6 Men Become 1st To Cross Perilous Drake Passage Unassisted (apnews.com) 103
As freezing water thrashed their rowboat in some of the most treacherous waters in the world, six men fought for 13 days to make history, becoming the first people to traverse the infamous Drake Passage with nothing other than sheer manpower. From a report: They dodged icebergs, held their breaths as giant whales breached near their small boat and rode building-sized waves while rowing 24 hours a day toward Antarctica. The team of men from four countries finished crossing the Drake Passage on Wednesday in just under two weeks after pushing off from the southern tip of South America. "This is a really big deal in Antarctic history to hear about this," said Wayne Ranney, a Flagstaff, Arizona-based geologist who has led expeditions to Antarctica and crossed the Drake Passage in motorized vessels more than 50 times. "One hundred percent of their progress was done with those 12 arms for 600 (nautical) miles. That's just phenomenal. I can't even imagine." Besides the threat to their lives, the men labored under grueling conditions. Their 29-foot (9-meter) rowboat, named the Ohana, had to be in constant motion to avoid capsizing. That meant three men would row for 90 minutes while the other three rested, still cold and wet.
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Re:Woo (Score:5, Funny)
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Rather the opposite (Score:3)
Having survived this, I think they will live quite a lot longer than they would have otherwise.
Re: Rather the opposite (Score:2)
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Congrats on taking 10 years off their lives.
"Your going to need a bigger boat"
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s/Your/You\'re/
Grammar nazi must learn how to use regular expressions properly.
Crazy. (Score:2)
I don't even want to visit the Drake Passage in a big ship.
Re: Crazy. (Score:3)
I have done this in a 100-person ice-hardened science vessel. It was completely insane. I donâ(TM)t suffer from sea sickness myself but a very large percentage of the other people on board were completely out of commission during the passage.
The Drake Passage is why Antarctica was the last discovered continent.
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Except ... the presence of the continent was discovered by sailing from the southern Indian Ocean and later the South Pacific from far west of the Drake Passage, after rounding the Cape of Good Hope.
If you want to pin a reason on the late discovery of Antarctica on anything, it's the "Roaring Forties" in general. But since both wind and current blow west to east, it is much easier to go through from west to east than the other way.
It's
Pretty hardcore (Score:5, Insightful)
I was going to make some lame joke but this is pretty fucking hardcore. Like climbing mt. Everest is now a walk through Disneyland compared to rowing nonstop for 13 days through ice cold water in a crappy tiny boat not large enough to sleep (or poop) in. It probably helped that they're all experienced rowers and had a support boat but sill, mad respect.
Re:Pretty hardcore (Score:5, Informative)
(emphasis mine)
https://marineindustrynews.co.... [marineindustrynews.co.uk]
Of course, just having a safety net does change things somewhat even if you don't end up using it.
The only thing missing (Score:1)
Fortunately the Polar Bears were 12,000 miles away (Score:3)
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is hungry polar bears
These six oarsmen were further away from a polar bear than 99.9999% of humanity.
You would be at greater risk of a polar bear attack in the Sahara Desert (a polar bear could escape from the Cairo Zoo).
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Ok, Bopper...
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OK Doorknob.
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Well, "The only thing missing is hungry antarctica bears", then.
Happy?
Gary Larson (Score:2)
I really fail to see the point here (Score:1)
I mean, like was one of these guys getting near closing time in a pub and someone said "you a big rower, huh? Bet you can't do Drake's Passage." They gonna try again next year with only four people?
I just don't understand people who decide to try something really dangerous, stupid, and without external reward just because nobody else ever did it.
Re:I really fail to see the point here (Score:4, Interesting)
Accomplishments like this that haven't been done yet are rare, and getting rarer. Navigation firsts that involved sailing between tropical islands full of naked native girls were taken centuries ago, and now they're scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of discomfort and danger.
Back in the 80s I did whitewater kayaking, and first river descents were already in the realm of super-elite skilled people doing extremely dangerous and on-the-edge-of-possible technical feats. There was a brief flurry of activity when somebody noticed that there were a number of rivers that had been *culverted* many decades before and for which there was no record of anybody paddling. Essentially there were still a few relatively non-technical first descents to be snagged if you were willing to paddle in a sewer.
