Clarisse Cremer - first woman to finish Vendee - breaks Ellen McArthur record

News - Some highlights of Clarisse Cremer's Press Conference - Vendée Globe - En

12th place Race time: 87d 02h 24m 25s  Thirteen boats still racing

Clarisse Cremer, 12th on the Vendee Globe, said the key objective has been achieved, finishing the race. She received a message from Ellen MacArthur congratulating her on her race which she said she was more excited about than her 12th place or being first woman! Here are a few snippets of Clarisse Press Conference which available on replay on the social media channels. 

Your knowledge and relationship with your boat?
When I started sailing with this boat in July 2019 I did not have much time to learn this boat but many other sailors on this Vendée Globe did not really know their boats much better than I did. But there is nothing to replace spending so much time solo on the boat in demanding race conditions. At the start I would not say that myself and the boat were in any kind of fusion, I was quite scared of this big machine, but now sometimes I feel it is not that big any more, you get accustomed to it and find your marks. But technically I still have a lot to learn and that was what required the most psychological work for me accept I could not master everything. I still have elements missing and am not up to a level with my boat. I would like to know it better still.

How was the finish?
The finish is filled with so many emotions because you are always worried about not finishing, all the time it is in your mind. When it is finished and when you succeed it I a lot of pressure gone away. And the Channel, well it was a big shock!

Are you proud?
Yes I am proud to have managed to look after the boat from the beginning and to finish. But now I am realising with three months of experience now I realise how I did not know how to do everything on board at the start, even if I was prepared. It is a pleasant feeling to know you have mastered the subject, that you mastered your boat but I am still fascinated by these boats. This morning I was in 40kts and I was nor even afraid, these beasts are made to go around the world, they are fascinating machines, objects and so there is a pride in having brought it and myself back safely and correctly.

On Ellen MacArthur’s record and her message?  
It is true that I beat her record, but the record was 20 years ago and they are two completely different editions of the Vendée Globe the boats are completely different, the length of the race we saw this time is not representative of the intensity of the race and what skippers are able to do. And so yes I am happy, it is fun this sentence ‘the fastest woman around the world on a monohull in solo sailing’ but it is an additional thing which is fun, but to have a message from Ellen MacArthur that is really something big for me.

12th or the first woman, what is more important?
The number 12th is not that important, the goal was to finish the Vendée Globe. Having finished in full race mode and having sailed well and the fact of being the first woman that is just the cherry on the top. We are not very numerous and yes people speak about us more because as the first woman it highlights the project. But on the water I never tell myself anything is different because I am a woman. I have a boat and if competitors are men or women I don’t think about it on the water, yes it is a subject we end up talking about a lot, but it does not affect the way I race at all. Being the first woman is good, but it was never my first objective and my thoughts are still with the women who are still on the water and others who we expected great positions from, Sam and Isa who were not lucky and had damage, but to have the courage to set sail again and finish the course.

 

The Owl by Edward Thomas | Poem of the week: | The Guardian

A tawny owl Photograph: FLPA/Alamy

Poem of the week: The Owl by Edward Thomas | Books | The Guardian

Selected by Carol Rumens

The Owl

Downhill I came, hungry, and yet not starved;
Cold, yet had heat within me that was proof
Against the North wind; tired, yet so that rest
Had seemed the sweetest thing under a roof.

Then at the inn I had food, fire, and rest,
Knowing how hungry, cold, and tired was I.
All of the night was quite barred out except
An owl’s cry, a most melancholy cry

Shaken out long and clear upon the hill,
No merry note, nor cause of merriment,
But one telling me plain what I escaped
And others could not, that night, as in I went.

And salted was my food, and my repose,
Salted and sobered, too, by the bird’s voice
Speaking for all who lay under the stars,
Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice.

Edward Thomas (1878-1917) is among my favourite poets, one of those whose revelations never become predictable (Emily Dickinson is another). Thomas, perhaps more stealthily, regularly delivers a surprise, a lyric poem which, if it were a gift, would be wrapped in honest, glitter-free brown paper. You open the parcel to find a poem which is so unexpectedly truthful and nuanced it suddenly seems hair-raising. The Thrush was the last Thomas poem featured here: this time, it’s The Owl.

Jean Le Cam 8th across the line but corrects to provisional 4th overall on Yes We Cam! - Vendée Globe - En

Four years ago Jean LeCam was rescued by Vincent Riou. This time he was the hero who rescued Kevin Escoffier .whose boat broke up in huge seas 450 miles south of the Cape of Good Hope.  The 61 year old, sailing his fifth! Vendee Globe was in an older, non-foiling boat yet on day 80! he finished eighth - a mere 10 hours behind Yannick Bestaven, the winner of the 27,000 mile solo unassisted circumnavigation.  

