Volvo Ocean Race

It used to be called the Whitbread Round the World Race.  Sponsored by a brewery, a big ketch called Steinlager skippered by a kiwi - Sir Peter Blake - won it 1990.  But in 1997 it all changed: everyone sailed boats of the same class. Boats were named after multi-nationals, like Dennis Conner's Toshiba, hulls and sails had ad's on them, and you could follow them on the web (dial-up).    It was the new economy boats that caught my eye:  EF Language's two boats, one with an all women crew, and Brunel-Sunergy (Dutch software and solar power outfits).  

San Francisco America's Cup star Paul Cayard proved he could master the high seas and took 1st in EF Language.  Dutch Olympian Roy Heiner was a come-from-behinder on BrunSun.  They can sail, the Lowlanders.  Heiner and crew took a 200 mile flyer after Cape Horn, went east of the Falklands, leap-frogged the fleet, and landed tanned, lean, hungry, and horny  in Rio de Janeiro for Mardi Gras.  Every boy's dream.

The 1997-1998 race introduced us to the work of photographer Richard Langdon, whose images you see here.  Two of his photos of Brun Sun are in our apartment.  I eat every meal beneath the shot taken on a beautiful day off the coast of France.  Richard's website - Ocean Images - shows much of his work - including at Qing Dao - site of the Beiing Olympics sailing events.

Qing Dao is a port on the new Volvo Ocean Race course, which follows trade routes - Volvo's trade routes - not the racing sailor's shortest course circumnavigation - head south, circumnavigate Antarctica, head home.

The race started from Spain Saturday October 11, 2008 - and concludes next spring.  you can follow it at www.volvooceanrace.org

Steve Fossett - Voyager

A blog called Voyages must pay tribute to the premier adventurer of our age - Steve Fossett.  The crash site and some of his belongings were found by a hiker and confirmed by the NTSB according to this New York Times acccount.  His plane's wreckage was found by  Preston Morrow, a hiker, at 10,000 feet in the mountains of the Ansel Adams wiilderness in California.

Fossett was a finance man whose wealth was called "vast, eight figure"  in pleadings to declare the missing pilot legally dead before the wreckage and remains were found.  But it was voyaging that owned Fossett, born in 1945 - like me and Van Morrison, to implausibly bracket myself in glory.  Fossett was first around the world in a hot air balloon (solo), first in solo flight around the world, and held the world distance record in a glider - 1,500 kilometers.

But it was sailing that caught my attention.  Driving Playstation, a maxi-catamaran, in 2001 he set the round the world speed record (58 days 9 hours 32 minutes and 45 seconds) and four others, including the Christopher Columbus 1492 route (9 days, 13 hours, 31 minutes and 18 seconds ).    The design genius of Morelli & Melvin  was behind Playstation - the craft for the 2001 campaign, for which Fossett was named Rolex Yachtsman of the Year.

James Stephen Fossett, 63, lost and presumed dead, September 3, 2007, declared dead February 2008.  He leaves his wife of 39 years Peggy Fossett, and a long trail of wonder.

Yosemite's grip

In 1974 I found a postcard in a shop on 4th Street. Loved the black and white image and pinned it next to my desk wherever I worked. A few years later my brother Peter, his wife Norma, my sister Nancy and I rounded a turn and saw the full moon rising over Half Dome. A tear came to my eye - I hadn't known that the place was Yosemite, the photographer a legend - Ansel Adams. I still have the snapshot - "Over-exposed Moon Over Half Dome".

The Times today has a long, warm profile of a legendary Yosemite climber - Charles Victor Tucker III - called Chongo. He was homeless in paradise for 30 years. His techniques for climbing the monolith - El Capitan - were innovative, his slack-lining legendary, his Complete Book of Big Wall Climbing a classic guide. Chongo sleeps under a trailer truck in Sacramento now and gets his meals from Loaves and Fishes, a Sisters of Mercy soup kitchen.

Chongo remembered as a moment of enlightenment rope-walking the Lost Arrow Spire. "When I walked across that thing, it outmatched any 60 seconds in my life, and I've had some great 60-second increments".

He is a man of grace, who was transported by a mountain, and achieved moments of wonder for which all of us yearn. I hope that Chongo finds comfort and peace again soon.

The Times story is: For Rock-Climbing Guru, the Sky Is His Roof

Southbound 650

I don't know why some cross oceans in boats too small and too fast for comfort.  And I certainly don't know why some, like my son Jesse (in the dark suit) and his mate Andy (the `target' in the Sierra Madre circus) want to ride motorcycles to Tierra Del Fuego.  I would like to round Cape Horn, but settled this weekend for Sands Point.  Jesse and Andy are southbound on Kawsaki KLR 650's.  Jesse left New York September 12.  They have crossed the Sierra mountains in Mexico bound for Patagonia.  Vaya con dios.

Jesse's blog is filled with details and good photographs.  I'll post at landmarks - like the Panama Canal.  Otherwise, you can follow them here at Southbound 650.

I took a million notes during the debate.... James Fallows

"I took a million notes during the debate....

27 Sep 2008 01:08 AM

... but let me boil it down to this:

When the details of this encounter fade, as they soon will, I think the debate as a whole will be seen as of a piece with Kennedy-Nixon in 1960, Reagan-Carter in 1980, and Clinton-Bush in 1992.”

James Fallows

Fallows is watching the US campaign from Beijing for The Atlantic. Thanks to the internet he watched every Democratic Presidential debate this cycle. His first, confident, assessment of the first debate is here.

Southbound - Canaries and Cape Verde

Richard Hudson and crew have stopped at Sao Vicente, Cape Verde Islands, after a placid sail from the Canaries, where they spent two months.

Next stop....?

Issuma's blog will have the answer - here

Crossing the Street

There are many kinds of voyages.

Photos by Susan Sermoneta capture some of them.

For more click here

South

Frank Hurley's photographs of the doomed voyage of Ernest Shackleton's Endurance are iconic images. Lugged across the ice, stowed in lifeboats, the glass negatives, like the men, survived to tell the tale of adventure gone south.

These images are available from Atlas Gallery, London.

http://www.atlasgallery.com/

J.M.W. Turner at the Metropolitan Museum

J.M.W. Turner (1775 - 1851) explored light and water.  Using what Benjamin Mendlowitz's calls complex light, he goes beyond realism to legend.

Here are thre illustrative images from the retrospective at the Met:

The Battle of Trafalgar as Seen from the Mizzen  Starboard Shrouds of the Victory

The Shipwreck

Fishermen at Sea

Supreme Court at Crossroads in Wyeth Phenergan drug liability case

The right to recover for neglect by a pharmacist is an ancient one. It is at great risk in the case of Levine v. Wyeth, to be argued before the Supreme Court on Monday, September 22, 2008.

Adam Liptak lays out the issues in the Times.


My comments appear here.