Before they set sail, Mr Clibbery, a Canadian, said in a video posted on April 12: “We’re doing everything we can to show that you can travel without burning fossil fuels.”
A couple who embarked on a “green odyssey” across the Atlantic were found dead in a lifeboat after being forced to abandon their wind and solar-powered yacht.
That’s what used to happen, often enough, before fossil fuel powered travel as well.
Looks like the dogma got in the way of proper design. There have been plenty of yachts that can cope with ocean voyaging, even in the Southern Ocean. I wonder if they avoided HF radio and EPIRBs because they aren’t eco enough.
I have seldom been more strongly reminded of what Oscar Wilde said about the death of Little Nell.
This is the funniest maritime disaster since that bunch that set out to document the melting icecap and got stuck in ice, having to be rescued by an icebreaker!
Didn’t get very far, did they? Canada to the Azores & they could still see the Canadian coast?
You can’t really justify a Darwin Award for this one, can you?
Lol.
Why am I not surprised that the female casualty was a “Reiki healer”?
Chris – And did Reiki calm the storm and berate her for her lack of faith?
Mystery surrounds how the couple’s planned voyage turned to tragedy, with fears growing that their reliance on sail and an electric engine powered by solar panels, may have left them without back-up when things went wrong.
Ah, so they went with the “British Government electricity strategy” then.
The couple held a Celtic marriage ceremony at Stonehenge known as ‘handfasting’
Of course they did.
Ms Packwood had previously written during one of their journeys together on Spain’s Camino Frances: “I believe in the mystical and often feel as though guardian angels watch over us.”
I don’t think they redeem Wiccan prayers.
That boat looked suspiciously like one constructed from GRP… Unless my memory deceives me, GRP needs considerable quantities of oil-derived components in its production. OK, not “burnt”, but “consumed” nonetheless.
The fact that they were in a life-raft suggests that the boat suffered some form of catastrophic damage or dismasting and capsize. One thing about sails is that as long as there’s a bit of a breeze you can still make progress even if the electric motor has packed up.
Chalk another W up for Darwin.
Nice of them to confirm my opinion about the Green revolution.
“The couple held a Celtic marriage ceremony at Stonehenge known as ‘handfasting’”
Couple I know of did one of those handfasting wedding things. Didn’t bother getting a civil marriage sorted either. Caused all manner of problems when the bloke died of cancer last year. His ‘wife’ had to get written permission from all his children to organise the funeral. He left no will either. Hippy types are f*cking hopeless.
You have good point there, Jim. These people are in direct line of descent from the Hippy movement of the late 60s/early 70s. Looking at their ages, they could even have been in at the start of it. I can remember the hippies. Once went to a “commune” somewhere out in Wiltshire I think it was. Load of idiots sprawling around in tie-dyed & embroidered afghans smoking spliffs. They couldn’t even get it together to do the washing up. I think the only sign of activity was every couple of weeks when they mounted an expedition to the local town to cash their doll checks. But the hippies were really all over by ’75. However they do seem to have taken about 25% or more of politics. Still just people, sprawling around, unable to do their washing up, but running the country.
Couple of the Brasian girls are in Brighton at the moment. Sent me video of some sort of gathering in a green area in the city. Exactly the same sort of people, except now they’re heavily tattooed. Can’t imagine what they make of them. They’ve come to Europe to get away from that kind of squalor.
Must look on the bright side though. If they get their hands on them they’ll strip them of every penny they have.
That boat looked suspiciously like one constructed from GRP… Unless my memory deceives me, GRP needs considerable quantities of oil-derived components in its production. OK, not “burnt”, but “consumed” nonetheless.
Its worse than that. GRP doesn’t decay and there’s been a long discussion in the sailing leisure sailing community about what to do with old boats. Whatever happened to that boat it will be lying around for a very long time.
On so many levels am I not an expert.
But I used to cruise recreationally in the Solent and the Channel on boats not so dissimilar to this. This was 40 years ago, and I was young and fit. And I well recall that there were regular episodes of very strenuous and sometimes not entirely safe activity involved. On one occasion, a long, hard beat back to Brixham to dryfoot one of the crew, just as young and fit as I, who had hurt himself quite badly.
I think it was that cruise that we watched them filming the Austin Metro commercial in Weymouth Bay. But I digress.
I’m of an age with these two, and there’s no way on God’s green earth I’d set sail in a yacht like that for so much as a gentle saunter from Dartmouth to Torquay – never mind an Atlantic crossing. The number of 60 and 70-year-olds tough enough to handle that is vanishingly small.
And it doesn’t even have to be some crisis of weather or injury that stops you. I live in Michigan now. A year or two ago, a large motor yacht set out with two fit, healthy people on board to transit Lake Huron from Port Huron to Mackinaw City. The weather was perfect, the boat was in perfect working order. A day later, the boat drove onshore somewhere up by Tawas. It was still in perfect order – it ran onshore in gear with the engine running. But of the two occupants, there was no sign. I think only one was recovered, weeks later, and to this day there’s no explanation of what happened to them. In water that big, you might as well be on Mars for all the help that’s coming, and what’s a trivial problem on dry land can escalate quickly and overwhelm you.
llater,
llamas
“But the hippies were really all over by ’75.”
BA Robertson had a hit song about the demise of the hippies in ’79. Hey man don’t stop and pray man, go out and buy T. Rex.
Yeah but no, but seriously:
The yacht had been converted to run purely on sail and solar power after having its diesel engine removed
He could’ve left the engine in, just in case. It was already one of those sailing boats with a motor engine, so it’d have been fine sitting there in the eventuality of, oh, I dunno, both him and his wife getting into serious trouble on a dangerous voyage? The decision to remove the engine seems to have been driven by virtue signalling rather than necessity, therefore.
Call me sexist, but I think it’s the husband’s job to keep the missus out of life-threatening situations, am I wrong?
The engine decision suggests this guy had the unwarranted self confidence of that Titanic submarine fella who is now squished organic matter at the bottom of the Atlantic, along with the poor bastards who fatally trusted a Confident Wealthy Boomer. If only we had thousands of years of literature and oral tradition warning us about the perils of the sea and the need to mollify Poseidon lest we be et by kraken tho.
“If God had meant us to build fibreglass boats, He would have grown fibreglass trees.”
we watched them filming the Austin Metro commercial in Weymouth Bay.
I didn’t realise Austin Metros floated. I suppose they had to be good for something. One learns something every day.
Bloke in Spain – here you go.
https://youtu.be/JdEVmIRl0zM?si=SJRe9ekO0QWlX9Ac
One of the sailboats you see in the wide shots – Woz Us!
llater,
llamas
Steve said:
“Call me sexist, but I think it’s the husband’s job to keep the missus out of life-threatening situations, am I wrong?”
Aye, but does that apply to one’s Celtic Handfasting Partner?