Female US rower completes historic solo journey from California to Hawaii
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Such a huge accomplishment.
Are you just using standard open canoes you'd use on a lake (potentially with some air bladders to keep from swamping?), or something special for this?
> Don't think of these waves like the ones you encounter at shore. Open ocean waves are moving mountains.
> It isn't this: /(
> It's this:
.,-~^^~-,.
___.-/ \-.__
This vid shows off the canoes on a small ~4' wave: https://youtu.be/deIpUyBp_6Y?t=251, but the mechanics are the same.
1. that 15m one was the most fun I've ever had on a wave, ever. Think of it like going down a ski slope in a canoe, except the ski slope moves with you for miles.
2. we had one of the motorized lead boats sink that year due to them. Interestingly, you're more safe in the canoes on them than you are a standard boat.
Surfing is just sliding down the rise in water caused by a wave at the pace as the water rises behind you as the wave moves (in the case of standing waves, I mean moves relative to the reference frame of the water).
Looks and sounds like a blast!
A 10ft swell on a 30 second period is nothing, a 10ft swell on a 5 second period you're going to have a bad day.
So, (and knowing very little about rowing), I am not surprised that a woman could take the record here. You can only row so fast. Other factors like weather, currents, nutrition, mental fortitude, navigation, and boat design overcome muscle strength.
All that said: props to Kelsey Pfendler! She definitely knows how to embrace the suck.
Here's a nice diary of her trip:
https://www.kcra.com/article/kelsey-pfendler-record-breaking...
Love these updates:
> Day 21: Kelsey gave an update on a lesson learned about her mental state, saying she had beaten herself up for sleeping in. But she realized that wasn't productive thinking. "When you're out here, you're not in control," she said. "You are in control of you." She said she realized that the way to respond to problems is much more important than the problem itself.
> Day 44: Kelsey could see O'ahu as she closed in on her goal. "If any part of this made at least one person feel a little bit more powerful in their own skin, I couldn't ask for anything else and I'm happy," she said. "Think about trying to find your own big, hard, scary thing. You might not think that you are strong enough to finish it right now, but you're definitely strong enough to start it and you'll find everything else along the way."
You are right in that "strength" isn't the dominating factor for these events or why males go so much faster/farther but rather VO2 max and for peak athletes males normally maintain a good 10% lead due to biological factors.
The male vs female 100 meter:
9.58 vs 10.49 = female record is 9.5% longer to run
Male vs female 200 meter:
19.19 vs 21.34 = female record is 11.2% longer to run
Male vs female 50km
2:38:43 vs 2:59:54 = female record is 13.35% longer to run
The difference also doesn't really change once we start going really long either
6 hour: 98.5km vs 85km male ran 15% farther
12 hour: 177.410 vs 153.600 male 15.5% farther
24 hour: 319.614 vs 278.621 male 14.7% farther
48 hour: 485.099 vs 436.371 male 11.17% farther
6 days: 1045.519 vs 928.577 male 12.6% farther
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramarathon scroll down to the male vs female records.
I've run dozens of marathons, multiple 100 milers, and several 12-hour and 24-hour events. You can be the strongest, most prepared person in the world, and it very much might not matter because of how many things can go south in such an event compared to shorter races.
Yes, these events have fewer participants, but nonetheless, even at the most of elite of these events, sometimes women win, and it's not always because the best man didn't show up that day. Big's Backyard Ultra attracts the best in the world, but it was won by a woman in 2019 and 2020.
To point out the performance difference is universal across all distances/speeds.
> and it very much might not matter because of how many things can go south in such an event compared to shorter races.
So your argument is now RNG plays a bigger role so eventually they'll score a win by luck?
> Yes, these events have fewer participants, but nonetheless, even at the most of elite of these events, sometimes women win, and it's not always because the best man didn't show up that day. Big's Backyard Ultra attracts the best in the world, but it was won by a woman in 2019 and 2020.
Are you arguing for me or against me with this line. That's basically a perfect example of the argument I used in my first paragraph.
My only point was that women can sometimes win and/or set records at prestigious endurance events when factors other than strength/speed are relatively more likely to influence the outcome. Such as this record right here: rowing from CA to HI.
Obviously the more elite men in the competition, the less likely this is to occur. But I'm not talking about a small local 10K where a sub-elite woman happens to show up and there's no comparably competitive men and the woman wins overall. I mean events where men and women of comparable competitiveness show up, but a woman just outlasts a man that day due to grit or better preparation or better planning or whatever the factors happen to be. All I'm saying is: the longer events give women more opportunity to win those races, regardless of event size.
I have an acquaintance I've raced with a few times. I've got the better marathon time, but she's got the better 24-hour distance. It's cool that we can both have those wins. That's all.
Uh, no. His argument is that the ~10% or so superiority you're fighting so hard to claim is no longer enough to have dominate sway over the overall outcome. Other factors, not random.
And this differences are only possible because best women athletes are excluded!
I'd be interested to know how much progress she made/lost due to drifting overnight. I feel like that alone would have a drastic impact. It would really suck to check your GPS track in the morning to discover you'd lost a day's progress overnight.
