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Nobby
(as his friends call him) called me yesterday and said:
'Hello, my dear boy. what's the matter with the BBC? Don't they have a
list of sailing records?'
I asked 'What's up Nobby?'
He said 'Robin Knox Johnson was not the first to sail around the world
solo as they declared him'
see
http://www.sailspeedrecords.com/otherrecords.html for
details.
Nobby said 'they' always leave off the one word that would make their
statement accurate. If they had said 'Robin was the first to sail
around the World solo NON STOP' then it would be accurate.
As per our internet quiz just completed, it is 1 word (or a couple of
letters) that could make all the difference in who was the all
important 'First'.
Tom McClean was 'the first to row the Atlantic solo' so long as
you include ''West to East'. Without this he was not 'the first'.
On Maud's website it says
' Maud... set off to beat Dee Caffari's round
the world time'. Being as Maud will not
cross the equator
once and Dee crossed it twice, Maud would be expected to be faster no
matter what. Maud is on a completely different course from Dee,
thousands of miles shorter.
In the ocean rowing world we are familiar with the same kind of
statements. As an example the distance from Newfoundland, Canada is
almost 1000 miles shorter than it is from the USA and of course would
be expected to be faster. So to row from Newfoundland, Canada and
claim the record for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic without
saying "from Canada" would not be an accurate statement.
Nobby then said to me 'You must keep these records up, my boy. It
takes a lot of work but someone must do it or the real records become
worthless'.
I promised him I would do my best to keep the ocean rowing records at
least as accurate as we possibly can. |
