Heart Transplant Recipient Sails Across Atlantic
Heart disease may have run in John Otterbacher's family, but he was determined not to let that stop him from fully living his life. And that meant testing his limits, whether by running marathons or sailing across the Atlantic four times after getting a heart transplant. For more on his nautical adventure, check out his biography, Sailing Grace (Samadhi Press). He shared some thoughts with Outside Online, below.
--Aileen Torres
You and your family lived on your boat, Grace, for about five years. What made you decide to stay on the boat for so long after your initial sail to Ireland?
Getting back to Michigan would have taken a year, using the standard seasonal routes down the coast of Europe and Africa, across to the Caribbean, up the East Coast of the U.S., up the Hudson River, and through the Erie Canal and Great Lakes. More importantly, we were just having a great family adventure--one of those instances when the reality outshines the dream. We wanted to sail the Irish, North, Baltic, Mediterranean, and Caribbean seas, to immerse ourselves in the beauty and history of Europe, North Africa, the Mediterranean, and Caribbean. Time with my wife and the kids was paramount, given the uncertainty of my health. I hoped to show the kids the joy of exploration, embracing the unknown, developing that radical attention that fresh environs summon up.
Continue reading "Heart Transplant Recipient Sails Across Atlantic" »
 |
Comments (0) | | | Email this post | | | TrackBack (0) | | | Permalink |
Mike Perham Sailing Solo Doc
A documentary on Mike Perham, considered the youngest person to sail solo around the world, will air November 5 on Channel 4 in the U.K. Perham was 16 when he embarked on his record-breaking feat. You can read more about him and other youngsters trying to break sailing records here.
--Aileen Torres
|
Comments (0) | | | Email this post | | | TrackBack (0) | | | Permalink |
October 29, 2009
Did Somali Pirates Capture Missing British Couple?
Paul and Rachel Chandler, a couple from Britain who have been sailing around the world, went missing last Friday after they sailed from the island nation of Seychelles. The Chandlers' online tracking system stopped sending updates of their location in when they were off the coast of Somalia, an area known for having pirates. Their whereabouts were still unknown on Wednesday, when European Union naval officials captured a group of Somali pirates who may be involved in the kidnapping of the couple, writes the New York Times. Although the claim has yet to be verified, the Somali prime minister has vowed that the government will not rest until the Chandlers are found.
-- Lisa Lombardi
|
Comments (0) | | | Email this post | | | TrackBack (0) | | | Permalink |
October 19, 2009
Head of the Charles Regatta in Boston
Nearly 9,000 rowers descended on Boston this past weekend for the largest crew
race in the world, the annual Head of the Charles Regatta. The three-mile
upstream race is considered to be one of the highlights of the fall rowing
season, with almost 300,000 spectators lining the banks of the Charles River
during good weather years, according to the race organizers. Crew is a rowing
sport featuring long, slender boats that can hold one, two, four, or eight
people rowing in unison. Some fours and all eights also include a coxswain
(pronounced COX-un) who calls out commands and directs the boat.
Like many expensive sports, crew has a reputation as a white collar, elitist sport. But under the matching spandex onesies, crew is a lot like NASCAR: lots of fast moving vehicles on a predetermined course, and, though no one likes to admit it, everyone’s kind of hoping for a collision. Three years on, the rowers from the University of Maryland in Baltimore County laugh about a nasty collision at the Head of the Charles that ended with an entire eight-man team abandoning their boat as it sank and swimming for shore in the dirty brown water. The best place for watching crashes? The John W. Weeks Footbridge, smack in the middle of the Harvard campus. A right-angle turn in the river and a bridge with three narrow arches makes it the deadliest spot on the course.
Above: The Harvard Men's Team passes the Riverside Boat Club during a practice. See photos of the race and practices the week before after the break.
Continue reading "Head of the Charles Regatta in Boston" »
|
Comments (1) | | | Email this post | | | TrackBack (0) | | | Permalink |
September 02, 2009
Sip Straws, Bag a World Record
Hilary Lister is now the first female quadriplegic to sail solo around Britain, the BBC reports. It was a four-month journey, and she accomplished it on an Artemis 20 called "Me Too" via a "sip-and-puff" system that uses three straws to control the tiller and steering. She also had a crew of six.
