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Paul Larsen
Paul Larsen (born 16 January 1970) is an Australian sailor who has been involved in many extreme sailing projects. He led the 10-year project for the Vestas Sailrocket, which set new nautical mile and 500m world speed sailing records in 2012. He credits Pete Goss as the person who had the greatest impact on his sailing career, and his sailing hero. Paul Larsen was part of Tim Jarvis's six-man crew that in 2013 successfully recreated Ernst Shackleton's famous journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia in the James Caird, a 22.5-foot lifeboat. Larsen successfully navigated the replica vessel, the Alexandra Shackleton, from Elephant Island to South Georgia using the same navigational instruments and methods that Frank Worsley, Shackleton's navigator on the James Caird, would have used. Additionally, after arriving at South Georgia, Larsen, along with Baz Gray, was part of Jarvis's three-man team that traversed the glaciers of South Georgie from King Haakon Bay to the now-aban ...
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Vestas Sailrocket
The ''Vestas Sailrocket'' was built to capture the sailing speed record competing in the B-class for 150 to 235 square feet of sail. It is piloted by the project leader Paul Larsen and sponsored by Danish wind turbines manufacturer Vestas. In 2008 the first version reached a reported unofficial speed of , before crashing. After being upgraded to a second version, the ''Vestas Sailrocket 2'' began a campaign to break speed records in November 2012 off Walvis Bay, Namibia. On 12 November, it made a run over a distance, then on the 16th. It attained on a one-mile run on the 18th and simultaneously on 500m. On 24 November, with wind speeds at roughly , it ran the 500m course at with a peak. Both records are ratified by the World Sailing Speed Record Council (WSSRC) for the 500m and the mile. A Swiss team of École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne university students and engineers, including members involved in the development of previous record-holder ''Hydroptère'', form ...
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Speed Sailing Record
Speed sailing records are sanctioned, since 1972, by the World Sailing Speed Record Council (WSSRC). Records are measured either by average speed over a specified distance or by total distance traveled during a specified time interval. The three most sought after records are the: * ''500 metre (or "outright") record'' is held by Paul Larsen. On 24 November 2012 he sailed the Vestas Sailrocket 2 at 65.45 knots in Walvis Bay, Namibia. * ''Nautical mile record'' is held by Paul Larsen. On 18 November 2012 he sailed the Vestas Sailrocket 2 at 55.32 knots in Walvis Bay, Namibia. * ''24 Hour distance record'' is held by Pascal Bidégorry. On 1 August 2009 he sailed the Banque Populaire V 908 nautical miles (at 37.84 knots). This was while he was breaking the northern Atlantic record. 500 metre records Class records Last updated: 19 November 2012. Nautical mile records Day's run A ''Day's run'' is the distance traveled by a vessel in one day, normally measured ...
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Pete Goss
Pete Goss, MBE (born 22 December 1961) is a British yachtsman who has sailed more than . A former Royal Marine, he is famous for his pioneering project Team Philips. He was invested in the Legion d'Honneur for saving fellow sailor Raphaël Dinelli in the 1996 Vendée Globe solo around the world yacht race. During a severe storm in the Southern Ocean, he turned his boat around and spent two days sailing into hurricane-force winds, finally finding Dinelli in a life-raft that had been dropped by an Australian Air Force plane shortly before the yacht had sunk. Dinelli is said to have come aboard clutching a bottle of champagne. He trained the original set of amateur crews for the British Steel Challenge, and competed in the race on board '' Hoffbräu Lager'', coming 3rd overall. Goss lives in Torpoint, Cornwall, and has three children: Alex, Livvy and Eliot. In June 2008, Goss launched a replica of a 19th-century wooden lugger called ''Spirit of Mystery''. Four months lat ...
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Tim Jarvis
Tim Jarvis AM (born May 1966) is a British-Australian environmental explorer, adventurer, climber, author and documentary filmmaker, with Masters qualifications in environmental science and environmental law. Due to his 2013 expedition recreating the voyage and mountain crossing of Sir Ernest Shackleton, Jarvis is considered an authority on Shackleton and the leadership style he espoused. Tim Jarvis is well-known public speaker who presents regularly around the world. He formerly worked as a Senior Associate – Sustainability to global engineering solutions firm Arup, and has also advised the World Bank, AusAID, and the Asian Development Bank on multilateral aid projects. His environmental work is mainly focused on climate change, sustainable aid provision in developing countries, and improving corporate environmental sustainability, as well as 'significant project' management through his project 25zero, which uses equatorial glacial melt as an indicator of global climate cha ...
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Ernest Shackleton
Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton (15 February 1874 – 5 January 1922) was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic. He was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. Born in Kilkea, County Kildare, Ireland, Shackleton and his Anglo-Irish family moved to Sydenham in suburban south London when he was ten. Shackleton's first experience of the polar regions was as third officer on Captain Robert Falcon Scott's ''Discovery'' expedition of 1901–1904, from which he was sent home early on health grounds, after he and his companions Scott and Edward Adrian Wilson set a new southern record by marching to latitude 82°S. During the ''Nimrod'' expedition of 1907–1909, he and three companions established a new record Farthest South latitude at 88°S, only 97 geographical miles (112  statute miles or 180 kilometres) from the South Pole, the largest advance to the pole ...
