Yachting FAIL - Jessica Watson

[MarkJ]

Originally Posted by llyrisk

I am still hung up on the amount of food she is taking. How on earth do you get clothes dry in those conditions, or don't you?
.

Originally Posted by llyrisk

still hung up on the amount of food she is taking. How on earth do you get clothes dry in those conditions,

Freeze dry the clothes!

The amount of food quoted looks about right.

32 tins of Spam ...rather than high-protein bars.

150 litres of milk powder,
64 tins of potatoes,
32 tins of pineapples,
36 tins of tuna and
160 popper juice drinks.
powdered egg

They obviously haven't mentioned the less exciting stuff like 50 kilos flour and rice etc.

32 cans of Spam for example seems about right. Thats 1 can per week for 8 months. When we open a can of Spam - not a high point on our voyage! - it last the 2 of us a full day: a couple of slices with eggs fired for breakfast and the rest minced in a pasta at dinner. One day in 7 is quite enough.
She has other preprepared meals as mentioned in earlier posts - say once per week.
36 cans of tuna is another day per week.
They didn't mention other forms of canned meat, fish, and meat substitutes.
She will get sick of the bloody canned potatoes! Revolting!
The photos showed Black and Gold brand powdered milk. We always go the highest priced powdered milk - its far better than budget brands. Quantity is probably about right for someone who eats cereal for breakfast.
160 poppers - nutritionally bad but less than 1 per day and her teeth show a sugar addiction anyway.
Powdered eggs are difficult to find. we bought direct from Pace Farms. Take up little room and are fine for cooking.

The protein or energy bars are just total bull$hit. Full of sugar and crap and taste like cardboard and extremely expensive. Glad they avoided them!

Emergency supplies on top of all that really don't need to be all that nice, just filling. We had 3 cartons of 12 cans bully beef as emergency supplies till Nic tasted a can and threw the lot out -Damn expensive mistake that was! LOL

We do our major provisioning at wholesale grocery stores - they let provisioning yachties in! Saves heaps; buy in cartons for easy stowage (never had a cocky problem); and good quality buy cheap catering supplies.

The problems with food are not the provisioning in that sense but:
Variety,
Excitement,
Nutritious treats.

You and I when board can always grab a pizza, McD's, or go chomp on a donut from a naughty store... or we can go to a nice restaurant.
At sea you get none of those occasional things because you know whats in the cupboard! Intimately and exactly you know every provision on the boat..... On our longest passage we couldn’t wait to jump off the boat and stuff something different down our throats... and that was only 20 days! She has 8 months+.

Anything she has forgotten is too late as any additional provisions now is 'assistance' fishing excluded! (Dont rely on fishing btw)

If she doesnt stick to her provisioning plan, like eating all her sweets in the first month, then she has to just manage.

[Wotname]

Originally Posted by roverhi

FWIW, the season to round the Horn is the middle of the southern Winter. IIRC, the chances of storms and strong winds are much greater during the Southern Summer. Even if she had an easy Cape Horn passage, it will be unpleasantly cold when she get's there. From her proposed track, it looks she is going to stay relatively far north till she makes her run to the Cape. Still, she will be sailing at the latitude of Oregon for most of her trip so it won't be a sun filled cruise.

Hmm... a difference of opinion here, I must do some checking in case my memory is failing me (again).
Regardless, she will (or should) be there before the end of summer (southern) given her proposed track but it will make the 10,000+ nm to Tassie plenty damn cold and miserable.

Originally Posted by MarkJ

..... We had 3 cartons of 12 cans bully beef as emergency supplies till Nic tasted a can and threw the lot out -Damn expensive mistake that was! LOL

Bugger, I could have traded you some spam! My taste buds say that bully beef is one notch higher up the scale than spam. Still it is not a warm climate food, when you open the tin and all the fat has melted and the remains are floating in it

Originally Posted by MarkJ

If she doesnt stick to her provisioning plan, like eating all her sweets in the first month, then she has to just manage.

Or be sensible and come home early

[MarkJ]

Originally Posted by roverhi

FWIW, the season to round the Horn is the middle of the southern Winter.

Look at the 2 attached pilot charts of gale percentages. The July (southern winter) has the much higher gale percentages. But double!

Without going through all the charts, it just seems that southern summer is by far the best time.

[Wotname]

Originally Posted by roverhi

FWIW, the season to round the Horn is the middle of the southern Winter. IIRC, the chances of storms and strong winds are much greater during the Southern Summer. ......

Originally Posted by Wotname

Hmm... a difference of opinion here, I must do some checking in case my memory is failing me (again).
Regardless, she will (or should) be there before the end of summer (southern) given her proposed track but it will make the 10,000+ nm to Tassie plenty damn cold and miserable....

Originally Posted by MarkJ

Look at the 2 attached pilot charts of gale percentages. The July (southern winter) has the much higher gale percentages. But double!

Without going through all the charts, it just seems that southern summer is by far the best time.

Looks like the Ocean Passages for the World (NP 136) agrees with Mark and moir and I can rest easy about my memory (for awhile) .

Quoting from para 8.66.1 (4th edition):
Rounding Cabo de Hornos from W to E is a comparatively easy matter, for the prevailing winds are favourable and the current near Cabo de Hornos sets strongly E. The passage is usually made between 56 S and 57.5 S, to the N of the W-bound route. December and January are the most favourable months; June and July, when E winds are not unusual, are the least favourable. Heavy W gales, with snow and hail, may be expected in August and September. In winter, a track about 80 miles S of Cabo de Hornos is recommended.

