H2uh0

Now if you told me there was a man who was going to swim around the world, I would say he is nuts. But this is no ordinary man. In fact, he has already run around the world (35,000 miles and 50 pairs of running shoes). He expects his swim to take about 8 years and 30 pairs of googles. Read his story here.

Several months ago we featured several folks that were attempting to sail around the globe in very small crafts. Well the the smaller of the two (8 feet in lenght) has quit before even getting off the dock due to lack of funds. I am not sure what these guys are thinking but somethng is not right. Read the posts here.

SAN BLAS, Mexico - Three Mexican fishermen adrift in a 25-foot fiberglass fishing boat for nine months and nine days were expected to return to their homeport of San Blas the week of August 21.

Initial reports picked up August 9 disagreed on whether the three young men in their 20s were at sea three months or nine months.

"It was nine months and nine days," said Jesus Vidana, one of the survivors. " One of the guys on the boat [had] a watch that shows the months and the days."

The anglers' disabled boat was spotted near a tiny atoll called Baker's Island, midway between Hawaii and Australia - nearly 5,500 miles west of their departure point - by a Taiwanese tuna fishing trawler owned by Koo's Fishing Co. of the Marshall Islands. Manager Eugene Muller said the same boat had picked up two other drifting fishermen from Kiribati five months ago. Those men had been at sea more than two months.

Two days after the San Blas anglers' miraculous rescue, Mexican government officials told reporters that two other men had been onboard the boat when the vessel left San Blas . The two as-yet unnamed men died at sea and their bodies thrown overboard.

Reuter's News Service on August 17 quoted a local San Blas government official as saying no one in the village knew that two other men were onboard. The survivors didn't mention their boat mates when initially interviewed by Mexican media from their rescue ship August 16, but later told officials the men had refused to eat, and succumbed to starvation - one in January and the other in February.

This survival story will go on record as one of the longest lost-at-sea sagas in modern history, surpassing British Vice Admiral William Bligh's six-week journey to Timor following the Bounty mutiny, and challenging or exceeding Chinese sailor Poon Lim's four months in the South Atlantic in 1942 after a German U-boat torpedoed the British Merchant Ship on which he worked.

The trio of shark fishermen - Vidana, Salvador Ordonez and Lucio Rendon - left their village near San Blas on October 28, 2005 for what they had assumed was a three-week fishing trip. While on the trip, however, one of their motors failed and the other ran out of gas, leaving them at the mercy of winds, waves and strong westerly currents.

They said they survived their 5,500-mile odyssey by eating "raw fish, ducks and seagulls" and collecting rainwater to drink.

There were times when we had only one bird to share among the three of us," recounted Vidana, adding that they once went 15 days without anything to eat.

They had no radio, but did have a compass, flashlights, water and a Bible which they read daily. By trip's end, reports say there were but a few worn pages left in the battered book.

"We never lost hope because there is a God up there," Vidana said during a telephone interview from the rescue ship just days after they were picked up.

The men were all asleep when they were spotted. Once aboard the Koo's ship, they were unable to communicate with the Chinese-speaking crew.

The men's onboard interview with the Televisa News station August 16 shocked family and friends in the fishing villages of San Blas and El Limon; most had long given up the men for dead and first learned of their miraculous journey and rescue when Mexican media began broadcasting their story.

They were reported to be sunburned and underweight but otherwise in good health. And though now safe, coming home to Mexico will still take time. The Mexican government said they will send someone to the Marshall Islands to pick up the men after the fishing trawler returns to port, possibly by August 24.

"I knew we would be found," said Vidana.

The Longest Wave - video powered by Metacafe

IT'S A LOT HARDER THAN YOU MIGHT THINK to swim from island to island across four-knot currents, gargling salt water hour after hour, getting chased by sharks, and towing your worldly possessions on a five-foot surfboard while flying the British flag. (It's even harder when you're told on your very first day in the British Virgin Islands that your British naval flag is actually a Swiss flag.) What with the jellyfish, hecklers, and excessive rum intake, you might even think twice about swimming your way through the Caribbean.

But that's what I did for spring break.

Why, at age 43, couldn't I have just plunked myself down at some swanky resort? Blame it on my midlife-crisis swimming fixation, in which I've bragged quite publicly that I'm going to make it to the 2008 Olympics in the 200 freestyle, even though I never even qualified for the trials in my prime. In fact, I pretty much sucked as a younger swimmer until my senior year at Kenyon College, when I came sort of close to qualifying—finishing two seconds behind in the 200 free (akin to being five minutes back in a marathon). After that, I went on with my life, albeit with the nagging thought that if I'd just had a little more time, I could've made it to the podium.