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Elephant Island
Elephant Island is an ice-covered, mountainous island off the coast of Antarctica in the outer reaches of the South Shetland Islands, in the Southern Ocean. The island is situated north-northeast of the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, west-southwest of South Georgia, south of the Falkland Islands, and southeast of Cape Horn. It is within the Antarctic claims of Argentina, Chile and the United Kingdom. The Brazilian Antarctic Program maintains a shelter on the island, Goeldi, supporting the work of up to six researchers each during the summer, and formerly had another ( Wiltgen), which was dismantled in the summers of 1997 and 1998. Toponym Elephant Island's name is attributed to both its elephant head-like appearance and the sighting of elephant seals by Captain George Powell in 1821, one of the earliest sightings. However, in Russia it is still known under the name given by its discoverers in 1821 – Mordvinova Island. Geography The island is oriented approximately ...
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South Georgia
South Georgia ( es, Isla San Pedro) is an island in the South Atlantic Ocean that is part of the British Overseas Territory of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. It lies around east of the Falkland Islands. Stretching in the east–west direction, South Georgia is around long and has a maximum width of . The terrain is mountainous, with the central ridge rising to at Mount Paget. The northern coast is indented with numerous bays and fjords, serving as good harbours. Discovered by Europeans in 1675, South Georgia had no indigenous population due to its harsh climate and remoteness. Captain James Cook in made the first landing, survey and mapping of the island, and on 17 January 1775 he claimed it a British possession, naming it "Isle of Georgia" after King George III. Through its history, it served as a whaling and seal hunting base, with intermittent population scattered in several whaling bases, the most important historically being Grytviken. The main se ...
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Voyage Of The James Caird
The voyage of the ''James Caird'' was a journey of from Elephant Island in the South Shetland Islands through the Southern Ocean to South Georgia, undertaken by Sir Ernest Shackleton and five companions to obtain rescue for the main body of the stranded Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–1917. Historians regard the voyage of the crew in a ship's boat through the " Furious Fifties" as one of the greatest small-boat journeys ever completed. In October 1915, pack ice in the Weddell Sea had sunk the main expedition ship ''Endurance'', leaving Shackleton and his 27 companions adrift on a floe. They drifted northward until April 1916, when the floe on which they were camped broke up; they made their way in the ship's boats to Elephant Island. Shackleton decided to sail one of the boats with a small crew to South Georgia to seek help. It was not the closest human settlement but the only one that did not require them to sail into the prevailing westerlies. Of the three ...
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Frank Worsley
Frank Arthur Worsley (22 February 1872 – 1 February 1943) was a New Zealand sailor and explorer who served on Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–1916, as captain of ''Endurance''. He also served in the Royal Navy Reserve during the First World War. Born in Akaroa, New Zealand, Worsley joined the New Zealand Shipping Company in 1888. He served aboard several vessels running trade routes between New Zealand, England and the South Pacific. While on South Pacific service, he became renowned for his ability to navigate to tiny, remote islands. He joined the Royal Navy Reserve in 1902 and served on HMS ''Swiftsure'' for a year before returning to the Merchant navy. In 1914, he joined the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, which aimed to cross the Antarctic continent. After the expedition's ship ''Endurance'' was trapped in pack ice and wrecked, he and the rest of the crew sailed three lifeboats to Elephant Island, off the Antarctic Peninsula. ...
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King Haakon Bay
King Haakon Bay, or King Haakon Sound, is an inlet on the southern coast of the island of South Georgia. The inlet is approximately 13 km (8 miles) long and 4 km (2.5 miles) wide. The inlet was named for King Haakon VII of Norway by Carl Anton Larsen, founder of Grytviken. Queen Maud Bay, named for his queen, is nearby. Shackleton Gap, a mountain pass, connects King Haakon Bay to Possession Bay. Cave Cove, which forms part of the bay, is best known as the landing place of Ernest Shackleton in May 1916 as he sought help for his shipwrecked crew marooned on Elephant Island with the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. The '' James Caird'' landed in the cove on 10 May 1916, after its tumultuous voyage from Elephant Island. While at Cave Cove, the men fed on albatross. Henry McNeish wrote: "We have not been as comfortable for the last five weeks, We had 3 young & 1 old albatross for lunch with 1 pint of gravy which beets icall the chicken soup I ever tasted." Since they ...
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Grytviken
Grytviken ( ) is a settlement on South Georgia in the South Atlantic and formerly a whaling station and the largest settlement on the island. It is located at the head of King Edward Cove within the larger Cumberland East Bay, considered the best harbour on the island. The location's name, meaning "pot bay", was coined in 1902 by the Swedish Antarctic Expedition and documented by the surveyor Johan Gunnar Andersson, after the expedition found old English try pots used to render seal oil at the site. Settlement was re-established on 16 November 1904 by Norwegian Antarctic explorer Carl Anton Larsen on the long-used site of former whaling settlements. Grytviken is built on a substantial area of sheltered, flat land and has a good supply of fresh water. Although it was the largest settlement on South Georgia, the island's administration was based at the nearby British Antarctic Survey research station at King Edward Point. The whaling station closed in December 1966 when dwindling ...
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1970 Births
Events January * January 1 – Unix time epoch reached at 00:00:00 UTC. * January 5 – The 7.1 Tonghai earthquake shakes Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (''Extreme''). Between 10,000 and 14,621 were killed and 26,783 were injured. * January 14 – Biafra capitulates, ending the Nigerian Civil War. * January 15 – After a 32-month fight for independence from Nigeria, Biafran forces under Philip Effiong formally surrender to General Yakubu Gowon. February * February 1 – The Benavídez rail disaster near Buenos Aires, Argentina, kills 236. * February 10 – An avalanche at Val-d'Isère, France, kills 41 tourists. * February 11 – '' Ohsumi'', Japan's first satellite, is launched on a Lambda-4 rocket. * February 22 – Guyana becomes a Republic within the Commonwealth of Nations. March * March 1 – Rhodesia severs its last tie with the United Kingdom, declaring itself a republic. * March 4 — All ...
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