SINGAPORE (Team Geared Up) - Thanks to Ciaran Rooney (via Twitter) for the heads up. AQA offer a service where you can text any question to 63336 (UK) or 57275 (Ireland) and they will find an answer and SMS you back for £1 or €2.

This great story (read the lead-in here about how they got lost on a remote Thai Island). I’m off to near this Island in 3 weeks!

At this point we were scared by the potential of spending the whole night in the jungle as we didn’t know what it would hold, snakes, monkeys, spiders, bandits etc! I first texted 63336 and asked for the number of the police in Koh Phanyang, they promptly sent me back the number for the police in Koh Phanyang but also the number for the tourist police on the neighboring Island (Koh Samui). The Koh Phanyang police didn’t speak any English so I was unable to communicate with them, we tried the number for the tourist police constantly but there was no answer.

I texted 63336 again and asked for the number of my hotel as I hoped they would be able to call the police and talk to them in Thai. But again, nobody at the hotel could speak English very well so that plan didn’t work. Fast running out of ideas I texted 63336 a more general message saying “We are lost in the Thai jungle do you have any idea as to what we could do?

Then after an answer, and to our great relief, we got a call from Bill at AQA to see how AQA could help further. He talked to us to get some details about roughly where we were and said to leave it with him.

-Robin.

SINGAPORE (Team Geared Up) - It’s all happening this week in at sea (read the Day 3 update on the Portrush Lifeboat Grounding). Overnight a Cargo ferry with roll-on-roll-off cargo and some passengers got hit by a freak wave and was grounded on blackpool beach.

The latest news is that the Irish Coast Guard Helicopter is now monitoring the situation and will fly to the UK to aid the situation if required.

Sitting on the bottom, it has developed a 40 degree list. All but a few crew have been airlifted off by RAF sea kings. We have video released by the HM Coastguard RAF helicopter on-scene (from RAF Kinloss), via BBC.

The ship is called the Riverdance. It crosses the Irish sea 2 times a day with freight trucks. I wonder what goods are onboard - and if this thing goes (pretty likely with the current winds, but may be prevented if a sand bottom) what will end up on the shore. Last time we had the Mercedes!

The large wave shifted all the cargo, causing it to tilt.

Reuters are reporting:

The crew comprised 15 Poles and four Britons. Four passengers had been on board. There were no reports of injuries.

The crew remaining on board were working to ballast the vessel to improve its stability, a coastguard statement said, adding there was “no reported oil pollution from the vessel”.

A Royal Airforce spokesman said the rescue conditions had been “the worst you could ever think it could be, and then some more”.

Winds of Storm Force 10 were reported, meaning up to 60 mph, with gusts taking the figure higher, and waves of more than 20 feet (7 metres)

-Robin-

(Image Credits: RAF, BBC)

SINGAPORE (Team Geared Up) - RTE News are reporting that the Portrush lifeboat was thrown onto rocks by a large wave as its crew attended an emergency call last night. It was stuck there on high ground as the tide went out. They attempted to get it off today but without luck.

The RNLI has suspended an effort to free a lifeboat which became grounded overnight near Rathlin Island off the Co Antrim coast. The operation will resume tomorrow after a failed attempt by a tug boat from Derry to free the vessel at high tide today.

Severn Class Lifeboat, this is seriously expensive machinery (boat specs). RNLI have a detailed report on their own site.

The three people who were at the centre of the rescue attempt were safely assisted to the shore by the Rathlin Island Coastguard team.

The Irish examiner reports…

Two of the lifeboat crew were thrown into the water from the lifeboat’s small inflatable boat after assisting in the attempts to refloat the all-weather lifeboat. They both managed to scramble ashore safely.

But I’ve no other reports of this.

-Robin-

(Image Credit: RTE News, BBC News, RNLI)

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Here’s some more of these flying maniacs in wingsuits, this guy is known as “The Dude” (full post coming tomorrow on landing without a parachute (thanks to reader tipoff). These videos are incredible. Absolutely incredible.

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Follow Tango & Cash the NI MTB Boys in their latest adventure, To Err-igal is Human.

The mighty Mount Errigal, County Donegal. Basically a big 750-metre-high wobbly peat trifle with granite crushed nuts on top. We always wanted to have a crack at it on/with the bikes, so we departed Antrim at 5:40am on Saturday 15 December 2007, to climb the mountain.

We knew it was a carry to the top, so we padded the top- and down-tubes with pipe lagging from B&Q. It’s a good idea if you are going to be carrying for a long period.

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MS “Beluga SkySails” is the worlds first tanker to be towed by kite. The kite is 160m sq.

Ship christening of the worldwide first cargo ship with SkySails-System took place at the Hamburger Landungsbrücken/Überseebrücke on December 15th, 2007 – Milestone regarding the use of environmentally sound propulsion technologies at sea.