Call it glory inflation -- the price keeps getting higher.
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When this was going on I was intrigued, but I'd paddled enough sketchy places to give it a pass. I went through a phase investigating every spot of blue on the topo maps to see if it could be paddled... looking any historical river or creek I found mentions of. I did this in a small open canoe because there's a lot of getting out and lifting your boat over obstacles.
Small, forgotten streams have a way of becoming trash dumps and sewers. I've paddled up creeks where the trees were festooned with condoms a
Re: I really fail to see the point here (Score:2)
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In some senses this is comparing apples to oranges, but I'd argue somebody like Edmund Hillary (first to bag Mt Everest) was more like a youtuber than Christopher Columbus, since by that tim
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Funny that you have the ability to know his internal motivation for climbing? With such insight I might guess that you were George Lowe except that he died a few years back.
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Navigation firsts that involved sailing between tropical islands full of naked native girls were taken centuries ago....
Centuries? You're off by a zero. Oceania wasn't "discovered" a couple hundred years ago, despite what you might have learned in history class. There had been a couple thousand years of settlements throughout there before Europeans showed up.
But if you're just talking white European drinking story firsts, carry on.
That said, I don't disagree that "firsts" are starting to be very hard to come by. The one in this story is one of a very small subset which likely wasn't already done by native peoples a thousand
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Well to be fair the Polynesians were great mariners and explorers, but the Europeans found them and not the other way around. The *reason* the Europeans found them was that they were looking for access to China, then the wealthiest and most advanced society on the planet.
Re: I really fail to see the point here (Score:2)
Who do you think the naked native girls are? (Score:2)
> > tropical islands full of naked native girls were taken centuries ago....
> Centuries? You're off by a zero. Oceania wasn't "discovered" a couple hundred years ago
It would be kinda difficult to have the island full of naked native girls if nobody had been there before, wouldn't it?
Re: Who do you think the naked native girls are? (Score:2)
Well, who else would have stolen all their clothing from the clotheslines? Pirates?
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I disagree, we see this continually - people make up an arbitrary challenge then put in the effort to be first to complete it, much like the woman who swam the English Channel four times back to back. There was no discovery, we learned nothing, but I guess some people got their 10 minutes of fame.
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Not really. There are an infinite number of these feats to be done because in the end someone just makes it up and before that it wasn't a thing. As long as there are people there will be new things to do. And there are still plenty of first descent type things. Head up to Alaska and you have virtually endless mountains that haven't seen a person set foot on them. Yes the world is getting smaller, but it's still pretty dam big once you leave the paths most travelled.
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The ski-season is in full swing. You can interview the skiers — and especially the snowboarders — to try to understand the motivations.
That may, actually, be coming. I'd imagine some advertising contracts for one. If I were looking for a new watch, for example, I might consider an endorsement by these guys over that of an actor playing a fictitious spy...
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Ah, but an actual spy playing an actor playing a fictitious spy... that's the perfect cover!
Ramming speed! (Score:2)
Battle speed, hortatory.
Battle. Speed!
How could they forcast the weather for 13 days? (Score:2)
Re: How could they forcast the weather for 13 days (Score:2)
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They were escorted.
Rolling the Darwinian dice (Score:2)
Normal human instinct is to avoid things that are uncomfortable or dangerous. Some people, however, enjoy doing dangerous things. If they succeed, people go "wow, that is amazing!", or "wow that is crazy!" in equal measure. Some even become famous. If they end up dead people say "oh well at least they died doing something they loved", or "Darwin in action", again in equal measure. The dead ones rarely become famous, however.
Risk is a subjective thing. Having a support boat in this case reduces the ris
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Someone had to fly the first airplane, open the throttle on the first Stanley Steamer (heard his last name started with S, hmmm), open the first parachute and descend successfully...
maybe the reason we've never had aliens visit from space is that normal intelligent creatures don't do crazy shit like get into space shuttles...
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Someone had to fly the first airplane, open the throttle on the first Stanley Steamer (heard his last name started with S, hmmm), open the first parachute and descend successfully...
And thank goodness for them. Now anyone so inclined can do those things.
