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Retrouvailles ... 8th Jan 2005
What joy to see my little Océor again. I ceased to believe it would ever happen! Midday Friday Pascal and I sit in the office of the forwarding agent , still looking patient. Things seem to be moving, we are with the customs officer who will open the container and accept my boat on Peruvian soil. But he won't budge, we came for nothing, "Monday, not before Monday", says the man behind his desk. He looks really sorry not to be able to help me. I look at him with my eyes of "chien battu" as Chantal would say. Then he relents. The fans blow in the office, it is stiflingly hot, the man perspires large drops of sweat, nearby 8 people work in silence. Je fais les cent pas. At the end of the afternoon, after much prevarication, the customs officer finally agreed to act. We got into our car and followed him to the area of the port where hundreds of containers were stacked up. I was the only one allowed onto the site. Océor is ok. I am relieved. Ten Peruvians are in the container, they are checking all my vacuum sealed bags, I try hard to make them understand that it is important not to open them (or they won't survive the voyage in Océor ... Rob), they look at me incredulously. One of the men slips a poster he found in a trunk into the hands of the cutoms officer, the officer smiles and tells me I look very pretty in the photo, and laughs while holding my arms ... 15 minutes later everything is done. The paper is signed and we have the authorization to come and pick Océor up tomorrow ... .......... Merveilleux ... Maud |
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Toujours en attente ..........
I have been here in Lima since Sunday evening, nearly 5 days, and things have progressed painfully slowly. What are said to be "customs formalities" are not in fact just "formalities". We trudge up endless paper trails, but still more appear in front of us. Each day the answer is tomorrow (mañana mañana:) and time passes. I seem to be the only one who is worried. Laurent (cameraman), Marcel Mochet (Photographer of the AFP) and Christian Bex of France Information arrive here on Saturday evening. I am still hoping to leave between the 9th and the 13th of January. The weather brings not a breath of wind under a blazing sun. Sometimes the wind gets up from East to West like it's singing. I am anxious to leave, to launch myself ... to find the wide open space again. Luckily we are patient, Thomas and I, at the home of Pascal and Élisabeth, French friends who are looking after us. This morning I was told I could look in the container on Friday. I hope everything will be straightened out by the end of the week. Voila, j'espère que de votre coté tout va bien. Je pense à vous, Maud Perú Negro "Son de los Diablos" |
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Arrivée sur Lima!
Pas de fouille de bagage, ouf! I'm not sure about the Argos beacons . Johnny, my contact on the spot, came to pick us up, Thomas et moi at the airport. It's hot , around 25°C (you call that hot!!!Rob), a cloud of pollution seemed to cover the immense city of Lima. Although it's late the traffic is still thick, the sound of blaring horns assaulting ones senses. Lima grouille de monde, more than 8 million inhabitants. Everything is big here ... and everything is not so easy, Océor is still in it's container. It will end up choking inside! Taking something out of bond is not so straight forward. Negotiations will continue tomorrow, de visu that will go better I think. The rowing club awaits us, everything will be better tomorrow. Portez vous bien, A très vite, Maud Play Radio Panamericana Lima Website Play RPP Noticias Lima (sport) Website Pacific Islands Radio Website Lima local time = UTC(GMT) -5 hours |
Maud et Thomas Bez (Maud's technical expert for Oceor) leaving Roissy airport Paris for Lima Peru ...
Photos: Jean-Christophe L'Espagnole |
During Maud's voyage from Puerto Callao in Peru to Tahiti you can check up on her progress
by visiting the Town Hall in Meaux (Seine et Marne) where a contact computer has been set up as a clearing house for info about Maud's daring exploit
across the mighty Pacific Ocean ...
how to get to the Town Hall (Mairie) in Meaux ... map1
map2
map3
(Thanks to everyone who supported Maud at her contact computer opening ... Robert) Mireille Mathieu La Marseillaise |
 VLF |
Maud at the return of Christophe Cousin to Paris on 18th December after his adventure travelling around the world on a bicycle.
Christophe was one of Maud's supporters and sent her messages from cybercafes around the world.
