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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Apr 14, 2013 - 08:23pm PT
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A heart-wrenching tale if ever there was one.
He went down almost within sight of New Zealand - 30 km. I gotta say that
hatch cover thing was a bonafide Rube Goldberg lashup that violated every
principle of the KISS philosophy. It is assumed a rogue wave did for him.
A rogue wave almost got me and my partner on a kayak trip up the coast of
Vancouver Is. It totally came out of nowhere, as they always do.
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AP
Trad climber
Calgary
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Apr 14, 2013 - 11:45pm PT
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He would have been a good fit on Shackleton's adventure
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rich sims
Social climber
co
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Apr 15, 2013 - 03:37am PT
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Ed was may still be a climber as well.
The tooth paste for food having the wind blow you back from shore with the island in view for several days sticks in my head having heard it in the late 80s.
He told me of the journey walking out after some climbs in Baja.
The guy is so aware we were walking along next thing I know we are veering off track and he finds a ancient food and water storage site, the pots had broken from the ceiling caving in. We spent an hour or so piecing the shard s back together then threw them back on the floor and headed back to the car.
Some climber are so much more that just a climber, ED is one such Guy
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Stewart Johnson
climber
lake forest
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Apr 15, 2013 - 10:35am PT
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for climbers, Messners solo of Everest could be
considered a great adventure.
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steve shea
climber
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Apr 15, 2013 - 10:39am PT
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Not months in a kayak but adventure nonetheless. Messner's run across the Nepal Himal. Solo, almost a month and way off the tea house trade routes favored by tourists. Almost the entire time above 15,000'. And much higher altitudes in very dangerous terrain. He was pretty stretched at times and recounted almost halucinating from fatigue and altitude. At one time he came face to face with a yeti. He was convinced. He wrote about yeti research some years later. I saw him in Kathmandu right after he completed the trip, he looked worked.
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sempervirens
climber
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Apr 15, 2013 - 10:57am PT
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I'm curious, are Ed Gillet and Ned Gillette related? They could easily be confused. Didn't Ned Gillette do a crossing from Tierra del Fuego to Antarctica?
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orle
climber
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Apr 15, 2013 - 12:45pm PT
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Aleksander Doba is the first person to sail in a 7 meter ocean kayak across the Atlantic ocean using the power of his muscles alone, a voyage that spanned 5394 kilometers. Doba's effort is believed to be the longest open-water crossing ever undertaken by a kayaker, at roughly 99 days. He was 65 years old when he undertook this journey.
Dude looks like he could out-armwrestle Donini. Them veins :|
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Lambone
Big Wall climber
Ashland, Or
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Apr 15, 2013 - 01:22pm PT
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holy crap...
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Apr 15, 2013 - 01:25pm PT
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Doba's achievement does merit an asterisk though because it is now known
that Poles have an extra T chromosome. T for Tough Muthas!
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Stevee B
Mountain climber
Oakland, CA
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Apr 15, 2013 - 03:02pm PT
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Fantastic read, thanks for posting John.
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Paul Martzen
Trad climber
Fresno
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Apr 15, 2013 - 10:44pm PT
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That is a great story about Ed's journey. I remember the continued silence as Ed's expected arrival date in Hawaii came and passed. Day after day, no word. He made no contact during the entire journey, so if something had happened to him, no one would have known at what point along the journey. I think he arrived about 2 weeks after he had hoped for.
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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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Apr 15, 2013 - 11:20pm PT
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Some great resources presented here of solo achievements almost impossible to imagine.
Erden Eruc and Doba are just two of these remarkable men and there are many more to be discovered.
Even with an active life it is pretty hard not to feel like a couch potato in comparison. Bons bons anyone?
On another note David Cowper who I wrote about early in the thread received the prestigious Blue Water Metal for 2012.
Here are some of his accomplishments:
New York, N.Y. (February 11, 2013) – The Cruising Club of America (CCA) has selected David S. Cowper (Newcastle, England) to receive its Blue Water Medal for his completion of six solo circumnavigations of the World and five solo transits of the Northwest Passage. The Blue Water Medal was first awarded in 1923 and is given “for a most meritorious example if seamanship, the recipient to be selected from among the amateurs of all nations.” The award will be presented by Commodore Daniel P. Dyer, III at the annual Awards Dinner on March 1, 2013 at New York Yacht Club in Manhattan.