If you are going to risk your life, doing it for the lasting benefit of humankind is way better than doing it for fun IMHO.
No minorities? (Score:4, Funny)
Six White men. Six wealthy Western White cis-men. An oppressed White wife of one of them managing the project — thus slavishly following her patriarchy-imposed gender role.
Not even a transsexual among them — and they haven't used taxpayers' funds either!
Where are the resident AmiMojos to condemn this endeavor?
Re:No minorities? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't adopt the behaviours of crazy people. Banish their thoughts from your mind - there should be room for more important thoughts.
Re: No minorities? (Score:2)
Sorry man, I stopped reading at this part. The author comes across as an insecure man-child.
The very name of Blackboard Ally exerts a kind of rhetorical force that demands compliance. Most Americans under 40 associate the word ally with the LGBT movement (the Second World War might as well have occurred in the Dark Ages). In LGBT discourse, to be an ally is to offer an affirmation of the LGBT community and criticism of the marginalization of its members.
Re:No minorities? (Score:5, Interesting)
I’m a bit surprised you didn’t find a way to complain about the guy’s wife keeping her own last name, given how upset you apparently are with the modern world.
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Ah, I missed this part! Thanks for pointing it out — maybe, these folks aren't behind redemption after all!
Re: No minorities? (Score:2)
Does saying that make you feel tough or something? I don't get it.
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If it is Ok — indeed praiseworthy [slashdot.org] — to reject the Bill of Rights and its authors on account of their having been White, male, and wealthy, why is it surprising — and hard to get — that a White man of some means (and aspirations for even greater wealth, thank you very much) would mock this racist and sexist point of view?
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Congrats to these guys on an incredible achievement.
Now go troll somewhere else.
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Classy :)
Ernest Shackleton did that, too (Score:5, Interesting)
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> What were the names of the men who did all the work?
Worsley, Crean, Vincent, McNeish, and McCarthy, but none of them actually worked. The boat had a sail. All they had to do was steer. Except for Worsley - he was the navigator, and had to keep them from smacking into the rocks. Did a nice job.
Shackleton was, at best, middle class, far from upper.
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Not a makeshift boat, a rather nice ship's boat, with sail and etc. However, small for the potential conditions and with very limited supplies. Careful rationing was equally as important as accurate navigation.
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A ships boat, that they had to add sides, a deck and sail to, while stranded on an Antarctic island.
Actually, it was a lifeboat and it was ugraded by the ship's carpenter before the expedition. See here. [wikipedia.org] The wikipedia article says "makeshift" deck, but the photograph says otherwise. Looks like a lovely, competent piece of work to me. Doing that voyage in an open boat would have been nuts. Swamped by the first 3 meter breaking wave, and every one after that. Survival unlikely.
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Note that deck is covered with canvas which makes it look nice and smooth. I don't know what the support structure looks like underneath, but IIRC the deck you can see is sail canvas stretched tight across the gunwales and nailed down. You can see it in the pic from the article you linked:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... [wikimedia.org]
I think it overlays reclaimed deck planking removed from the main expedition ship. Probably some slightly curved cross beams underneath. It wouldn't have needed to be particularly tightly b
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Note that deck is covered with canvas which makes it look nice and smooth. I don't know what the support structure looks like underneath, but IIRC the deck you can see is sail canvas stretched tight across the gunwales and nailed down.
That's supposed to be bad?
Probably some slightly curved cross beams underneath. It wouldn't have needed to be particularly tightly built if they were relying on tarred canvas to prevent water ingress ... I think it overlays reclaimed deck planking removed from the main expedition ship.
No. Before its voyage, the ship's carpenter, Harry McNish, strengthened and adapted the boat to withstand the mighty seas of the Southern Ocean [wikipedia.org]
I'm going to have to call you an armchair admiral, an armchair shipwright and self-appointed armchair arbiter of all that is true on the internet. Just don't sail to Anarctica, ok? Or if you must then please go solo.
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Congrats on reading what you want into what I said so you can feel superior. Yeesh.
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And how should I read this in any other way than flat wrong? "I think it overlays reclaimed deck planking removed from the main expedition ship"
Correct response to having the error pointed out would be "thanks", as opposed to "ooh don't be mean, I never make mistakes".