In what is the greatest sailboat race ever 61 year old ​Jean LeCam - sailing a non-foiling boat - ​was one of eight!!! sailors in the 33 boat fleet (only 7 have retired!) to finish on day 80 of the 27,000 mile solo circumnavigation. 1920 hours - yet only 10 hours separated first and eighth!

LeCam  was given corrected time for the diversion - making him the fourth place finisher.  Actually he should get a gold medal as the first in a non-hydrofoiling boat.

News - Jean Le Cam 8th across the line but corrects to provisional 4th overall on Yes We Cam! - Vendée Globe - En

On a wet, windy, unpleasant Thursday night it was at 19:19:55hrs UTC that Jean Le Cam crossed the finish line of the ninth Vendée Globe to take fourth place overall. Although he actually passed the line eighth, with his time compensation of 16hrs and 15minutes he moves up to fourth, in fact missing the podium by just 3hrs 19 mins 43 seconds.

Racing on his fifth Vendée Globe, 61 year old Le Cam is actually only 10hrs and 09s behind the winning time of Yannick Bestaven. He now displaces Boris Herrmann to fifth.

Without doubt Le Cam is the popular hero of this Vendee Globe after rescuing Kevin Escoffier on 1st December when the PRB skipper was forced to take to his liferaft. 

After the line he said 

"This is a finish line like I've never passed  in my life. You will see tomorrow why. I don't know how I got here, honestly I don't know. But it's done! This is a deliverance certainly. This Vendée Globe has been a sick thing. I did it but with everything that happened. Besides, apparently I'm 4th! It's been two days that I have been pushing just to not to miss the tide. This morning Anne (editor's note Anne Combier, team manager) told me that I could get still ahead of Boris Herrmann. I had never imagined that! I was happy to be have been ahead of Groupe APICIL, that was the challenge between boats with straight daggerboards. This challenge was very much the race. These foiling  boats are a lot of puzzles for not much! Like computing software. But sailing is not an exact science! For me the single most important thing is that I gave the younger generations the idea that they could do the Vendée Globe with limited means. I have had testimonials from young people in this regard. I am happy because we have seen budgets going up and up and so this is a real victory. I went from here to here. But as I say if I say too much about it only makes me chuckle."

After his second place behind Vincent Riou in 2004-5 this is Le Cam’s second best result on the Vendée Globe and – ironically – improves on his sixth in the last edition on the same boat.

It is a remarkable achievement, reflecting a very smooth and accomplished route all the way around the world on his 2007 Farr design which originally won the 2008 race in the hands of Michel Desjoyeaux.
 

Le Cam’s race

The skipper had already said his goodbyes to his family when he went down alone to the pontoon on the day of the start, as if he was in a hurry to set sail, after spending so many months preparing the boat in a shed in Port-la-Forêt. He believed in his boat in spite of the fact that she was built in 2007 and very few people chose her as one of their favourites for the race.

And yet, on the day after the start, Yes We Cam! led the fleet. Jean would lead the race on nine occasions early in the race. Two competitors took therisk of entering the eye of the first big storm: Alex Thomson and Jean Le Cam. “Jean is getting close to me. He is incredible,” said the British sailor. The Breton found it all rather amusing. “There are people who think they can plan everything, come out with all sorts of ideas and talk rubbish... Saying things may make people laugh, but everyone falls silent, when you do things. The old man is ready to put up a fight.”      

Jean Le Cam’s voyage down the Atlantic was impressive, with the foilers apparently afraid of burning their wings if they got too close to danger. Ashore, he has always been popular in France, never one to pay attention to what is expected of him and ready to joke about what you are supposed to do to fit in with society. The French adore his spontaneity, while the ocean racing fraternity loves his trajectories. He has the image of a bragger or a wit, but those who follow such races closely know that he is always consistent in his sailing.

His progress would however be halted on a night in November off the coast of South Africa. Kevin Escoffier abandoned his boat and jumped into his life-raft, with Jean twenty miles away. He changed course, spotted the skipper of PRB, before once again losing sight of him. When he found him again, he managed to bring him aboard his boat. “God, you’re aboard. That was close,” said Jean, who must have thought about his own rescue in 2009 when he was helped by Vincent Riou. After a scary night, everyone wanted to pay homage to Jean, including the French president.