[Factor]

Originally Posted by SvenG

Boy was she ever under sail !

The report says she was doing 7 kts in a 34 foot cruising sailboat at night while she was sleeping down below. That's not bad for a boat with a theoretical hull speed under 7 kts.
-Sven

Sven my good chap - check out the East Australian Current and get back to me. There is a difference between boat speed and speed over ground, as I am sure you are aware.

[llyrisk]

I see that a lot of the questions I asked are coming up in the comments on Jessica's blog, when you plough through them, and people are coming up with responses based either on their knowlrdge of sailing or things they have read in newspaper articles or seen on interviews. Fpr instance she has a 3000 litre(?) supply of fresh water, plus a desalination unit, and will be collecting rainwater from the sails.
I have one more question though.
As the record is for sailing non stop and unassisted, then I am assuming the reason for having the motor is to get to safety in the case of damage that means you can't sail, or so that if you were to become becalmed for some ridiculous amount of time you would have a way out. In either case, you would then have blown your chance at the record?
I f you had to use the motor, what sort of distance would you be likely to be able to cover, which obviously must relate to the level of fuel supplies you have on board? In the Southern oceans you seem to be a very long way from anywhere.
Purely hypothetically, if someone was tempted to help themselves along a little by using the motor for a short time to get to somewhere where there is more wind, is this purely an honour thing, or would people following their passage be able to tell from their position and weather information about prevailing winds etc that they have not been travelling under sail? Not talking about Jessica in particular, but how do we know for sure that someone today or in the recent past claiming a long distance sailing record hasn't relied on their motor for part of the journey?

[osirissail]

- - To do the equator loop in the Indian Ocean would definitely be suicidal. she would have to track the east coast of Africa up by the Seychelles and Somalia to get above the equator and then turn south again to avoid India and the Indonesian Islands. The Somali pirates would have a field day with a pink boat and a female teenager.

[SabreKai]

I'd be questioning the source of that "3000 liter water supply". You are talking about 6600 lbs of water. I would think someone got over zealous with the 0s.

Anyway, back in 92 I ended up going diabetic. One of the things they gave me was a diet plan. One was set up for my days off, the other was for my working days. I was involved in heavy consturction at the time so it was made to give me more energy to cope. The values given were 1200 Kj and 1800Kj per day. Now I also have heard that the Volvo boys were figured at 3500-4500 kj per day. So whats the real energy needs for a person to go long distance sailing? I would expect that in cruddy weather the needs go up, decent weather they drop. It would seem to average out.

As for spam, Its great stuff. Breakfast food of the US Marines. Fried spam, raw spam, spam n gravy on toast. Spam with pickles n beans. Spam with onions. I LOVE SPAM. (try not to cringe here ok?) BullyBeef is second on my list but spam is great.

I would guess her provisions list is quite extensive so I'm not going to worry about that. She had the help of a
diatician, so you can expect it will be ok assuming they planned on the correct duration. She will have to be discipline enough to spread the goodies out over a period of time but otherwise should do ok.

Sabre
40 days n a wake up

[llyrisk]

My mistake about the water. I just relied on memory instead of checking backt through all the comments. It is 300. Shows how little knowledge I have. Sorry!

[shadow]

Is there a semi real time tracker on her progress?? I would love to track her daily to see her progress..

[Pblais]

Very good points Paul, but I do believe age is a factor when discussing “risk management”

It depends on who the risk is directed against. You can't assess the risk on the youngest person to EVER complete the trip. It's a record not an average. So risk assessment on something never been done is possible? The number say not possible. It clearly is arguable that it is possible but I'll bet money the risk assessment isn't possible. Risk assumes a sense of what is and what is not possible.

[Bark]

So...what percentage of teens who publicize and then embark upon a solo circumnavigation actually succeed?

[MarkJ]

Originally Posted by llyrisk

I am assuming the reason for having the motor is to get to safety

The sole use of the engine is to charge the batteries. Like a cars engine it has an alternator to make eletricty.
She needs electricity to make water, have lights etc.

There is no rule about using theortor to propell the boat, so she could use it as much as she wants to move the boat but her fuel would not last the trip to charge batteries if she used it for propulsion. If she was heading for serious trouble like an iceberg she could motor iout of its way.

Her fuel capacity would let her motor for, say, 2 days, maybe 3 days.

Her solar panels wouldnt work at all down there, I wouldnt think.

Has anyone got solar panel experience in high lattitudes in winter?

Mark

[TaoJones]

Originally Posted by MarkJ

Has anyone got solar panel experience in high lattitudes in winter?

Mark

Mark, you've mentioned a few times, now, about Ms. Watson sailing the Southern Ocean in winter, and you have me thoroughly confused. Winter in the southern hemisphere, as you know, does not begin until June 21, and ends on September 21 when the southern hemisphere spring begins.

Ms. Watson began her voyage just one month into southern spring, and, if she manages to keep to her planned 100nm per day average, will sail back into Sydney Harbour at the end of approximately eight months at sea. That would see her concluding her voyage around mid- to late-June.

In other words, no part of her voyage will be during the southern winter.

I suppose you could be referring to northern winter, but I don't see the relevance of that to her planned route.

TaoJones

[bill good]

Good question Mark!! What is the performance of solar panels in the area where the sun never sets!! Mind you I still prefer Warm Tropical Waters where I can sleep at night.