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Featured Adventure - Andrew Skurka

April 19th, 2010 by Julie
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Endurance adventurer Andrew Skurka (28) is tackling yet another epic journey – skiing, rafting and hiking a continuous 7,500 km circuit through Alaska and the Yukon.

aboutskurka

Five weeks ago, on March 15th, he set off from Kotzebue, a small Alaskan city that borders the Bering Sea and sits 50 km north of the Arctic Circle. From here Skurka’s route will go through four US national parks and two Canadian ones and is expected to take about 200 days.

To say Skurka is a seasoned hiker is putting it mildly. He has trekked over 37,000 km in pristine wilderness areas of Alaska, Iceland, the Colorado Plateau, and California. He zipped along the Pacific Crest Trail, Appalachian Trail, Great Western Route, Sea to Sea Route and Colorado Trail. He finished second in the world-famous Leadville endurance trail race, but most of the time Skurka is competing with just himself. National Geographic named him Adventurer of the Year and Person of the Year by Backpacker. This is definitely not the type of amble described in Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods”.

In the last month Skurka has skied 1,150 km, reaching the tiny village of McGrath, Alaska on April 13th.

Andrew describes the stretch he’s done so far as one he “probably wouldn’t do again” primarily because “there were a few too many miles on icy snowmachine trails though unspectacular scenery, and a surprising non-wilderness feel”. That doesn’t mean he didn’t enjoy it and he talks about the pros, visiting welcoming villages, experiencing new landscapes and my personal favourite, developing “new thresholds for cold”.

route_map

The route turns off-trail now and will require forging rivers and finding game tracks. In the next 6 weeks he’ll be travelling across the western Alaska Range (including Denali National Park), eastern Alaska Range (“Hayes Range”), Mentasta Mountains, and Wrangell-St. Elias National Park to the Gulf of Alaska. Soon he’ll be trading his skis in for hiking boots and a raft, which will make up about 75% of his journey.

You can follow Andrew through his blog at National Geographic Adventure, http://ngadventure.typepad.com/blog/andrew-skurka/ and find out more about his Alaska-Yukon Adventure through his website, http://www.andrewskurka.com/.

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February Update - Where did February go?

February 21st, 2010 by Julie
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newsletter_image051We’ve been so wrapped up in the excitement of the Olympics and preparing the Angus Rowboats plans and kits that our February update is more than fashionably late. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have good news to report.

We’ve resumed rowing after a long hiatus and it’s great to be back on the water. Colin’s started training for his around-Vancouver-Island row with four-hour non-stop rowing stints. In comparison, my rows are leisurely jaunts exploring the nearby estuary and beachfront. If you want to hear about our earlier rowing journey through Europe, you can listen to our latest interview with Shelagh Rogers on The Next Chapter where we discuss rowing, writing and relationships.

Apart from our training, for the last month we’ve been working non-stop on completing the Expedition Rowboat plans and kit (well, except for watching Olympic hockey, skeleton, snowboard cross, etc…). The good news is we’re finally done! The plans are laid out on seven sheets of 24×36” paper and extremely detailed with full-sized templates for all the tricky parts. And the manual is a mini-book. It’s over 50 pages with dozens of diagrams and photographs from the different stages of the building process.

The kits are also ready! The wood components are being precision cut on a CNC machine and will be ready to be shipped along with all the other materials (fibreglass, epoxy, hatch strapping, and dozens of other bits and bobs) that you need to build the boat. It’s like assembling IKEA furniture, except the instructions are a whole lot better. Okay, maybe it takes a little longer. If you’re a first time boat builder, it’ll take you about 100 to 120 hours.

The kits and plans will be available at www.angusrowboats.com on Feb 26th. There is a waiting list for the kits and if you have not already spoken to us about purchasing a kit, check back on Feb 28 to see the approximate wait time to receive your boat. There won’t be any wait for plans. Oars and other accessories will also be available.

As always, we’re captivated by a number of exciting ongoing expeditions. You may remember our past updates on Jessica Watson, who at 16 is attempting to be the youngest person to sail around the world solo. Well, she’s getting close to completing her journey. She’s been out on the water for over 4 months since starting in Australia and is now just 250 nm from the Cape of Good Hope – two thirds of the way there!

