Jeanne Socrates' "Nereida" Damaged in Record Attempt

[GordMay]

The oldest person to sail around the world, solo, non-stop and unassisted:
The officially recognised body, for ratifying sailing records, is the World Speed Sailing Record Council, an ISAF committee specifically set up to ensure consistency in rules for such events.

What is a Guinness World Records title?
➥ What makes a Guinness World Records title | Guinness World Records
➥ http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/...o-and-non-stop)

[Breaking Waves]

^^ Gord, I probably am missing it; but I don’t see anywhere there that it actually says that Guinness is using the wssrc rule set?

I see Guinness says she has oldest solo non-stop unassisted ..... and (as I said above) I have just always found that odd given she had her life raft replaced, during the record attempt, with a new one brought to her as she was sitting on a buoy.

The buoy I can sort of debate either way, but I think use of her own anchor would have been more “pure”. But having people replace your raft, after you lost your first one over board, seems rather like outside assistance to me.

Outside Weather advice can be debated also, and it is very hard to enforce (witness the GGR), but again just my personal opinion it should not be used if you want an “unassisted” record.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Breaking Waves

^^ Gord, I probably am missing it; but I don’t see anywhere there that it actually says that Guinness is using the wssrc rule set? ...

Indeed, nor did I.
I think the Guinness rules are whatever they decide they are, at any given moment.

[merlyn]

I wounder what is holding her up to enter the harbour?
Been quite a 3 day zigzag course in the bay outside Oamaru.

[Tillsbury]

It would be good if she got on with it -- it's about to start blowing hooligans for a while...

[JPA Cate]

Breaking Waves, the exception for the life raft was because it was considered essential safety equipment, I believe, and iirc, it was floated down to her and she had to wrestle it aboard....

merlyn, part of what she has to fix is tears on the lower leech of the main sail. The boat's windward performance is hampered by the lack of the main, at present.

Ann

[Tillsbury]

The argument for the liferaft is that many sailors wanting the record would have simply carried on without one. The organisations supporting and following her wouldn't have wanted the press associated with a disaster if they had "not allowed" her to continue with a life raft.

To me, floating a new life raft is probably the only outside assistance that makes sense -- because the desires of both parties is different in that particular case.

[merlyn]

Also, maybe because of her power problems she is not able to update her log on her website as often as before, unfortunate it's got a bunch of us guessing. I suppose that everyone in Oamaru is also asking.

[Breaking Waves]

Originally Posted by JPA Cate

Breaking Waves, the exception for the life raft was because it was considered essential safety equipment, I believe, and iirc, it was floated down to her and she had to wrestle it aboard....

yea, I understood that.

At the time I told her I thought there was a better solution - which was to simply restart from San Francisco. She was doing a west coast to west coast trip and san Francisco was as good for the record as Victoria. This would have allowed her the record 'clean', without having an asterisk/rule exception. But she did not want to do that.

The 'float it down to her' does not seem like much of a fig leaf. They could also obviously 'float' down to her crates of food or a new mainsail.

The 'safety' thing . . . where do you draw the line on that? A replacement hatch/port (or whatever it she has damaged right now) could certainly be considered a safety item - can someone bring her a replacement? Extra tether, a sat phone or a mainsail can be considered safety items also. They would all be 'outside assistance' imho.I personally consider unassisted to be pretty simple - simply no outside assistance - no preset mooring buoy, no replacement parts, no weather routing advice, etc.

I should comment - I don't really care, it's not really any of my business, I just personally feel if you are publically going for a record you should respect and honor the record - that's the game you choose to play. I guess it is just a more "modern legalistic approach" to go for the grey areas and ask for exceptions.

I fully understand others have different opinions on this, and it's not really worth debating. It's more a matter of personal philosophy.

[El Pinguino]

You can get a good idea of where she is by going here and using her position as received by satellite.... the more nl'y one of the two..
https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais...:-45.1/zoom:11
It currently suggests she has about 13 miles to go.... with about 5 hours of daylight left.

The 'named' position is an historical position logged by a shore station https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais.../stations/4043
and the latest is about ten hours ago when they lost her signal....

[merlyn]

well I've been using this one to track her. The last fix might be earlier
https://www.gsattrack.com/Track

[merlyn]

she just made an update in her log

[Breaking Waves]

I have not looked at the weather forecast, but if it were practical and I had a choice I would head for barrier island, port fitzroy. Lovely spot, quiet for making repairs, decently easy to get in and out of and to anchor. One of our fav spots. But that is some distance from her current location.

Dunedin is rather closer and reasonable - we sat in there for a while and made repairs.

There were actually some decent options on steward island but I think she just wanted to get around.

[Tillsbury]

She’s well downwind of Dunedin/Oamaru now, and more importantly come Saturday there will be gale force and more south-westerlies which are not pleasant, even in the “lee” of Banks Peninsula

[merlyn]

if someone is looking for an excellent free online marine chart of NZ this is it
https://wetmaps.co.nz/#10/-43.9681/172.8575