--Aileen Torres
|
Comments (0) | | | Email this post | | | TrackBack (0) | | | Permalink |
August 31, 2009
Crackers, Gum, and the Will to Live
Sailing Syzygy: Getting Knocked-Up and Knocked Down
Over the last five hundred years or so, if a sailor did something stupid like neglect his duties or disobey orders or insult his captain, or strike an officer, or desert the ship, or display rank incompetence or drunkenness or insubordination, or steal a dram of rum, or spit on the deck, or fail to stow his things properly or to clean his clothes adequately, there were any number of punishments that could be meted out: the sailor could be flogged, or whipped, or pickled, or cobbed, or made to run the gauntlet or to clean the head or to carry a 30-pound cannonball around the deck all day or to station himself at the top of the mast for a few hours or just to stand still until told otherwise. He could be lashed on board every ship in the fleet, or he could be tied to the mast for a week, or keel-hauled, or he could have had his feet bound and covered in salt and presented to goats for licking, which quickly went from ticklish to agonizing, because the goats don't stop licking before the sailor's feet have become bloody stumps. Or, if the sailor had mutinied or murdered, he could be hanged, shot, or have his head cut off, boiled, and then shoved onto a spike above decks, and left there for a week or so, to serve as an example to the remaining and hopefully far more loyal crew. Magellan preferred this latter technique. If the sailor had buggered (aka sodomized) another sailor, that, too could earn him the severest punishments. The sea was not San Francisco, man. But, if the sailor, while meeting the locals on some tropical island far away from home, knocked up a local woman, or a bunch of local women: nothing. Getting a girl knocked up was what sailors did when they weren't sailing, like Genghis Khan, or Mulai Ismail, the last Sharifian emperor of Morocco, who had something like 1400 sons and daughters before he died. Most sailors probably never knew how many women they knocked up on their voyages.
Continue reading "Sailing Syzygy: Getting Knocked-Up and Knocked Down" »
|
Comments (0) | | | Email this post | | | TrackBack (0) | | | Permalink |
August 28, 2009
Girl's Fight to Sail the World Hits Snag
Laura Dekker, 13, will not be allowed to embark on her round-the-world sailing plan as soon as she would like. A Dutch court officially placed Dekker under the supervision of child care officials, the AP reports. They will have custody for two months so that a child psychologist can evaluate how mentally and emotionally prepared Dekker is to undertake such a solo voyage.
Dekker sailed alone to England earlier this year, and she was detained by authorities, who asked her father to sail back home with her. But Dekker sailed home solo.
She will be allowed to continue living with her father while under custody of Dutch child care officials.
--Aileen Torres
|
Comments (0) | | | Email this post | | | TrackBack (0) | | | Permalink |
August 26, 2009
Girl Fights to Sail Around World
The Dutch Council for Child Protection has filed for temporary custody of Laura Dekker, 13, to try to stop her plan to sail solo around the world, the AP reports. The girl's parents support her goal, but authorities worry about the dangers of allowing a child to undertake such a voyage.
"She simply does not have the experience to anticipate the problems and possible crises that await her," according to an editorial in De Volkskrant, a Dutch paper.
"A 13-year-old girl is in the middle of her development and you don't do that alone--you need peers and adults," said Micha de Winter, who teaches child psychology at Utrecht University. "Adults can choose to be alone, but for children it is not good."
Dekker was born while her parents were sailing around the world, and she lived on the ocean through the age of four.
--Aileen Torres
|
Comments (0) | | | Email this post | | | TrackBack (0) | | | Permalink |
August 24, 2009
The Good Route: Toxic Seas Need Advocate
Artist's Rendering
As if he needed more motivation, David de Rothschild can add one more item to his list of reasons we need to stop dumping plastic into the world's oceans: At the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society last week, scientists said they've discovered that plastics break down while floating around at sea much sooner, and at cooler temperatures, than first believed.
The findings contradict a long-held assumption that plastics littered in the ocean maintain their stable composition for many years. "We found that plastic in the ocean actually decomposes as it is exposed to the rain and sun and other environmental conditions, giving rise to yet another source of global contamination that will continue into the future," says study lead researcher Katsuhiko Saido, Ph.D.
Continue reading "The Good Route: Toxic Seas Need Advocate" »
|
Comments (0) | | | Email this post | | | TrackBack (0) | | | Permalink |
