October 2009 On Tuesday, 20 October, 2009 (6.00pm) Australia’s Jessica Watson reports all is well aboard her yacht Ella’s Pink Lady on day three of her around the world voyage. If successful she will become the youngest person in the world to complete the quest. Last month her yacht collided with a cargo ship off southern Queensland and last weekend one of her mentors, Andrew Short, was killed in a yachting accident. All this makes her recent departure an emotional and worrying one for her family, friends and supporters.
To succeed Watson must adhere to a number of rules for around the world record attempts including:
- Departing and arriving from the same port.
- Crossing all lines of longitude.
- Cross the equator entering into the Northern Hemisphere at least once.
- Round the southern landmarks of South America and South Africa.
The journey will likely cover over 23,000 nautical miles (about 38,000 kilometres) across some of the world’s most tretcherous oceans.
RemoteAdventurer.com will be covering the story at every turn. Subscribe to the RSS feed or check back regularly for updates.
In February of this year 121.5 MHz EPIRBs stopped being detected by the Cospas-Sarsat satellite system making them effectively obsolete. Despite this the units are still detectable by many commercial aircraft and, if activated, can result in a full scale search and rescue operation. Due, in part, to a rise in false alarms from this type of beacon they will become illegal to use one for any purpose after 1 February 2010.
Mountaineer Andrew Lock has been honored by the Australian Geographic Society as the 2009 Australian Adventurer of the Year.
Until last week only 17 men in the world had succeeded in climbing all fourteen 8000 meter plus peaks (known to climbers as 8000′ers). It’s the ultimate climbing pilgrimage that has become the holy grail for mountaineers the world over. At exactly 5:05pm on Friday 2nd October, however, Australian Andrew Lock officially joined the world’s mountaineering super elite by making himself the 18th.