Born in war-torn Britain in 1942, Cowper is an Englishman who was educated at Stowe School in Buckingham and is a member of the Royal Cruising Club. Sailing has been a passion of his since an early age, and his profession as a Chartered Surveyor and a fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has allowed him to take time off to sail alone around the World.
In 1980, Cowper completed the fastest solo circumnavigation of the globe by way of Cape Horn (Chile), Cape of Good Hope (South Africa), and Cape Leeuwin (Australia) in his Sparkman & Stephens 41-foot sloop Ocean Bound in 225 days, beating the record holder at the time, Sir Francis Chichester, by one day. Two years later, he repeated the feat, sailing against the prevailing westerly winds and rounding all five capes in 237 days, beating record holder Chay Blyth’s time by 71 days and becoming the first person to ever circumnavigate the world in both directions.
In 1984, Cowper moved from sailboats to motorboats and converted the 42-foot ex-Royal National Lifeboat, Mabel E. Holland, into his new vessel, and took it westward around the globe, becoming the first person to circumnavigate solo on a motor vessel.
In 1986, Cowper made his first attempt to complete the Northwest Passage, an ice covered sea route through the Arctic Ocean along the northern coast of North America. He departed the U.K. and made his way across the North Atlantic Ocean and up the West Coast of Greenland. After entering Lancaster Sound in the Canadian Arctic, Cowper went on to Fort Ross on Somerset Island. Here, heavy pack ice forced him to leave his boat and he returned to England. In the short summer of 1987, Cowper returned to the Mabel E. Holland and managed to get the waterlogged boat ashore and repair it. He returned again in 1988 and was able to reach Alaska, where he left the boat in Inuvik.
Cowper sailed through the Bering Strait in 1989, becoming the first person to have completed the Northwest Passage single handed as part of a circumnavigation of the world. He continued on the voyage via the Midway Islands in Hawaii and Papua New Guinea before reaching Darwin in Australia, where he stored his boat for the hurricane season. In April 1990, Cowper resumed the voyage via the Cape of Good Hope and arrived back home in Newcastle that year on September 24. He then wrote the book, Northwest Passage Solo about his four-and-a-half-year solo circumnavigation.
In 2001, Cowper had the 48-foot aluminum lifeboat Polar Bound built, and in 2002, he motored it west around Cape Horn and up the West Coast of the U.S., with the goal of completing the Northeast Passage over the top of Russia. Unfortunately, Russian authorities refused him permission, so Cowper was forced to turn east and completed the Northwest Passage again in two summers. He became the first person to have completed an east-to-west then west-to-east singlehanded transit.
In August 2009, Cowper began his sixth circumnavigation, which included an east-to-west transit of the Northwest Passage and a voyage that would take him down the west coast of South America and to Antarctica, the Falkland Islands and South Georgia, then on to South America, South Australia, Hawaii and Alaska before going west-to-east through the Northwest Passage. Cowper completed the voyage, arriving back to England on October 5, 2011.
In July 2012, Cowper took Polar Bound through the McClure Strait in Canada at the western end of the Northwest Passage. This fifth transit was another first for Cowper, as he did his first solo passage through the notorious ice-bound route. Polar Bound is wintering in Dutch Harbor, Alaska. Cowper will return to his boat in the Spring to resume his seventh solo circumnavigation.
7th completed! He did not winter over.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Apr 16, 2013 - 12:45am PT
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I take it he's not married?
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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Apr 16, 2013 - 12:49am PT
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I take it he's not married?
BWA HA HA hahahaaaa!!!
What about Forest Gump? Didn't he run back and forth across the USA like 4 times?
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nutjob
Sport climber
Almost to Hollywood, Baby!
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Apr 16, 2013 - 02:38pm PT
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No mention of a bad@ss lady who did a lot of serious solos and firsts:
http://www.ameliaearhart.com/about/achievements.html
One of those solos almost followed the same path as original post:
January 11, 1935 - First person to solo the 2,408-mile distance across the Pacific between Honolulu and Oakland, California; also first flight where a civilian aircraft carried a two-way radio
Imagine relying on a 1935 airplane for crossing that much open water?
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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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Apr 16, 2013 - 03:16pm PT
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Hey Nutjob, interesting you brought that up as this is our most recent design we did for the Smithsonian. I have read the Coast Guard Radio Logs of the Cutter Ithaca stationed off Howland Island as a relay for that final flight from Ley and it is gut wrenching to think of all that open water, no island in sight and little fuel. Still, there is some evidence she might have set down on Gardner Island now known as Nikumaroro.
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