Not to diminish the massive accomplishment that it is, but there are a good number of people who have paddled across (or attempted) the Atlantic Ocean solo. None of them have done it standing up though. This weekend a Frenchman by the name of Nicolas Jarossay left from the Port of Praia on Cabo Verde off Africa’s northwest coast hoping to change that atop his nearly 20-foot “livable” Stand Up Paddle Board. The plan was to finish on the French Caribbean island of Martinique.
Unfortunately, one of the key problems to Jarossay’s boat-like SUP is that he couldn’t get it to self right in rough seas in case of a capsize, something he experienced in the testing phase. That, combined with equipment malfunction was his undoing.
This was translated from Facebook:
For a reason that remains unknown at this point, the rudder system has suddenly broken and exposed the boat broadside to a flood. The boat capsized. All attempts to refloat were unsuccessful (and) more and more exhausting.
The continued deterioration of the situation (exhaustion, hypothermia, night), sadly, rendered inevitable triggering the distress beacon. A chain of emergency first-responders was mobilized methodically, and in the context of very modest means available to Cape Verde, it took strong technical, and admirable dedication from lifeguards.
After a brief checkup with doctors he was busy arranging his return to France.
The most noticeable feature of Jarossay’s SUP is the large cone-shaped compartment which doubles as his bed (and probably made it extremely tippy). The idea had been stewing in his mind for three years, and while the original plan was to accomplish the feat alongside a guide boat and use GPS to pinpoint his exact start and end points each day, it was actually a bad dream that inspired Jarossay to do it all solo.
“I am out there in the ocean paddling with my food on board the SUP for the day and a heated argument breaks out with the people on the boat who take off and leave me in the middle of the Atlantic,” he said of his dream in an interview.
From that point it was a mission to plan out how to embark on the paddle without any help, and that included using a SUP 6.3 meters long and 83 centimeters wide, equipped with the 45 centimeter hull and even solar panels. Since he couldn’t possibly bring an electric desalinator on boar, Jarossay planned to spend about 90 minutes to two hours each day pumping a manual desalinator by hand, making sure he’d get his 8 liters of water a day.
The entire journey was expected to take 2 months, costing about $50,000. But then, a day after leaving Cape Verde for the island of Martinique, the whole thing was cut short.
Bummer.