With Kevin at his side, they formed a comic duo, and appeared to be enjoying themselves during their week together. When it was time for Kevin to go aboard the Nivôse on a sunny Sunday morning, Jean was clearly moved. “Searching for someone, spending a week together and then finding myself alone again, is not that easy,” he admitted. 

He got back into the race and had to deal with warm fronts in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, “where long surfing waves are just something you find in books.” He rounded Cape Horn (“it was not something to take for granted”) in 6m high waves and in 45-knots of wind. He would often find himself in a contest with other competitors, such as Damien Seguin, with whom he chatted, and Benjamin Dutreux, who “never eased off.” In early January, he said that it seemed that “there is no getting away from each other. Benjamin gets excited at times and gets ahead. Sometimes I call him up and tell him, what is this pact we have? It’s not working out. You are just doing what you want!” This was not Jean’s way of mocking, but rather his way of showing respect. He appreciated Benjamin’s achievement aboard a boat like his without foils.

His climb back up the Atlantic may well serve as an example to sailors learning their skills. Jean clearly enjoyed himself aboard his ‘Hubert’, the nickname given to the boat in memory of his friend, Hubert Desjoyeaux who founded the CDK yard. On the way back home, Jean explained he was in a good position, as he was “one of the chasers behind the pathfinders out in front.” The skipper kept pushing relentlessly and would remain close to the frontrunners, thanks to his expert knowledge of his boat. Reliability appeared to be worth more than flying at any cost.    

Key moments

Equator (outward bound)

4th on 18t November at 1319hrs UTC, after 9d 23hrs 59mins

Cape of Good Hope

6th on 2/12/2020 at 0452hrs UTC, 1d 05hrs 41mins after the leader

Cape Leeuwin

6th on 14/12/2020 at 0213hrs, 11d 21hrs 21mins after passing the Cape of Good Hope

Cape Horn

7th on 04/12/2020 at 2018hrs UTC after 57d 06hrs 58mins

Equator (return leg)

8th on 17/01/2020 at 1414hrs UTC after 70d 00hrs 54mins

Best 24-hour run

7t December at 0800hrs UTC: 459.61 miles averaging 19.2 knots

Vendee Globe: first four EIGHT finishers - around the world in 80 days!

Iceboarding Wordon Pond, Rhode Island

 The Ocean State has a lot of ponds - perfect for iceboating when a cold snap hits.

But that's kind of old-fashioned: ice-boarding is windsurfing with blades on the smooth surface of a frozen fresh water pond, like here on Wordon Pond, South Kingstown, RI.

Salla, Finland's coldest city bids for summer games - 2032

 Salla, Lapland, Finland ...plan your stay  July: Avg. high: 66 F Avg. low 55 F

The Friendship Slooop

Illustration by Tim Ewing
 The Friendship Sloop - Soundings

In the late 19th century, Wilbur Morse, a boatbuilder in Friendship, Maine, was turning out an unprecedented number of working sailboats of similar design. As Betty Roberts writes in her history of the Friendship sloop, the boats were gaff-rigged with a clipper bow and a graceful (and practical) elliptical stern. Working craft, they were likely developed from the fishing boats of Gloucester, Massachusetts, and were used for most any kind of fishing, whether hand-lining for cod, seining for herring or hauling lobster traps.

Though Morse is credited with building the most “Friendships,” fishermen all over Maine — Thomaston, Cushing, Morse Island, Muscongus — were building the versatile, capable and seaworthy boats. Most were 30 to 40 feet, built using a formula that allowed for varying sizes. Beam was related to length, and mast height was related to length and draft. Thus, they could be built to any length from 21 to 50 feet. All had the elliptical stern.

Builders would cut their own wood, bring it to a sawmill and float the milled lumber to a boathouse using dories. “Each builder had some little secret innovation, which, in his estimation, made his model better than the others,” Roberts writes. The idea was to launch in spring, fish in summer, sell in the fall and build another. Used boats might fetch $300 to $500, the average cost of building.

The Friendship sloop remained in use as a fishing boat into the early 20th century, when motorized boats began replacing them. Before the Friendship faded from history, however, a devoted group that admired its look and sailing qualities seized upon it. The Friendship Sloop Society was founded in 1961, and the first of its annual sloop regattas, held in Friendship, Maine, drew 14 entries. Today, there are gatherings in Connecticut and Massachusetts, as well.

For more on the Friendship sloop, visit the society website at fss.org.

This article originally appeared in the August 2017 issue.

Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden | Poetry Foundation

Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden | Poetry Foundation

Those Winter Sundays

BY ROBERT HAYDEN 

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he’d call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Robert Hayden, “Those Winter Sundays” from Collected Poems of Robert Hayden, edited by Frederick Glaysher. Copyright ©1966 by Robert Hayden. Reprinted with the permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.

Source: Collected Poems of Robert Hayden (Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1985)

‘Icebound’ Takes Us Back to the Arctic, in All Its Terror and Splendor - The New York Times

‘Icebound’ Takes Us Back to the Arctic, in All Its Terror and Splendor - The New York Times

‘Icebound’ Takes Us Back to the Arctic, in All Its Terror and Splendor

In her new book, “Icebound,” the journalist Andrea Pitzer chronicles William Barents’s three attempts to find a mythical northeast passage to Asia.

Credit...Christopher Miller for The New York Times

When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.

By Rachel Slade

• Published Jan. 8, 2021Updated Jan. 12, 2021

ICEBOUND
Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World
By Andrea Pitzer

Europeans once dreamed of an open sea at the top of the world. In 1606, Gerard Mercator, arguably the most famous cartographer of his time or any other, published a top-down map of the earth as he understood it. At the center of Mercator’s North Pole stood a magnetic mountain that pulled all compass needles northward; whirling around the mass of gray rock was a warm sea ringed by a thick circle of ice.

At the time, no one had a clue what the poles looked like. Mercator based his map on a theory proposed 1,800 years earlier by Pytheas, the first Greek to breach the Strait of Gibraltar and check out the Atlantic for himself. Pytheas sailed up the west coast of Europe, circumnavigated the British Isles, then continued north until he hit ice, possibly Iceland. Beyond that, he theorized, might be a free-flowing sea.

Pytheas’ travelogue was picked up by Pliny and others. Uncontested over centuries, his polar sea theory hardened into fact. Thoughts of that undiscovered ocean at the top of the world marinated in European imagination throughout the Middle Ages until the Portuguese found they could sail around Africa and into the Indian Ocean, prompting a trade route bonanza.

By the 16th century, European ships were poking into every bay, inlet and river. If there was a navigable ocean at the pole, it could provide a shortcut to Asia. In 1594, Dutch investors bet big on that theory, commissioning the cartographer William Barents to lead an expedition to the northernmost tip of Norway and then east over Russia in search of a northeast route. If they were right, Barents would make the Dutch phenomenally rich.

Climbing the Himalaya With Soldiers, Spies, Lamas and Mountaineers - The New York Times

Climbing the Himalaya With Soldiers, Spies, Lamas and Mountaineers - The New York Times

HIMALAYA
A Human History
By Ed Douglas

When I first came to India, I asked one of the most erudite politicians in the Indian government a question I had been scared to pose to anyone else but that seemed fundamental to understanding the region: Why does India have so many people? Geographically, it’s one-third the size of the United States but its population is nearly five times as large. The politician, who had had a long successful career in the United States as a business executive and seemed happy to explain just about anything to a new correspondent, stood up from his desk and walked over to a large wall map. He tapped a certain region, shaded brown and white.

“The answer,” he told me, “is the Himalaya.”

He explained that the world’s highest mountain range, home to Mount Everest and countless myths and counter-myths, had created such an immense river network that it left behind staggeringly rich soil across a vast swath of Asia. It’s no accident, he said, that on either side of these mountains lie the world’s two most populous nations, India and China. If you include Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, all of which also greatly depend on rivers sourced in the Himalaya, we’re talking about nearly half of humankind tied to these mountains.

The range, part of an even vaster highland region stretching more than 2,000 miles from Kyrgyzstan in the west to Myanmar in the east, has shaped Asia more than any geographical feature has shaped any other continent. The forces that drove religion, trade, learning and human interactions flowed across these mountains and their foothills for thousands of years. Even today, some of the rawest flash points in Asia, which can send armies rushing to the border and fighter jets roaring through the sky, lie high up in the Himalaya. The pros never put an “s” at the end of the word; it’s just Himalaya, which in Sanskrit means “abode of snow.”

Image

A climber from the Royal Geographic Society films members of an expedition on Mount Everest in 1922.Credit...Times Wide World Photos

In “Himalaya: A Human History,” the journalist Ed Douglas untangles the history of the mountains starting from when they were formed, about 50 million years ago, to the Everest climbing craze today. His book is the fruit of an enormous amount of research that focuses on the conquest of the mountains and the interconnected kingdoms and states that vied for control. His observations are sharp, and in many passages, his writing glows.