There must be something about 16 year old girls and sailing, because Jessica is not alone in her attempt to break that record. Abby Sunderland, also 16, of Thousand Oaks began her journey in California in January and has just crossed the equator en route to the Horn. If her name sounds familiar it’s because her brother Zac Sunderland recently completed a solo circumnavigation at the age of 17, becoming the youngest to do such a trip. He held that title for about six weeks, until Mike Perham of Britain, also 17, completed the journey at an even younger age. It looks like Abby is keen to reclaim that title for her family and good luck to her!

Now we have to get going because the Canada vs. US hockey game is about to start. Go Canada!!

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January Update - Happy New Year

January 13th, 2010 by Julie
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We brought in the New Year quietly, drinking eggnog and reminiscing about the last decade. I mentally pledged to eat healthier and call my parents more often and Colin claimed to have made no resolutions, although I have noticed that his office is markedly tidier. The start of New Year is also a time to look at things from a fresh vantage, to wind up old projects and begin new ones. We spent much of 2009 working on Rowed Trip, writing the book, editing the film and then touring across Canada with both. Now our energies are focused on new adventures and ventures.

Angus Rowboats Vancouver Workshop

As many of you know, we’ve been working on creating kits and plans for the rowboats we used in our last journey, and this is where much of our time is focused. It’s been a rigorous process of reconstructing the boat and refining the building process. We’ve been working with Vancouver boat-builder Malcolm Chaddock, digitizing the boat design for his CNC robotic cutter and dissecting the building process to make it as straightforward as possible. Another crucial element is conveying the building process in an easy-to-understand fashion. We’re achieving this by creating a 10,000-word manual with diagrams and photos ensuring that even those without boatbuilding experience will be able to construct this boat. All these details take time, and as a consequence we have pushed the release date for the Expedition Model rowboat kit to late February, although plans and manuals may be available a little sooner

We’re also preparing for our upcoming adventures. This summer Colin will row around Vancouver Island in an attempt to beat the fastest human-powered circumnavigation of the island. The eastern coast sports tidal rips and whirlpools while the treacherous rocky west coast is difficult in the best of conditions. Currently, British kayaker, Sean Morley holds the record for paddling the 1100-km distance in just over 17 days. It’ll be an incredibly difficult time to beat requiring as much luck as determination. A spell of bad weather or a repetitive usage injury could quickly quell any chances of achieving a timely journey. Meanwhile, I’m starting the research for my next book project which is about olive oil and the Middle East. We’ll return to west Asia and follow an ancient olive trading route beginning in the Syrian Desert and ending in the more fertile lands near Aleppo, where my family still grow olives today. It’s a route that will take us past historic ruins and artefacts, through desert oases and into olive fields during harvest season.

Speaking of adventures, we’re pleased to see that Australian, Jessica Watson, a sixteen-year-old sailor we featured a few months ago, is almost halfway through her solo circumnavigation of the world. Check out her website to read her latest blog posting from Cape Horn. 

This month we have a few public events in Vancouver, Seattle and Bellingham. In Vancouver, we’ll be part of the Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival on January 22nd and Maritime Museum Ocean Cruising Adventures Lecture Series on January 29th. We’ll also be speaking at The Mountaineers in Seattle on January 28th and Village Books in Bellingham on January 27th. Please join us if you’d like to hear more about our Scotland to Syria journey or if you’d like to see our rowboat, which will be displayed at all four events. You can also hear our interview on CBC’s North by Northwest online.

Anyway, enough for now – I have to make a call to my mum. We wish you a happy and adventurous 2010.

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December Update - Home for Christmas

December 8th, 2009 by Julie
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Colin and I are finally back home on Vancouver Island after completing our two-month book/film tour. Our final show was in Washington, DC, and we celebrated by visiting the Terracotta Warriors exhibit at the National Geographic Museum, a display of life-sized clay soldiers and horses created over 2000 years ago by the first Emperor of China.

