Lap Of Antarctic By Rowing Boat Results In A Surprisingly Short Journey

Sydney Morning Herald

Friday January 6, 2006

Andrew Darby

IT MIGHT have been one of the greatest Antarctic adventures: the first solo circumnavigation by rowing boat.

But Colin Yeates managed to spend only about an hour going in the right direction.

The Briton yesterday joined the ranks of heroic polar failures when his boat crashed ashore and was wrecked, back on the Falkland Islands he had left two days earlier.

The 47-year-old was about 11,600 nautical miles, hundreds of thousands of icebergs and uncountable hazardous waves short of his target.

Yeates's four-year-old dream seemed to have been realised when he cast off into the South Atlantic from a tow boat out of Port Stanley, headed for the latitudes known as the Screaming Sixties.

Wrapped in cold-weather gear, he was aboard a seven-metre purpose-built rowing boat and carrying 1.6 tonnes of stores and equipment, including food and water, communications gear, solar panels and a wind-powered generator.

"It will be the most difficult and hazardous lone circumnavigation of the globe," said the former Royal Navy man, now a Dorset landscape gardener.

He said he was expecting waves as high as five-storey buildings, ice and freezing fog.

"I will neither touch land nor take on board additional provisions during the 101/2 months at sea non-stop around Antarctica."

Apart from his personal quest, he planned to collect data on behalf of "a clutch of prestigious institutions", including the British Hydrographic Office and British Antarctic Survey.

A departure in January on a planned 10-month journey would mean he was attempting to weather the Southern Ocean in winter darkness.

Still, when he was released outside Stanley harbour the tow-boat's crew reported: "He was pleased to be on his way and looked confident."

An Argos satellite track shows Yeates made a few kilometres in the right direction - east - before wind and current began to push him back, north of the islands.

After a day struggling with the oars he was seasick and unable to sleep or eat. As his supporters tried to organise another tow clear of the island the current caught him again.

The Argos track shows a furious attempt to clear one rocky point before the boat was cast ashore at Cow Bay, East Falkland.

"Strong local currents dragged him onto the rocks and he spoke to me from the beach, watching his boat being wrecked by the waves," said the project co-ordinator, Simon Dyde.

Last seen, the Argos track showed Yeates had made five kilometres onshore.

Local police were taking him to the nearest farm.

THEY DARED TOO

1997 Attempting the first group skydive at the South Pole, Americans Ray Miller, Steve Mulholland and Austrian Hanz Rezac misjudged their height, hit the ice without opening their parachutes, and died.

1998 Already rescued in 1995 from the Southern Ocean by the Royal Australian Navy,

Frenchwoman Isabelle Autissier capsized in another yacht race 1900 nautical miles west of Cape Horn. She was rescued by fellow competitor Giovanni Soldini.

2001 Peter Bland and Jay Watson of Melbourne attempted to walk across the

Antarctic Peninsula. Bland fell into a crevasse and was injured. Watson had to obtain

emergency aid from the Chilean armed forces.

© 2006 Sydney Morning Herald

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