up the glen, the air was filled with the liquid song of skylarks, and approaching Corndavon bothy we put up the first grouse: the plump, slightly comical bird sprang from the heather beside the track and wheeled away from us, cackling.
After two days of almost unbroken sunshine, the sky darkened as we neared the snow-dappled mountains. ‘This is big country,’ Dave said tremulously, at the confluence of Glens Gairn and Builg, where I would like my ashes to be scattered. On the footpath past Loch Builg, a section that tested our riding skills, the first pellets of rain began to fall. Descending steep-sided Glen Builg, the intensity redoubled and roared back and forth across the Builg burn; we were soon soaked. At Inchrory, a grand Highland stalking lodge above the river Avon, the track improved dramatically and, with the scent of a pub apparent, we tore through the last eight miles to Tomintoul.
Grey skies, stiff bodies and perhaps a dram too many made for a slow start on day three. Snipe zigzagged out of the rushes as we struggled across a bog to reach the river in Glen Brown, but the avian highlight was passing through a picturesque rock-cleavage in the delightfully named Braes of Abernethy. Dave and I were waiting in the heather when a golden eagle with a 2m wingspan wafted silently overhead. It was an electrifying sight.
Descending from the braes, we made our way into a stand of Caledonian pine forest. The like covered most of Scotland at the end of the last Ice Age; less than 1 per cent remains. This landscape of scattered birch, rowan, juniper and statuesque Scots pines has a profound sense of antiquity. ‘You half expect to see a grey wolf bounding up the hill,’ Spencer said.
Hunched over our bikes, we hurtled down the track past Ryvoan bothy into the Rothiemurchus forest. Increasingly confident in our mountain biking skills, we negotiated the fine mix of single-track and forest rides to reach the river Spey as the lights illuminating the Ruthven Barracks by Kingussie began to glow.
Our last day was always going to be a struggle – 70-plus miles, crossing the Monadhliath mountains via the 750m Corrieyairack Pass. The Hermitage Guesthouse set us up with a mighty breakfast and the first 20 miles, following the Spey through Newtownmore and Laggan, were a good warm-up.
The English General Wade built the road in 1731 as part of a grand scheme to suppress Jacobite rebellion in the Highlands with troop mobility and good communications. It didn’t work, of course – the Jacobites rose again in 1745 and, ironically, passed this way.
Yet Wade’s roads are enduring feats of engineering, expertly tracing the contours of the land, and they’re as busy today with walkers and mountain bikers as they were with English soldiers 250 years ago.
Evans Cycles had generously leant us bikes for the ride, to assess whether a full-suspension or a hard-tail (front suspension only) was most suitable. On the long, tough ascent to the Corrieyairack Pass, much of it pushing the steeds amid patches of thick snow, we concluded that the lighter, hard-tail bikes were ideal for a multi-day adventure in Scotland. We gave the bikes, and our back teeth, a rattling on the hour-long belter of a descent from the pass down to Fort Augustus in the Great Glen.
As we reached Loch Oich, the sun was waning slowly, like us. We had three hours to cycle 30 miles to reach Fort William and catch the Caledonian Sleeper. As lambent light filled the glen, we raced beneath Ben Nevis, dreaming of being lulled to sleep by the ‘ta-dum, ta-dum’ of the lolloping train.’
Essentials
Wilderness Scotland (0131 625 6635; wildernessscotland.com) runs seven-day guided and supported coast-to-coast trips, from Aberdeen to the tip of the Ardnamurchan peninsula.
First ScotRail (08457 55 00 33 ; firstgroup.com/scotrail) operates a daily sleeper from Fort William to London Euston; one-way ‘Bargain Berth’ tickets, booked in advance, cost from £19.
The Hermitage Guesthouse in Kingussie (01540 662137; thehermitage.clara.net) has five en-suite bedrooms and serves a great cyclists’ breakfast (from £28 per person).