Our tour was a big success, and it was wonderful getting to visit so many different communities and to meet other adventurous individuals. There are a lot of people and organizations who helped us make this happen and a huge thank you goes out to you all. Also we were happy to have raised over $1,000 for the Living Ocean Society, a Canadian organization dedicated to preserving marine habitat. And congratulations to our grand prizes winners, Aileen Crane of Ottawa and Dan Taft from Victoria, who each received a Helly Hansen Ekolab jacket.

Rowed Trip is now available in the US, and of course still in all Canadian bookstores. You can read a recent book review in the Ottawa Citizen and see us discuss it on Discovery Channel’s Daily Planet.  Also I was excited to find out that my book Rowboat in a Hurricane won an award at the National Outdoor Book Awards - Honorable Mention in the Outdoor Literature Category

If any of your friends are thinking about paddling or travelling in Europe or the Middle East, Rowed Trip is the stocking stuffer for them.  Our books are available in bookstores but if you’d prefer the DVDs, you’ll find our complete line of expedition films in our online store. The Rowed Trip DVD just became available online today and we have new stock of Beyond the Horizon DVDs, which sold out during our tour. There’s still time to receive your orders before Christmas, and any Canadian order over $40 will be sent by priority post and will include a tracking number.

Now that we have the workload of the book behind us, it’s time to start thinking about our upcoming projects. Next year we will return to the Middle East to embark on a trek by foot and camel following an ancient trading route through the Syrian Desert. Our journey will end at my family’s olive farm in Syria, and will allow me to explore and research the role the olive has played in the development of Mediterranean countries for an upcoming book I will be writing.

Our upcoming expedition is still a long way in the planning. In the meantime, as always, Colin and I will be staying in shape by going for hikes in the local mountains and keeping inspired by following the journeys of others. A project we have been tracking with great interest is the quest of Bertrand Piccard to circle the world in a solar powered airplane. The task of creating an aircraft that can fly day and night exclusively using the energy of the sun severely pushes the limits of human ingenuity and technology. Despite the monumental challenges, this Swiss team has made huge leaps and just a few days ago a major milestone was reached. You can read more about it in our December featured explorer article.

We wish you a happy holiday season.

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Featured Expeditions - Bertrand Piccard - Around the world on a wing and a ray of sunshine

December 8th, 2009 by Colin
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Bertrand  Piccard, famous for being the first to complete a non-stop balloon circumnavigation of the world, is working on a new project that seems at odds with the laws of physics. Piccard, and his team of scientists, engineers, and physicists is working on Solar Impulse, an effort to create an aircraft capable of remaining aloft indefinitely without the need for refueling.

They have created a solar-powered airplane, achieving what has long been deemed impossible. The high energy requirements needed to keep traditional aircraft aloft combined with the modest power generation of solar panels seemed a dead end combination to create a functioning system. Energy created by adding additional solar panels would be negated by the  energy-sapping weight, creating a seemingly vicious cycle of impossibility.

Or so scientists and engineers used to think. On Dec 3rd, 2009, Piccard’s dream reached a major milestone after six years of planning, designing and construction. Their prototype, HB-SIA, took flight for the very first time. It was only a test hop, just rising a few metres from the ground, but the craft handled perfectly, which bodes well for high altitude testing taking place later this spring.

One of the greatest challenges the team faces is flying through the night. The solar panels need to create enough energy not just to maintain daytime flight, but also to power the plane through the long dark nights. Night flying means the solar panels have to produce significantly more than double the energy required for daytime flying due to heavier payloads (from storage batteries) and the unavoidable energy losses of electrical storage. One way the team plans to reduce the batteries required is to take advantage of potential energy gain; a means of storing energy that an airplane is well suited for. Throughout the day the aircraft will gain altitude using energy of the sun. Through the night the craft will gradually lose elevation, flying almost like a glider. This will use significantly less electricity than maintaining a level path through the night.

There is still a long way to go before attempting the first sun-powered circumnavigation of the world. After the high altitude testing, the next big challenge will be testing the aircraft on its first night mission. Finally, the team will take what they’ve learned from the prototype and build a new aircraft which should be capable of circling our planet. They will first attempt a flight across the Atlantic followed by a circumnavigation of the world.