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The sea Shackleton crossed was just as bad I'm sure, IIRC an old whaler at the time couldn't believe it. They encountered a wave that was so high it momentarily blocked out the moon and nearly capsized them, all the while they were in sleeping bags with rotting soaked reindeer hair.
When they finally reached the island it wasn't just a glacier, it was terrain from hell that wasn't successfully navigated again until decades later. Here's the excerpt from the epilogue of "Endurace" by Lansing:
Not exactly, no. (Score:2)
Although what he did was certainly impressive too. He had "assistance"--a sail. What these guys did that had never been done before was make the crossing powered solely by their own muscles.
Hiding from whales (Score:2)
It is well known that if you hold your breath, whales can't find you.
Six men, but unassisted? (Score:2)
How many people does it take before "unassisted" takes into effect?
"An aircraft carrier with a full crew becomes 1st to cross perilous drake passage unassisted."
And if there's an emergency boat nearby to save any of them that might be in danger, how is that "unassisted" again?
unassisted /nsistd/
Adjective:
- not helped by anyone or anything.
- (of a play in a team sport) done by one player, without an assist from another player.
I guess words don't mean anything anymore, and that's why car window of cake bouque
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if the emergency boat did nothing for them, then it's unassisted. You are the one who does not understand the meaning of the definition you posted. I guess words don't mean anything any more between your ears.
PBS Carrier (Score:2)
OK, not in the Drake Passage, but in South Atlantic, with no "divert field", in the middle of nowhere with heaving seas, some brass back on land-based HQ orders pilots on the Nimitz to practice landings. You see David Fravor of later White Tic Tac UFO fame shrugging, saying in convoluted Navy slang that questioning those orders was beyond his military rank.
My fave was gum-chewing Southern lady, staring at a TV monitor in the darkened landing operations room, wincing as jet after jet "bolters" (misses th
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both are unassisted, your bucket of sentimental slop means nothing.
Equally boneheaded (Score:2)
It is sentimentally sloppy to be skeptical of some Navy admirals back in Norfolk or wherever, ordering those pilots to risk their lives in a training exercise in the middle of South Atlantic Ocean nowhere?
The Captain or the Air Boss of the Nimitz were sentimentally sloppy to call off launching more aircrews and to be genuinely worried about recovering the crews already flying and whether they could even recover the tankers they were launching to recover the pilots who were bouncing off the heaving deck o
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it is sentimental slop to bring that up at all, of no relevance to the truth that this article was of people who did something without assistance, even if 100 boats were tailing them ready to offer aid, but never did.
instead you bring up tales of heroism and sacrifice and..... irrelevant stuff.
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Any number.
You are conflating "unassisted" with "solo". In general in a human powered sport if you carry/propel everything yourself without outside mechanical aid it's "unassisted", even if done in a group.
For example if you ride a bike across the country solo, but you are followed by a van which provides parts, tools and mechanical fixes (e.g. like a cross country race), it's a *solo* but *assisted* crossing. If you and your buddy jump on your bikes and ride across the country, carrying everything you ne
I know this man personally, but... (Score:2)
This is not the first team to row across the Drake Passage. It was first accomplished over 100 years ago during WW I, by the Shackleton Expedition after its ship was crushed by pack ice in the Weddell Sea. All of the expedition crew surivied, but only after rowing to Elephant Island, just outside the pack ice, and from there to the Norwegian whaling station of Grytviken, South Georgia.
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They sailed, actually. And, the path they took was not across the Drake Passage - it was almost 90 degrees from it.
Inappropriate vehicle (Score:2)
Six men crossed from South America to Antarctica in a vehicle entirely unsuited to the purpose and whined about the discomfort. Color me unimpressed, until somebody does it in a bathtub. [dailyhive.com]
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If they did it in a longship I'd be more impressed, that thing has solar panels and satellite and everything.
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And training wheels in the form of an escort ship. Hard to see why this lame stunt deserves any press attention at all.
The bathroom? A bucket? (Score:1)
Whoopdedo! (Score:1)
Poor Boat... (Score:2)
WHY? (Score:1)
Asshole pedant says... (Score:2)