>For those who enjoy following blogs of sailing exploits, like me, today is somewhat notable as it was today that Jessica Watson, the young girl trying to circumnavigate the world in a small sailboat, reached the point in the ocean called “Point Nemo”. That point was named for Captain Nemo the fictional hero of Jules Verne’s “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea”, 1869″. It is the point in the ocean that is the farthest from land of any place on the planet. This position was computed by drawing lines between three points, in this case islands. These points are…
s48:52:31.748 w123:23:33.069
This point is exactly 2 688 220.580 meters (slightly more than 1 450 nautical miles) away from the following three coastline points:
s24:40:39.360, w124:47:25.872 Ducie Island (Pitcairn Island Group, South Pacific)
s27:12:29.304, w109:27:33.120 Motu Nui / Rapa Nui (“Easter Island”, South Pacific)
s72:57:57.024, w126:22:30.793 Maher Island / Siple Island (Antarctica)
Jessica is probably less than two weeks from passing Cape Horn, what is likely to be the toughest part of her voyage. Interestingly, she has been sailing in fog for some days now and I have to wonder what it’s like being in reduced visibility of only a few hundred feet and yet being 1,450km from the nearest land. Sounds a bit surrealistic to me.
When she was leaving port for a test sail months ago, she had an accident that made headlines when she collided with a huge ship. This video also has an interesting interview with a fellow long distance sailor who attempted such a voyage with disastrous results.
When Brenda and I were in Key West last week we saw an IMOCA 60, a really terrific ocean racing boat. This video is in French but does have some footage of Bel, the big red French boat that we saw sailing near the docks. What an amazing boat, and so fast. What a contrast from Jessica Watson’s Ella’s Pink Lady.