Читать книгу Little Ship of Fools. Sixteen Rowers, One Improbable Boat, Seven Tumultuous Weeks on the Atlantic онлайн

35 страница из 92

What distinguished those first thirty attempts from rows that have occurred since was that they were undertaken without life rafts, satellite phones, or desalination equipment—or any navigational conveniences such as an autopilot or a GPS (which had of course not yet been invented). A broken rudder or oarlock meant the end not just of the voyage but quite possibly of those aboard.

Peter Bird of the U.K. had already rowed both the Atlantic and Pacific when, in August 1982, he introduced modern desalination and communications equipment to the sport during his 294-day odyssey from San Francisco to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Between June 1992 and June 1996, Bird would make five more attempts to row the Pacific, all of them unsuccessful, invariably from the east coast of Russia with the hope of reaching the west coast of the USA. The fourth attempt lasted 304 days before he gave it up. On his fifth attempt, he rowed a couple of thousand miles east from Vladivostok, made his last contact with land on Day 69 of his voyage, and was never heard from again.