Tenerife kitesurfing action on video
Great kite surfing video from gloomer666 on YouTube with some excellent action of kite surfing at Tenerife – where’s that I hear you say – its one of the Canary Islands duh – where are the Canary Islands?………Ok you have a point – somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean between Africa and America……..will that do huh? Look just get on the darn plane that’s going to Tenerife and hope the pilot knows where he or she is going!! Enjoy.
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Extreme challenge
One individual, one boat, three oceans – this extreme challenge has never before been attempted.
I would like to introduce you to Ollie Hicks, a 26 year old Brit who is about to attempt one very extreme adventure and that is to circumnavigate the globe in a rowing boat! Crazy? Well probably but then people would have said that of anyone who tackled the ‘impossible’ – the list of names is too numerous but throughout our history there has always been a first – from the oceans, deserts, space, mountains and continents – and here we have another intrepid explorer ready to risk life and limb to achieve that accolade.
But this adventure is not just about being the first: Hicks is hoping to raise £1,000,000 for charity as well as collecting scientific and medical data and highlighting the effects of global warming on our planet as well as demonstrating what can be achieved by using renewable energy sources.
The Global Row will also be working to raise awareness of climate change and global warming and showing that it is possible to live off alternative energy sources such as solar and wind power.
It is particularly fitting that the Global Row should depart this year in the middle of International Polar Year which aims to focus attention on the Northern and Southern Polar regions.
The journey will encompass a region which has already been significantly affected by climate change.
- The Southern Ocean has warmed up by 0.17C between 1950 and 1980
- In 1995 the Larsen A ice shelf disintegrated from the Antarctic Peninsula.
- In 2002 1,250 Sq. miles of the Larsen B ice shelf collapsed in 35 days.
- Warming in Antarctica is 5 times the international average +2.5C
since 1945. - The melt season has increased by 2-3 weeks in the last 20 years.
- The Adelie penguin population has shrunk by 33% in 25 years due to decline in winter sea ice habitat.
The basis of the voyage is to utilise the favorable currents and winds in the Southern Ocean. The expedition will leave New Zealand later this year and head towards 50 – 55 degrees south latitude and into the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC), this is also the midst of the Furious fifties where the prevailing westerly winds swirl around the planet. These winds and current will help maximize Hicks’ daily mileage and by staying above 60 degrees south the worst of the cold and ice will be avoided.
By following the 55 degrees south line across the Pacific Hicks will pass through the Drake passage and past Cape Horn aiming to make landfall on South Georgia for a resupply and to overwinter for 4 – 5 months. From South Georgia Hicks will continue eastward across the Atlantic ocean passing well to the south of the Cape of Good Hope and into the Indian Ocean before an intended return to New Zealand, some 18 to 24 months after departing.
The Southern Ocean has long been regarded by mariners as the wildest of the oceans and has been described to in much maritime literature and legend. Sea temperatures vary from about 10C to -2C. Cyclonic storms travel eastward around the continent and are frequently intense because of the temperature contrast between ice and open ocean. The ocean area from latitude 40 degrees south to to the Antarctic circle has the strongest average winds found anywhere on earth. In winter the ocean freezes outward to 65 degrees south in the Pacific sector and 55 degrees south in the in the Atlantic sector.
At these latitudes – the roaring 40s, furious 50s and screaming 60s will be prevalent and with no landmass to slow them down they always present an extreme challenge to any mariner. Huge icebergs miles in length and width, smaller bergs and sea ice are ever present. High winds, mountainous waves, powerful storms, fog and poor visibility will all have to be negotiated. Perhaps the greatest risk to Hicks’ boat is accumulation of ice on the deck and superstructure, in certain conditions this can form thick and fast compromising the stability of the boat. And what hope of a friendly helicopter appearing overhead in the event of a disaster……..well your guess is as good as mine when you are a thousand miles from the nearest base.
We at Xtremesort4u wish Ollie the best of luck and we will keep you, our readers, informed of this remarkable voyage as and when he sets out.
Hicks’ intended journey – starting from Wellington, New Zealand, November 2008, 15,000 miles, scheduled completion 18 to 24 months later, Wellington, New Zealand
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