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OCEOR LEAVES FOR PERU
"It was time to load Oceor into it's container on a cold rainy early Monday morning in Le Havre.
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The charts below (from an !experimental! El Nino prediction model) show how much warmer than average the sea surface temperature of the Pacific ocean
is forecast to be for the months when Maud will be rowing from Peru to Tahiti ...
for the Pacific temperatures +1.5 to +3.5 degrees Celsius above average would be considered characteristic of an El Nino event.
The higher the increase and the larger the area effected the stronger the El Nino ...
As you can see an El Nino event is very unlikely going on the forecast sea surface temperatures ... (The +1.5 to +3.5 criteria will NOT be met in 2005) = (NO el Nino in 2005) WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT TO MAUD??? because in an El Nino year the SE trade winds can break down and they are the winds she is relying on to drift her from Peru to Tahiti!!! (You didn't think she was going to ROW avec ses mains nues over 4000 nautical miles did you???) 
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HOW NOT TO CROSS THE PACIFIC IN A ROWING BOAT ... or why Jim Shekhdar took SO LONG (over 9 months) to cross the South Pacific Ocean from Peru to Australia???
Well if we look at the graph of Maud's voyage across the Atlantic from West to East where the winds are strong but variable and then compare it with Jim's graph for his voyage
Jim's problem jumps right out at us ... (Compare last half of Jim's graph with Maud's)
Strong variable winds like Maud experienced necessitate a stop start voyage where Maud deployed the sea anchor when the winds were contrary and rowed when they were favourable.
So Maud's speed varied a lot during her voyage (Her graph is very similar to Emmanuel Coindre rowing the Atlantic West to East)
On a tradewind East to West crossing of an ocean ones graph should look similar to that of Fedor Konyukhov rowing from La Gomera to Barbados ... with very little variability once you have cleared the east(of the ocean) coast(of in his case Africa). Why Jim started from Peru in June I don't Know, perhaps he was over optimistic about the speeds he could maintain? Any way you can see his graph is fairly smooth till about day 140 when something went seriously wrong ... He arrived in the Western Pacific at the start of the Summer cyclone season!!!! (bad move Jim) so he had to start rowing south to get himself out of danger ending up off Brisbane Australia at 28 degrees South. In effect he lost his tradewinds and ended up having a stop start voyage with the last half of his graph looking like that of someone rowing the difficult West to East route across the North Atlantic ... Well Maud being the smart cookie that she is will start in January so she will arrive in the Western South Pacific Ocean at the start of the Winter season when the tradewinds are strong in that area (and the cyclones have gone) Once Maud clears the coast of South America she should get into some pretty solid South Easterly trade winds and her graph for the whole Pacific crossing should look much like that of Fedor Konyukhov below, except she has about 1.7 times as far to row ... BUT getting from the coast of Peru to the trade winds is NOT GOING TO BE EASY Maud will have a strong current and light winds taking her north up the coast so the first part of her graph will look like Fedor's unless she can come up with some inspired way to defeat this bouchonne sur le périf du Pacifique ... Robert I don't envy you the job of keeping the bottom of the boat clean on a 4 months tropical ocean crossing :) ... at least the water will be warm this time ... Robert |
Comparison of Maud's almost half Pacific row from Peru to Polynesia with Jim Shekhdar's full Pacific row from Peru to Australia ...
Well all you keen ocean rowers ... Who's going to be the first to row Peru Australia in less than 6 months??? Depart Puerto Callao Peru January 12 ... Arrive Townsville Australia before July 12 ... GO FOR IT !!! Maud has shown you the way ... |
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 Apologies to Tori Murden
for the glaring error on the front cover of the English translation of Maud's book Maud was NOT the first woman to row the Atlantic (I added the NOT to the cover:)   - nice photo of Gerard D'Aboville with Tori Murden in Tenerife - .. before she became the first woman (and first American) to row the Atlantic (You should have got me to translate it or at least edit the translation Maud ... Duh!) Maud had not seen the book but she is very upset and is "on the case" 
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