Canoeing 15 meter waves!? I've bailed off of lakes at like 2 foot waves for fear of swamping (admittedly fully laden canoes, but still).

Are you just using standard open canoes you'd use on a lake (potentially with some air bladders to keep from swamping?), or something special for this?

This guy has rowed from America to Australia, SE Asia and I think he has just reached the Seychelles in the last few days:

https://www.instagram.com/adventureaaron/

A lot of these long crossings seem to involve a serious amount of chance as far as conditions go.

I mean, it's 1/10th of the circumference of the entire planet. Crazy.

In endurance running, the longer races become, the more competitive they are for women. Women semi-regularly win multi-day and 100+ mile races, even if women don't have course records at these times/distances. In an event of sufficient time/distance, factors besides strength dominate the outcome.

So, (and knowing very little about rowing), I am not surprised that a woman could take the record here. You can only row so fast. Other factors like weather, currents, nutrition, mental fortitude, navigation, and boat design overcome muscle strength.

All that said: props to Kelsey Pfendler! She definitely knows how to embrace the suck.

Here's a nice diary of her trip:

https://www.kcra.com/article/kelsey-pfendler-record-breaking...

Love these updates:

> Day 21: Kelsey gave an update on a lesson learned about her mental state, saying she had beaten herself up for sleeping in. But she realized that wasn't productive thinking. "When you're out here, you're not in control," she said. "You are in control of you." She said she realized that the way to respond to problems is much more important than the problem itself.

> Day 44: Kelsey could see O'ahu as she closed in on her goal. "If any part of this made at least one person feel a little bit more powerful in their own skin, I couldn't ask for anything else and I'm happy," she said. "Think about trying to find your own big, hard, scary thing. You might not think that you are strong enough to finish it right now, but you're definitely strong enough to start it and you'll find everything else along the way."

It’s quite an accomplishment, but this is done rarely (https://oceanrowing.com/statistics lists less than a thousand completed rows world-wide), and the weather hugely affects how long it will take to do it.

Also, my geographical knowledge may be lacking, but it appears “to Hawaii” is essential here.

https://oceanrowing.com/filter?id=1415 shows a row from Monterey to Hanalei, Kauai in 32 days. That’s in the state of Hawaii, too, but about 200km closer.

This was only completed one other time by the male who was doing it for a fundraiser and not to set a record.

Fellow rower here, affirming the above.

Thought folks would be interested in her boat, built for ocean rowing:

https://yourowkelsey.com/about/

I wonder if it's as much of an issue with those big boats at sea. The wavelength gets pretty long off the continental shelf, so I imagine it's a lot less adjustment than lake waves, with the exception being storm conditions you should probably avoid anyway.

All I'll say is that this is the place on the internet I have seen the largest percentage of people who have an opinion on OOP at all also have that opinion be positive

Coincidence? You decide

She posted a video of her food loadout on instagram. It looked like a lot of dehydrated meals, and also a lot of peanut butter and tortillas.

She said she has two desalinators - one hand-pump and another electric, plus emergency water bottles to last a few days.

its not small at all. its 21 feet long.

she also has solar panels on it. probably just a lil stove she has somewhere.

Portable desalinators exist.

I don't know how to verify it, but I've been told that drinking seawater is acceptable to do and is just enough to keep you alive.

If I were to do it though, I would invest in some water filters which are fairly cheap and can remove a lot of things that you wouldn't want to be drinking.

One fun thing you get to do in long distance outrigger canoe races in hawaii is crew changes.

Generally, outrigger races have 6 people in the boat and a 9 person team. An escort boat will hold your reserve people, and then drop them in front of the canoe when you need to swap people out.

The problem is that you need to drop people around 200m in front of the canoe so the canoe can have enough time to prep for the crew change, but with that distance, the wave height can obscure the crew from the person steering.

The solution? If you're the one being dropped, you're expected to splash violently. Create as much splash as possible so the canoe can see you, even behind a wave.