At a time when we all need to take steps to reduce our energy consumption and look to sustainable sources, the Solar Impulse project is an inspiration. If a human can fly around the world using nothing but rays of sunshine gathered in the sky, there is no limit to what we can do here on the ground.

>> Read about other featured explorers on our website.

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Road Trip versus Rowed Trip

November 11th, 2009 by Colin
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For the past month, we’ve been exploring the towns and cities of Canada on a road trip touring our latest show, Rowed Trip. With a rowboat on the roof on our car and a whole lot of audiovisual equipment inside, we’ve slowly been making our way east, starting on Vancouver Island and ending in Ontario two weeks from now. Although a little different from paddling the craggy shorelines of Scotland or rowing the majestic Danube, it is a rewarding experience of a different kind, taking us from the rugged shores of BC, to the Rocky Mountains, under the wide-open skies of the prairies and finally to the shores of the world’s largest lakes.

Currently we’re staying with Julie’s family in Toronto, and preparing for our final four presentations in Ontario – Ottawa, Waterloo, Toronto, and Kingston. As we traverse Canada sharing our stories and promoting our new book, Rowed Trip, we can’t help but notice a parallel theme unfolding. Rowed Trip is about connecting our ancestral homelands – travelling from Scotland where my mother and father were born to the Middle East where Julie’s father is from. Our present road trip, coincidentally, started on Vancouver Island where my mother now lives and ends in Ontario where Julie’s parents reside. Once again, we’re on a long journey connecting family.

Just as in our last adventure, we’ve met many great people en route and a big thanks to those of you who have come out to our presentations. One of the most rewarding parts is hearing your thoughts on adventures, boats, bikes and other fun stuff.

If you are an Ontarian, we hope to see you over the next 2 weeks. We’ll be in Toronto on Tuesday Nov 17th, Ottawa Thursday Nov 19th, Kingston Friday Nov 20th, and Waterloo Sat Nov 21th. More information and tickets are available at www.angusadventures.com/tour.html. And if you aren’t able to make it to a show, check out the book. Rowed Trip is in most bookstores across Canada and it makes a pretty good stocking stuffer too. (Hint: I’ve discovered that if you’re going to read a book before gifting it, taking it into the bathtub may not be the best idea.)

We hope you enjoy Rowed Trip. In a few weeks we’ll finish our road trip and will be back on Vancouver Island, eager to explore our snowy mountains and settle down with a good book.

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October eNewsletter Available

October 11th, 2009 by Julie
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The October issue of our eNewsletter has been sent out.  You can take a look at it here, and if you’d like to have the next one delivered to your inbox, please subscribe to it.

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Featured Expeditions - Jessica Watson - Sailing around the world at 16

October 11th, 2009 by Colin
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A collision with a 63,000 tonne cargo vessel would probably put most people off sailing for life. Not for 16-year-old Jessica Watson of Australia who considers it just part of training in her attempt to be the youngest to sail around the world solo. Jessica was sailing alone from Australia’s Sunshine Coast en route to Sydney in a trial run when she was hit by the freighter. Fortunately the boat was not badly damaged, but the mast was broken necessitating a return to shore for repairs. Once the boat was fixed, Jessica returned to her vessel, the Pink Lady, and completed her five day solo run to Sydney.

There is the usual chorus of naysayers stating that Jessica is too young and inexperienced to complete such a journey, and that her parents are being irresponsible for allowing such foolhardiness. And yet, while such a journey comes with inherent risks, it is people like Jessica that inspire others to pursue their own ambitions.   When I spent five years sailing the South Pacific, it seemed half the sailors out there had been inspired by reading the school book, Dove, a true story about a sixteen-year-old who sailed around the world alone.

Despite her setbacks, Jessica Watson has the courage to continue forward with her plans and is set to begin her circumnavigation later this fall (spring in Australia). She will commence her journey in Sydney and hopes to return to this point eight months later.

