April 12, 2010 - Recent storms have uncovered part of the wreck of the HMS Somerset III from the sand at Dead Man's Hollow near Provincetown.The Somerset was last uncovered in 1973 and may be covered again soon. The National Park Service is taking advantage of this moment and having the wreck “digitally preserved’’ using three-dimensional imaging technology. The 70-gun British ship of the line supported English troops at the battle of Bunker Hill and was immortalized in Longfellow's poem of Paul Revere's ride:

Then he said 'Good-night!' and with muffled oar

Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,

Just as the moon rose over the bay,

Where swinging wide at her moorings lay

The Somerset, British man-of-war;

A phantom ship, with each mast and spar

Across the moon like a prison bar,

And a huge black hulk, that was magnified

By its own reflection in the tide.

 

The Someset was wrecked in a storm off Cape Cod in November 1778.  Twenty of her crew drowned while the others were saved and  exchanged for American prisoners of war. Here's more from Stefanie Geisler at the Boston Globe.

March 21, 2010 - In January we looked in on three young women who were in various stages of ocean going voyages. 16 year old solo-circumnavigator Jessica Watson was about to round Cape Horn in her 34' sailboat. Abby Sunderland, also 16, was about to set off from Los Angeles for a round-the-world voyage in a 40' sailboat. And Katie Spotz, a 22 year old college student from Ohio, was ten days into rowing across the Atlantic from east to west.  Here's where they are today:

Jessica Watson is in the home stretch. 1/2 way across the Indian Ocean with roughly 5,000 miles to go. She hopes to reach Sydney by the middle of May. In her most recent gale she had 15-foot seas and 40 knots of wind. With over 1 million people following her blog each week she has achieved fame. Observers such as Phil Lutton of the Sydney Morning Herald are already counting the money she'll make in sponsorship opportunities when she returns home.  She's sailing a solid but slow 1974 Sparkman & Stephens 34. Read Jessica's blog here.

Abby Sunderland, is in the 58th day of her voyage off the coast of southern Chile. Leaving Marina Del Rey in Southern California she's been heading due south toward Cape Horn. She was off the coast of Chile during the recent earthquake and the tsunami-that-wasn't passed under her keel.  Her boat is a finicky and fast Open 40 racing sloop. Read Abby's blog here.

Katie Spotz completed her transatlantic row on March 17th landing in Guyana after setting out from Senegal 2.5 months earler (image from her website above). Here's her account of her landing:

“Welcome to Guyana” – a sentence I’d been waiting to hear for 70 days, 5 hours and 22 minutes!

It appeared as darkness fell, starting as a soft glow on the horizon. As the night progressed, it turned into dotted lights and, by the morning, had turned into trees and buildings. Even hearing new sounds that I hadn’t heard for two months was a revelation. As relieved as I was to see land, I didn’t allow myself to become too excited until my feet were planted on terra firma, as I knew these final miles could be the most treacherous.

When I got to within four miles of the end, I immediately realized it was a different day to the rest of them when a helicopter appeared overhead and, the best thing of all, a boat full of friendly faces, including my dad and brother. But that wasn’t the end of the challenge, as the final approach into the Demerara River proved as difficult as any other. It started to rain, at times I was rowing as hard as I could just to stay in the same spot and, worst of all, I was having to make sure I looked like I knew what I was doing for all the interested onlookers!

Eventually, I found myself rowing up to the landing spot. However, the relief of hitting land was quickly replaced by fear, as I spotted my final obstacle: a ladder.

I questioned whether this was really the best place to land, as I was expecting to not be able to walk, at least straight, once on land. As I crawled my way out, I was faced with one final battle, finding my way to a desperately wanted, long-awaited watermelon amidst a mob of media. As tempting as it was to karate-chop my way through the masses, I patiently waited for my moment. And there it was. Sweet heavenly watermelon. More...

March 9, 2010 - Seeking to save on fuel costs the 15,000 ton German fishing boat Maartje Thedora will leave the Netherlands this week with assistance from a 525 square foot (160 sq meter) kite from Hamburg based SkySails GmbH. The kite will be flown in trade winds on a line that may extend up to 3,000' (900m). "The challenge for us is to see how it works during trawling, because then the ship is not moving from A to B but it's turning and moving around," said Diederik Parlevliet, head of fishing firm Parlevliet & Van der Plas, operator of the ship. Here's the story from Catherine Hornby Reuters.  *Image is of another ship and is not the Maartje Theodora.

 

 

March 3, 2010 - Two passengers were killed and others injured when three waves estimated at 30' high smashed into the forward facing windows of a deck-level restaurant lounge on the 680' Louis Majesty. The two passengers were killed by shards of glass from broken windows. The ship was in the Mediterranean outside of the French port of Marseille on its way from Barcelona, Spain to Genoa, Italy.  1,350 passengers and 580 crew members on board at the time of the incident. Here's more from CBSNews.