The fun part is what gives signal to the canoe is the same thing that gives signal to sharks. Our coach used to say the adrenaline helps us in the race.

(I was replying to a child comment on fear of deep waters, seemingly deleted?)

I’ve heard this sentiment before, and can sort of intellectually follow, but man. I love scuba diving, I love the ocean and its varied and alien and multi-scale inhabitants. I’ve spent weeks on a live-aboard boat explicitly to seek out megafauna like sharks and rays (same subclass as sharks).

When I start my descent, I love to turn around and see my exhaled air bubble up, up towards the sun rays in the top layer of the water that slowly fade further away as the pressure on my ears builds and I enter the unknown ocean. It’s the most relaxing feeling, and I often remember it to go to sleep.

How beautifully individual our preferences can be. :-)

I thought sharks only attack stuff that looks like wounded animals. Would a shark really attack a boat?

its not a standard canoe you see people going down rivers on. She has a heavily modified one and its kinda large

pic of it: https://imgur.com/eiESZzT 21 feet long

I've done open ocean crossings in canoes between the hawaiian islands, so I can answer from experience.

Don't think of these waves like the ones you encounter at shore. Open ocean waves are moving mountains.

It isn't this: /(

It's this:

        .,-~^^~-,.    
  ___.-/          \-.__

sealed compartments. harness and tether for outside equipment and personnel.

This isn’t the first time she’s done it.

She spent 41 days making the same trip with 2 other people

If you're young and not married, it sounds like a fun trip I'd love to make. I've done various canoe trips through like the Boundary Waters, but I've never been able to take off enough time from work to pull this off.

This is one of those cases where getting started is hard, but once you get started you probably can do more if you want it because you get a reputation and people will sponsor you. You end up in a lot of cases your job is to get sponsors for this trip and you live in the meantime cheaply just earn enough money that you can afford to take off a couple months to do these things.

That said, it probably isn't all that expensive. You do need to get a canoe, but those are not terribly expensive. You need enough food to last this long. The ideal way is if you're living with your parents or some other situation where you can just stop paying rent while you're on the trip. A large part of living expenses are things that she would not have when she's out on the ocean. Also, if th if this is your goal you're probably living for that so you might be working two jobs to raise money for the trip and then you quit both jobs, take your trip and then you go back to work.

"Because it's there"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mallory

Some people are just driven to do things for the accomplishment. I don't think we need more psychologizing than that.

I'd look at evolution. Some people need to explore the new terrain in search of resouces while others keep the camp running.

I admire the ambition which likely preceded the trip over a long enough term to make the conclusive 43-day journey end up as the smaller amount of calendar time.

But that which obviously means the most from the standpoint of fulfillment :)

Usual answer is to get away from the wife (or partner), but she doesn't seem married so I'm baffled...

I saw some of her videos on instagram during the journey. There's a rudder that keeps the boat pointed in the right direction without propulsion while she sleeps.

It’s an ocean-going row boat with 2 cabins. Most row boats you’ve seen are probably hyper-light and designed for still water.

The model of this boat:

https://www.rannochadventure.com/boats-2/r25

I always assumed it was because they had storm resistant cabins for sleeping and supply storage.

Daily use boats probably don’t need as much in that respect.

It's about a compromise. You need enough space for all the food and whatever other supplies you need on the way. You want enough stability that it's not going to capsize in whatever waves. Remember that a storm could come up. Her boat has solar panels and a navigation system and other things which are certainly nice to have but not required. I would expect she has some sort of radio on board.

The Polynesians appeared to have used basically canoes with an outrigger to row across the ocean. I'm not an expert on Polynesians, though, and how they got across the ocean. So if someone is an expert, please correct me.

Because there are big waves in the open ocean and people need to sleep?

Her rowboat is fascinating: https://yourowkelsey.com/ https://yourowkelsey.com/about/

Yeah, it is cool, but this article is not HN appropriate.

Rowing across the Pacific Ocean faster than anyone has ever done it is some pretty good PR on its own!