Also, my geographical knowledge may be lacking, but it appears “to Hawaii” is essential here.
https://oceanrowing.com/filter?id=1415 shows a row from Monterey to Hanalei, Kauai in 32 days. That’s in the state of Hawaii, too, but about 200km closer.
¹https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/384202-fa...
Not to take away from Pfendler's incredible achievement. She's amazing. But, I'm the kind of nerd that immediately went to "surely that is a logistical nightmare, how are you going to carry enough supplies for months at sea in a boat that a human being can propel across the ocean at a decent speed?" It's a bigger boat than I imagined, at 21 feet long and 5.5 feet wide, and 730 pounds. It also has cabins at either end for storage and sleeping.
She gives a brief tour of the inside of the boat here: https://www.instagram.com/p/DZBUJ2VJvp_/
And, she also discusses some of the technical problems she had in some other videos in the series, like not being able to run her desalination machine because not enough sun and having to dip into her emergency water rations.
The athletic side of a thing like this is incredible, but I always want to know the logistics.
Also, it was adorable seeing her stuffed animals. Whatever it takes to stay sane over six weeks.
Rowing across an entire ocean is absolutely amazing.
Thought folks would be interested in her boat, built for ocean rowing:
> Lily is a Rannoch R25 built in 2019.
More info on Rannoch R25:
https://www.rannochadventure.com/boats-2/r25
There are several Youtube videos showing you the interior if you're interested.
https://www.instagram.com/yourowkelsey/reels/
https://www.tiktok.com/@yourowkelsey
Here's a cabin tour: https://www.tiktok.com/@yourowkelsey/video/76461920366635778...
Coincidence? You decide
What does one eat and drink on a trip like this? The article talks about her cooking. With a fire or one of those little butane stoves?
Can a small canoe carry enough water for a trip like this or do you rely on rain water too?
Here's a video of a day's food: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZd8V8BtGbH/
She said she has two desalinators - one hand-pump and another electric, plus emergency water bottles to last a few days.
she also has solar panels on it. probably just a lil stove she has somewhere.
If I were to do it though, I would invest in some water filters which are fairly cheap and can remove a lot of things that you wouldn't want to be drinking.
(Though there might be some obscure edge case, and if you're about to die of dehydration that a little bit of seawater will buy you a minuscule amount of more time? doubt it)
If you're about to die of dehydration - from sweating - and have not been rehydrating you're already also hypernatremic (too salty) as well so I sort of doubt it would help. Sweat is less salty than your blood so it increases salt concentration.
Every account of people stranded at sea that survived points to them getting hydrated through rainwater, or fish/turtle blood that they hunted, or even dirty non salty water enemas.
Generally, outrigger races have 6 people in the boat and a 9 person team. An escort boat will hold your reserve people, and then drop them in front of the canoe when you need to swap people out.
The problem is that you need to drop people around 200m in front of the canoe so the canoe can have enough time to prep for the crew change, but with that distance, the wave height can obscure the crew from the person steering.
The solution? If you're the one being dropped, you're expected to splash violently. Create as much splash as possible so the canoe can see you, even behind a wave.
The fun part is what gives signal to the canoe is the same thing that gives signal to sharks. Our coach used to say the adrenaline helps us in the race.
A hyperbolic example would be imagine a pole vaulter with a safety sausage attached to them.
I’ve heard this sentiment before, and can sort of intellectually follow, but man. I love scuba diving, I love the ocean and its varied and alien and multi-scale inhabitants. I’ve spent weeks on a live-aboard boat explicitly to seek out megafauna like sharks and rays (same subclass as sharks).
When I start my descent, I love to turn around and see my exhaled air bubble up, up towards the sun rays in the top layer of the water that slowly fade further away as the pressure on my ears builds and I enter the unknown ocean. It’s the most relaxing feeling, and I often remember it to go to sleep.
How beautifully individual our preferences can be. :-)
Its always a form factor I’ve never seen before
Where can I learn more about this scene?
The model of this boat:
Daily use boats probably don’t need as much in that respect.
The Polynesians appeared to have used basically canoes with an outrigger to row across the ocean. I'm not an expert on Polynesians, though, and how they got across the ocean. So if someone is an expert, please correct me.
She spent 41 days making the same trip with 2 other people
This is one of those cases where getting started is hard, but once you get started you probably can do more if you want it because you get a reputation and people will sponsor you. You end up in a lot of cases your job is to get sponsors for this trip and you live in the meantime cheaply just earn enough money that you can afford to take off a couple months to do these things.
That said, it probably isn't all that expensive. You do need to get a canoe, but those are not terribly expensive. You need enough food to last this long. The ideal way is if you're living with your parents or some other situation where you can just stop paying rent while you're on the trip. A large part of living expenses are things that she would not have when she's out on the ocean. Also, if th if this is your goal you're probably living for that so you might be working two jobs to raise money for the trip and then you quit both jobs, take your trip and then you go back to work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mallory
Some people are just driven to do things for the accomplishment. I don't think we need more psychologizing than that.
But that which obviously means the most from the standpoint of fulfillment :)
Don't think of these waves like the ones you encounter at shore. Open ocean waves are moving mountains.
It isn't this: /(
It's this:
.,-~^^~-,.
___.-/ \-.__pic of it: https://imgur.com/eiESZzT 21 feet long