Such a huge accomplishment.
So, (and knowing very little about rowing), I am not surprised that a woman could take the record here. You can only row so fast. Other factors like weather, currents, nutrition, mental fortitude, navigation, and boat design overcome muscle strength.
All that said: props to Kelsey Pfendler! She definitely knows how to embrace the suck.
Here's a nice diary of her trip:
https://www.kcra.com/article/kelsey-pfendler-record-breaking...
Love these updates:
> Day 21: Kelsey gave an update on a lesson learned about her mental state, saying she had beaten herself up for sleeping in. But she realized that wasn't productive thinking. "When you're out here, you're not in control," she said. "You are in control of you." She said she realized that the way to respond to problems is much more important than the problem itself.
> Day 44: Kelsey could see O'ahu as she closed in on her goal. "If any part of this made at least one person feel a little bit more powerful in their own skin, I couldn't ask for anything else and I'm happy," she said. "Think about trying to find your own big, hard, scary thing. You might not think that you are strong enough to finish it right now, but you're definitely strong enough to start it and you'll find everything else along the way."
You are right in that "strength" isn't the dominating factor for these events or why males go so much faster/farther but rather VO2 max and for peak athletes males normally maintain a good 10% lead due to biological factors.
The male vs female 100 meter:
9.58 vs 10.49 = female record is 9.5% longer to run
Male vs female 200 meter:
19.19 vs 21.34 = female record is 11.2% longer to run
Male vs female 50km
2:38:43 vs 2:59:54 = female record is 13.35% longer to run
The difference also doesn't really change once we start going really long either
6 hour: 98.5km vs 85km male ran 15% farther
12 hour: 177.410 vs 153.600 male 15.5% farther
24 hour: 319.614 vs 278.621 male 14.7% farther
48 hour: 485.099 vs 436.371 male 11.17% farther
6 days: 1045.519 vs 928.577 male 12.6% farther
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramarathon scroll down to the male vs female records.
I'd be interested to know how much progress she made/lost due to drifting overnight. I feel like that alone would have a drastic impact. It would really suck to check your GPS track in the morning to discover you'd lost a day's progress overnight.
Women are much more photogenic, get publicity, and fundraise, more easily.
All these rowing things are stupid, regardless of gender. Especially in a craft that large the person's contribution to propelling it is negligible.
There's an idiot around here who has tried to do this several times and his boat has either sunk or been blown back right where he started, each time wasting a lot of public resources in terms of emergency services.
Also, my geographical knowledge may be lacking, but it appears “to Hawaii” is essential here.
https://oceanrowing.com/filter?id=1415 shows a row from Monterey to Hanalei, Kauai in 32 days. That’s in the state of Hawaii, too, but about 200km closer.
Rowing across an entire ocean is absolutely amazing.
Thought folks would be interested in her boat, built for ocean rowing:
> Lily is a Rannoch R25 built in 2019.
More info on Rannoch R25:
https://www.rannochadventure.com/boats-2/r25
There are several Youtube videos showing you the interior if you're interested.
Not to take away from Pfendler's incredible achievement. She's amazing. But, I'm the kind of nerd that immediately went to "surely that is a logistical nightmare, how are you going to carry enough supplies for months at sea in a boat that a human being can propel across the ocean at a decent speed?" It's a bigger boat than I imagined, at 21 feet long and 5.5 feet wide, and 730 pounds. It also has cabins at either end for storage and sleeping.
She gives a brief tour of the inside of the boat here: https://www.instagram.com/p/DZBUJ2VJvp_/
And, she also discusses some of the technical problems she had in some other videos in the series, like not being able to run her desalination machine because not enough sun and having to dip into her emergency water rations.
The athletic side of a thing like this is incredible, but I always want to know the logistics.
What does one eat and drink on a trip like this? The article talks about her cooking. With a fire or one of those little butane stoves?
Can a small canoe carry enough water for a trip like this or do you rely on rain water too?
If I were to do it though, I would invest in some water filters which are fairly cheap and can remove a lot of things that you wouldn't want to be drinking.
(Though there might be some obscure edge case, and if you're about to die of dehydration that a little bit of seawater will buy you a minuscule amount of more time? doubt it)
Generally, outrigger races have 6 people in the boat and a 9 person team. An escort boat will hold your reserve people, and then drop them in front of the canoe when you need to swap people out.
The problem is that you need to drop people around 200m in front of the canoe so the canoe can have enough time to prep for the crew change, but with that distance, the wave height can obscure the crew from the person steering.
The solution? If you're the one being dropped, you're expected to splash violently. Create as much splash as possible so the canoe can see you, even behind a wave.
The fun part is what gives signal to the canoe is the same thing that gives signal to sharks. Our coach used to say the adrenaline helps us in the race.
I’ve heard this sentiment before, and can sort of intellectually follow, but man. I love scuba diving, I love the ocean and its varied and alien and multi-scale inhabitants. I’ve spent weeks on a live-aboard boat explicitly to seek out megafauna like sharks and rays (same subclass as sharks).
When I start my descent, I love to turn around and see my exhaled air bubble up, up towards the sun rays in the top layer of the water that slowly fade further away as the pressure on my ears builds and I enter the unknown ocean. It’s the most relaxing feeling, and I often remember it to go to sleep.
How beautifully individual our preferences can be. :-)
Don't think of these waves like the ones you encounter at shore. Open ocean waves are moving mountains.
It isn't this: /(
It's this:
.,-~^^~-,.
___.-/ \-.__This is one of those cases where getting started is hard, but once you get started you probably can do more if you want it because you get a reputation and people will sponsor you. You end up in a lot of cases your job is to get sponsors for this trip and you live in the meantime cheaply just earn enough money that you can afford to take off a couple months to do these things.
That said, it probably isn't all that expensive. You do need to get a canoe, but those are not terribly expensive. You need enough food to last this long. The ideal way is if you're living with your parents or some other situation where you can just stop paying rent while you're on the trip. A large part of living expenses are things that she would not have when she's out on the ocean. Also, if th if this is your goal you're probably living for that so you might be working two jobs to raise money for the trip and then you quit both jobs, take your trip and then you go back to work.
She spent 41 days making the same trip with 2 other people
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mallory
Some people are just driven to do things for the accomplishment. I don't think we need more psychologizing than that.
But that which obviously means the most from the standpoint of fulfillment :)
Its always a form factor I’ve never seen before
Where can I learn more about this scene?
The model of this boat:
The Polynesians appeared to have used basically canoes with an outrigger to row across the ocean. I'm not an expert on Polynesians, though, and how they got across the ocean. So if someone is an expert, please correct me.
Daily use boats probably don’t need as much in that respect.