Chris Martin's diary

Chris Martin is a British Oarsman who is participating as a solo contestant in the Atlantic Rowing Race from La Gomera to Antigua in solo. He is seeking to beat the 42.5-day record presently held by a French rower. Moreover, he participates to the competition for the benefit of two cancer charities (see Chris Martin's website).

Chris Martin has agreed to send to us by email his observations on the ocean movements and in particular on the surface currents that he may encounter during the race. This page will present his messages to us as they arrive, in the form of a diary. Check it regularly if you are interested in human observations from the field!

 

Message received from Chris Martin on December 17th, 2005:

 

Just a quick one to say that I'm on the Sea anchor at the moment in a Southwest wind (10 - 15 knots, 11 - 17 Mph) and waves (8ft, 2.50m). But the 12' (3.6m) para-anchor has picked up a current and is dragging me South at a speed of about 0.7 knot (0.8 Mph).

 

 

 

Message received on December 13th, 2005:

 

I did notice this morning that I was drifting West. When I came off, the sea
anchor was drifting NW. Most of the sea action was coming from the NW, so I
can only assume that my sea anchor had caught onto some current and was
dragging me southwest. As I was being hampered by the wind, a net West
movement was reached.

If the GPS (Global Positioning System) breaks I have 2 backups. They (the organizers) would know I'm in trouble because of my EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon) beacon which is an international safety beacon. I also have a positioning beacon ARGOS which updates my position to a place in France every 90 seconds, and is used for record on the race website (the successive positions of all boats can be found here) .

 

 

 

Message received on December 6th, 2005:

 

Sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you. It's been rather busy.

The ocean rowing boat is really affected by wind. By trimming the boat so that most of the weight of food and water is in the stern, I can make sure that the wind will tend to blow the bow (front) of the boat out of the wind, so that when I row, I row with the wind. (Chris is here writing about the wind blowing on the hull of his boat. This effect is called windage. Like the surface currents, it influences the path of any object that floats on the ocean surface.)

Therefore, as I see it, if my tracking on the GRP is anything different to the compass (taking into account magnetic variation) then it must be accountable to current.

The current is certainly not a traveler all going in one direction. Particularly on day 3 (December 2nd), the wind and waves were all taking me NW (northwest). I put out a drogue (small sail or parachute placed in the water) to slow my progress but woke up 3 miles to the NE. I think this is because of the current behaving strangely near the islands. (It also may be that the Canary current, which averaged direction is southwest, has momentarily changed due to some regional disruption of the surface circulation.)

Now I'm in the thick of it, I can feel when I get into a section of current although it is strange how 10 strokes later, it will feel very heavy again and the speed will drop off. However, this is difficult to quantify properly, and could have a lot to do with my mental and physical state at the time. I'm getting rather tired out here, and things I may have been able to judge easily a few days ago are suddenly rather difficult. [...]