Rowing across the Atlantic in 48 days | Hacker News Reader

Rowing across the Atlantic in 48 days

clem.travelmap.net

118 pointsclementmas32 comments

Congrats Clément and team! Just spent 45 minutes reading the blogs!

Two random comments I liked:

"Last night we saw a meteorite land a couple miles away from us - it was only small but it had a big blue trail"

"For example, one weekend, go out saturday morning on your bike and don’t come home until Sunday evening. Or maybe take the whole family out, bring a tent and go for a hike that takes longer than a day. Or even just sleep in your garden one night with the kids"

Congrats! If you like the story, here's something that may interest you: a website of 71-year-old man who kayaked alone across the Atlantic three times in the last few years http://www.aleksanderdoba.pl/en/

And there's Katie Spotz who rowed it solo in 3 months in 2010, for a clean water charity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katie_Spotz

Amazing accomplishment!

Strange thought: A future where we have VR world records, crossing a virtual realtime ocean. Sitting for days in a chair, rowing and rowing.

there are already WR for indoor rowing. We are getting there!

As a friend at a rowing club said, ergs don't float.

It's good exercise, but it's not at all the same thing.

http://www.concept2.com/indoor-rowers/racing/records/ultra-d... only goes to 12 days, 12 hours, for a team of 10.

They don’t give distance rowed, but I guess that’s in relay with one rower at a time because that’s what is done in the 24 hour records (they also change rowers every !15 seconds or so! because that is fastest. For an example, see https://youtube.com/watch?v=WSbK9gP5pYU)

Lets us all remember Alain Bombard ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Bombard ) who taught us the most important lesson: if shit happens you will survive a very long time at sea.

I was under the impression his claims were discredited and he was sneaking supplies (including fresh water).

I don’t know that, but his impact is on the psychology of the victims: the idea that they will survive for a long time.

Whenever I hear of someone crossing the Atlantic, be it in a boat or a barrel, my immediate concern is the huge waves, how would they deal with them?

I remember reading about that. During storms they close their boat, so the water can't get in, and then they wait it out.

The key is to move up and down with them. If you are stationary, then you are looking at things like 5 meter high waves with a 10 second period. So you go up for 5 seconds then down for 5 seconds. You get used to it.

For sailors, they tend to be going more or less downwind which makes the period longer for a given wave height. Assuming they aren't going straight down wind, their sail also forms a sort of feedback system which keeps them heeled over at a fairly constant angle so there isn't a lot of boat rocking going on.

You can see typical values at http://www.stormsurf.com/page2/papers/seatable.html Note that is in "feet@seconds" and the blue values are typical, the white cells wander off into computational fantasy.

Yes, we had a storm at the end of the first week. 6m high waves. We dropped the para-anchor, locked ourselves in the cabins and waited 36 hours.

I had never heard of a para-anchor[1] before, so I just looked it up - they're really cool! It's a brand of sea-anchor[2] that looks like a big parachute that goes underwater, effectively anchoring the boat where it is without having to reach the sea floor.

1: http://para-anchor.com/

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_anchor

More significantly, a sea anchor orients a craft parallel (and leeward) of the wind, and hence, prevailing swell.

That makes me ill just thinking about it. We’re you always invincible to seasickness or was it something you developed?

It was my first time on the ocean/sea ever. Felt sick the first night puking a couple of times but never felt sick ever again.

In case nobody noticed but the author of the blog and the record breaking rower also wrote the software to do the blogging. Very clever!!!

I liked the entry concerning Red Nose day:

"We are team 4 nations and one of us is English. He brought us all today a red nose because today is red nose day in England and you have to wear the thing all day so that you can't hardly breath during rowing but that's all ok because it is for charity! Colin explained us that today that they collect money to support poor English who don't have a penny left to buy enough booze to get drunk which results in a nice little red nose. As team 4 nations we support that kind of causes so to everybody out there who reaches this tune in this evening to the BBC and make your donation!"

I imagine banter on expeditions goes like this, it reminds me of some of Shackleton's journals and the things the men did for amusement.

I do think that one thing that is forgotten is how brave seafarers have to be. I get on the water to kayak the mile or two to work, just on the Thames which has to be the easiest water to be on. Nonetheless the terror of the water is real. If it is slightly too cold, too windy, too rainy or the tide is not right then I go by bicycle instead. Having read about 6 metre high waves, the mind boggles as to how Team 4 Nations coped. Congrats.

Reminds me a bit of Thor Heyerdahl's Ra expedition: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/heyerdahl-sails-p...

How long does it take without rowing, just relying on winds and currents?

Are there good examples of a 'control' crossing of a (perhaps unmanned) drifting boat?

In 1970 a guy named Thor had a reed raft built matching stuff found in an Egyptian tomb. He then rode it with friends from Morocco (Africa) to Barbados (Caribbean). The book is great if you can find it.

Travel time 59 days, but the rowers covered a longer distance - mainland Europe to mainland Americas.

The Algarve is close to Morocco, even if they left from Agadir, so not much difference in distance. The total drifting distance Agadir-Barbados is about 5500km, compared to nearly 6000km for rowing Algarve-Guiana.

In 48 days they could have drifted up to 4500km (75%), leaving over 1500km (25%) due to rowing, which is an average rowing speed of at least 1.3kph.

Where can you start? Wouldn't starting from West Sahara shave of some days? Or would you drift too far south?

I wouldn’t know, but looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_winds, that should be an option. It may be unpopular because of logistic and security concerns, though (the Canary Islands are regular departure points, but that may be cheating for this record)

The (I am sure) bestselling book “How To Row An Ocean” (http://thenextchallenge.org/books/row-ocean/) probably has an answer.

There's also organized, annual race for rowing across the Atlantic: https://www.atlanticcampaigns.com/the-challenge/

so for 48 days they were on a 2-hour-row-2-hour-sleep schedule with no breaks? wow

Yes, the 2 hours on / 2 hours off non-stop for 48 days was the toughest. After eating and cleaning ourselves, there wasn't a lot of time left to sleep.

The map is neat but I want to hear the story and see the photos!

Photos are on the blog. You can read more about the expedition on the blog of another team member: http://atlanticrowblog.blogspot.com

How does one prove they did that officially?

The Ocean Rowing Society keeps track of the expeditions: http://www.oceanrowing.com/ORS_Archive/ORS_archive2017.htm

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