PlayStation, adventurer Steve Fossett's 125-foot catamaran, smashed many records just 8-11 years ago, including the 24-hour speed record, the trans-Atlantic record, and the Jules Verne Trophy, circumnavigating in 58 days, 9 hours.
How fast things happen–and how fast boats sail–in this crazy sailing life. I think all of those record have since been broken again, and in the case of the Jules Verne, twice broken, now down to 45 days, 13 hours.
Steve Fossett died when his plane crashed in the Nevada desert in 2007. One of the many record-breaking projects he left behind was his submersisble, designed to take ...
My association with this vessel dates back to 1992, when I sailed across the Atlantic with Cliff and Ruth Ann Fremstad aboard their Alden schooner Constellation. After we unfortunately lost Constellation in a river in Spain that summer, I was a bit surprised when Cliff and Ruth Ann, who had been living aboard the schooner for several years, announced they would have to move back aboard their other boat. My surprise morphed into amazement when they described it to me and showed me some pix. It was a 52-foot Dutch botter jacht named Groote Beer (or “Great Bear”), which ...
There are very few voyages these days that truly earn the superlative "epic." Matt Rutherford, an Annapolis sailor, just delivered one. Non-stop, and solo, around the Americas, via the Northwest Passage and Cape Horn. More than 27,000 miles in 310 days. Incredible.
“Long time, no see,” Rutherford, 31, said into the mike, with the same familiar combination of awkwardness and comedic timing that those who know him best had missed these last 309 days. He was still barefoot, his toenails brown and gnarled, and thick shocks of
Does it say something about sailing or does it say something about journalism that even the New York Times had to look for an Americas Cup tie-in when it reported the tragic deaths of five amateur sailors aboard a keelboat rounding an island at the edge of the Continental Shelf, 27 miles from the nearest point of the planned 2013 Americas Cup course inside San Francisco Bay?
In the last week I have not had a single sailor-conversation that has not turned to the tragedy of losing five souls in the 2012 Farallons Race. For that matter, it came up ...
He's crossing oceans at high rates of speed and giving his family an experience that is unlike most any other in this harried, technified, 21st Century (course the Bumfuzzles know a thing or two about this, as well).
Only one out of six of the VO70s on the current leg of the Volvo Ocean Race has managed (or been lucky ebough) to avoid a major breakdown. Nice, PUMA.
First, a quick video summary (and full details of Groupama's breakdown and options are here):
The chaos and catastrophe have been sufficient to induce VOR CEO Knut Frostad to issue a statement of concern. And, naturally, all the breakages have set off the usual armchair designer critics, who have taken to sailing forums across the globe.
To sort it all out, and explain things from the design side, ...
What's up with Artemis? Don't they know that when you play the America's Cup game you are supposed to be paranoid, secretive, and hostile to media efforts to learn anything about your plans and designs? And that you need lots of security goons to shoo inquisitive, photo-snapping journalists away?
Apparently not. Yesterday they distributed pictures of their new AC72 wing. And now we see that they've also allowed CNN Mainsail's Shirley Robertson behind the scenes for a pretty extensive look at their team and progress. The result is three sweet video reports.
Is big-wave surfer, and shark-riding freediver Mark Healey crazy? Or does he know something the rest of us don't?
A little of both, I think, as this video of Healey diving with bull sharks attests. He goes on from the title quote above to say: "People have ulterior motives. I think people are way more dangerous than sharks." Hard to argue with that.
This guy, however, seems more than a little crazy.
James Cameron, a film-maker by profession and an explorer by nature, is going deep. Very deep. Sometime in the coming weeks he'll squeeze into a one-man submersible and dive to the bottom of the Challenger Deep, the deepest known point in the world's oceans. Located in the Mariana Trench, it is almost seven miles down (significantly deeper than Everest is high). It's another world.