Now, at the last possible moment, I want to see if I was right.

When I first resubmerged myself in the swimming world last fall, I was like any other midlife dingbat pedaling past you in traffic jams or burning rubber at the local treadmill. I was swimming six days a week. Pumping iron. Counting heartbeats. Getting in touch with my inner guppy. But something was missing: I wasn't having any fun. And I wasn't going all that fast. So I decided to train more like I had in college. That meant downing plenty of fresh-squeezed lime margaritas, doing vodka shots in the Jacuzzi, and spending money like my daddy would bail me out. My wife and four children weren't amused, but, sure enough, I got faster. Soon I was closing in on my old pace.

As my besotted winter blurred by, I figured I'd head south like all the other kids for spring break, only instead of passing out on the same beach every night, I'd swim from island to island. That way I could keep up my Olympic training, with only a few tweaks to my rigorous schedule: swim, eat, nap, drink, nap, drink, eat, drink, sleep, repeat.

Read the remainder of the article here.

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It has been a while since we featured some base jumping. For some great video, click here.

Sixteen feet. Sixteen seconds. These two simple numbers can have a wild impact when they show up on Tahiti swell-prediction charts. On Monday 24th July, the whole South Pacific region from Antarctica to Tahiti was showing strong wind fetch heading for the French Polynesian Islands. These were the perfect ingredients to bring the famed Teahupoo reef break really alive a few days later.

Things had been unusually quiet since the beginning of the year. The much-anticipated late April tow-in sessions had never materialized. Some foreign tow-in teams had actually camped over 2 months waiting for one of those epic sessions. Some big classic paddle-in sessions had taken place but nothing worth pulling out the jet ski from the garage.

By Thursday night, the Tahitian reefs were rumbling with a clean SSW deep ocean swell. Waves were starting to wash up into the multi-million dollar beachfront homes close to Taapuna.

The Billabong Adventure Division team, Dylan Longbottom and Laurie Towner were quickly dispatched to pair up with Shane Dorian and local Manoa Drollet. Laird Hamilton teamed up with local charger Raimana Van Bastolaer.
Mark Healey, Peter Mel and Brazilians Patio and Silvio Mancusi made up the foreign contingent. Most of the usual Teahupoo addicts were on stand-by for an amazing day.

For the local crew it was an emotional day. Everybody had only one thing on his mind - our late friend Malik.

Cameramen like Gilles Hucault, Marco, Timothé Pruvost had followed Malik on practically every tow-in session at Teahupoo. Surfers like Manoa Drollet, Raimana, Poto and Arsene had shared some incredible rides and moments with him at Teahupoo. Malik’s girl friend, Kamakea, came out with us with her HD camera to film all the action from the boat of Manoa’s father, Bjarn Drollet. As we set foot in the boat, a lizard not unlike Malik’s dorsal tattoo was sitting in the back next to the engine. Obviously this little gecko wanted to hang out with us today!

It took some courage for Kamakea to get back out into the roaring maxed-out Teahupoo line up, the type of conditions in which Malik would leave his mark, always rising to the occasion.

Something was tragically different without Malik’s physical presence in the line up. Tears were periodically fogging up the eyepieces of some of the most seasoned Teahupoo photographers and cameramen. It was as if the wave itself had actually changed. As if the reef was bending a different way. As if the waves were maybe smaller. People were looking over their shoulders expecting to hear that laugh or see his magnetic smile. His name kept popping up in conversations. But eventually the beauty and the hypnotic power of the wave started to work its magic. See the pictures and read the rest of the article here.

Some of you may know about the huge festival of art, music and mind altering oblivian that happens in the northern Nevada high desert every summer. If you have not heard, I'd like to give you the skinny. 40,000 folks from all corners of the earth come together for an amazing six day fest that includes high art, theme camps and a 80 foot man that burns at the climax of the event. Think Woodstock without the mud, rain, Jefferson Airplane, bad brown acid and almost 40 years in the future. No really, it's nothing like the hippie era of Woodstock. It's RV's, bikes, themed vehicles, super hot days and cold nights, sand storms and an incredible celebration of music, sharing and life!! I have yet to attend but have several friends that go every year and they have nothing but great things to say about the gathering of the tribes. This year's theme is Hope and Fear: The Future. There is plenty of info on the web about this get together but start at the source. "You're here to celebrate. On Saturday night, we'll burn the Man. As the procession starts, the circle forms, and the man ignites, you experience something personal, something new to yourself, something you've never felt before. It's an epiphany, it's primal, it's newborn. And it's completely individual." Click here.