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October Update - the Book is out

October 5th, 2009 by Colin
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It’s out! Exactly one year after completing our 7,200-km rowing journey from Scotland to Syria, our new book, Rowed Trip, is in stores across North America. This is the first book Julie and I have penned together, and I’ll tell you, the relationship-management skills we’ve learned living together in rowboats also come in handy in the book-writing process.

For those of you interested in reading a sample from the book, check out the October issue of explore magazine and go online to read last weekend’s Globe & Mail or Air Canada’s enRoute magazine. Also if you have any questions about our journey, the book writing process, or life in a rowboat, ask us tomorrow during a discussion hosted by the Globe & Mail. It will be live at 10 am EST on Tues Oct 6th. Just go to globeandmail.com/travel/ to join the discussion.

We feel lucky to have been able to intimately experience so many waterways of Europe. Some, such as the Rhine and Thames have gone through major rehabilitation processes, and the re-emergence of native fish species is excellent news. Other areas, such as the Black Sea, remain in poor condition, and the sight of millions of jellyfish (a species that thrives in collapsing systems) drove home just how much negative impact humans can have on the habitat around us. In Canada we are lucky to have great swaths of wilderness, but abundance does not grant invincibility. The crash of the sockeye salmon stocks in Canada’s west illustrates the vulnerability of our own waterways, and we have decided to donate all royalties for books sold in our upcoming tour to the Living Ocean Society, an organization dedicated to preserving aquatic habitat.

Our documentary, Rowed Trip, is finally completed and it will be screened on our 20-city Canadian tour – from the Comox Valley to Ottawa – over the next two months. If you’re interested in seeing our live presentation and film, check our schedule to see if we’re coming to your town. The tickets are available on our website, in retail outlets, and at the door. In our last tour most venues sold out, so get your tickets early to avoid disappointment.

If you’d rather get a pair of free tickets and a DVD, that can be arranged too. We need two volunteers at most of our events, and if you’re interested we’d love to hear from you. Just send us an email at team@angusadventures.com.

And finally, a big thanks to all of you for your support and encouragement. It’s been a lengthy process building our boats, planning the expedition, doing the journey, and finally writing the book and editing the film. Throughout the process we have received much encouragement and interest from you, and now we hope you enjoy the final product.

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September Update - Backyard Distractions

September 21st, 2009 by Julie
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I wish I had some impressive tales to share this month, but our only adventures have been backyard ones (and I mean literally, the patch of grass out back). We’re working fervently to prepare for our upcoming show and to complete the documentary; most of our days and much of the night is spent in our offices, faces glued to the monitor, fingers doing the ten-digit tango.

Unlike the task of rowing across an ocean, office labour is much more prone to distraction, and often I find my attention gently diverted elsewhere. A quick peek at a newly arrived e-mail turns into perusal of news headlines touting the inane, such as newly discovered health benefits of beets. Next I’m Googling recipes for borsht and so on. Then I step outside, into the backyard, to clear my head and watch deer munching supposedly deer-proof plants. Colin who is also drawn to distractions joins me and suddenly we’re taking pictures of our cat - as you can see from the photo she’s rather fond of deer.

But the good news is the documentary is almost finished and in less than a month we’ll begin showing it on our tour. We’re looking forward to our cross-Canada trip, meeting up with distant friends and hopefully seeing many of you. Since our last newsletter we’ve added Toronto to the tour (Nov. 17) and you can now buy tickets not only online but at various shops. Also if you’d like to get a sneak peak at our book (not in bookstores until Sept 29th) check out this month’s issue of explore magazine, which contains an excerpt from it.

Although we haven’t had any recent adventures, there are many who have and our featured expedition this month  tops the list. Ed Stafford is attempting to be the first person to hike the length of the Amazon River, which is either extremely difficult or suicidal, depending on who you talk to. Read more about his expedition in our earlier post and for anyone interested in historical expeditions to that part of the world, I would recommend the book The Lost City of Z by David Grann - a fascinating read about Percy Fawcett’s deadly search for a city built of gold in the Amazon jungle.

We hope that you’re having a good September.

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