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The Kandersteg Ice Climbing Festival starts tonight in Switzerland. Love that event. Above is one of my photos from 2004 when I watched Ines Papart win first place.

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How not to launch an RNLI lifeboat from the beach. The on-shore wind blew this English crew back onto the beach, for a minute it looks like they weren’t going to get away. Massive seas. Watch this video. (Thanks diverman).

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All climbing have a great video of Will Gadd ice climbing icebergs from waterlevel. Massive icebergs too! Iceberg-oldering anyone?

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Adventure Race World Series has been announced in Ireland for June 14-21 2008. Location is South West and more details are available from Jan 11th.

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-Robin-

LONDON, UK (Team Geared Up) - Resusi Annie is the most kissed woman in the world, albeit rubber - but little did I know she’s modelled on a real French woman. The Guardian report the following quotes and I’ve “dredged up” (oops no pun intended!) some photos:

He based Anne’s face on that of a young unnamed woman who drowned in Paris’s river Seine in the 19th century.

The story goes that when the woman’s body was fished out of the water at the Quai du Louvre, the Paris pathologist found her so mesmerisingly beautiful that he ordered a moulder to take a death mask of her face. No one ever identified the perfect, blemish-free body.

Amazing! In the Laerdal company’s history of Resusci Anne, the mystery is referred to as all-important. “This seems to be the key to her lasting fascination”. It certainly is a good story - not sure I’ll be too pleased knowing the next time I practice CPR I’m doing it on the death-mask of a real 16yr old girl.

-Robin-

(Credit: Thanks to Matt G for sending me the story)

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Howth Coastguard & RNLI were up at 4am yesterday to rescue 4 men from rocks in Howth. Their fishing boat was holed and sunk within minutes. I understood that the All-weather sent in its tender and the inshore brought them back to harbour. Great job! Video on RTE (click link at bottom of page).

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First photos coming through of the 154 rescued from the sinking Antarctic cruise ship overnight. Crazy. My latest update is that the captain & 1st officer are still onboard and the ship is at 25 degrees.

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Fancy driving up Elbrus in a landrover? These guys did! Not only that, but they left it up there! I had no idea of this, and there’s photos of it being found by another expedition.

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GO-Blog have found a free Mountain Hardware Cookbook, for great meals in the hills. Download it! (3MB).

It’s 20 pages of recipes from the world’s top climbers, skiers, adventurers. Keep in mind the many of the authors of the recipes may be high altitude experts, so there’s the whole brain damage thing.

Love it!

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Our TGU Forums have started to get a bit of chat going on. Thanks ’siubhanmac’ who left a post about the ‘Ocean to City 2008′ race in Cork.

An Ras Mor is set for the 31st of May 2008. The race is open to all types of fixed seat rowing craft including kayaks. The course runs from Crosshaven in Co Cork up to Lapps Quay in Cork city over 15 nautical miles taking in Roches point.

Cheers Siubahn!

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I hope you enjoyed that round up!

-Robin-

(Image Credits: All from their respective websites as linked.)

LONDON, UK (Team Geared Up) - Sorry about the cheesy title! Brian mailed me this morning to say their new site at www.doolincoastguard.com had gone live. The Doolin Unit of the Irish Coast Guard is located in County Clare on the west coast of Ireland. All volunteers, on-call 24/7/365.

If you’re an Irish climber and take a slip at Doolin or Ailladie, over the edge, twist an ankle on a sea cliff pitch or bottom out… these are the guys coming to pick you up along with the SAR Helicopter based at Shannon Airport.

The team offer Cliff Rescue, Sea Rescue (Delta Rib & D-Class) & Coastal Search. They have a 4×4 Isuzu, Honda Quad, Ford Gear Van & a Tractor for rough RIB launches.

Their site gives a great personal overview of their rescue operation. The guys have a fantastic video archive, worth a watch.

The Unit is comprised of 24 volunteers who are on call 24 hours 365 Days a year.Volunteers are alerted through a VHF based paging system.

The Irish Coast Guard is a part of the 999/112 emergency system and the Doolin coastal unit is one of fifty two similar teams located at regular intervals around the Irish Coastline.

Take a look at www.doolincoastguard.com.

-Robin-

(Image Credit: John Kelly, Doolin Coast Guard.)

Disclaimer: I’m a volunteer at howthcoastguard.com

LONDON, UK (Team Geared Up) - Call in the crowd! Artificial intelligence is now being used in the form of Amazon Mechanical Turk to track Steve’s position. The idea is to complete simple tasks that people do better than computers by splitting up the images into tiny squares and getting 1000s of humans to remotely check them. Typically these tasks are extraordinarily difficult for computers, but simple for humans to answer.

You will be shown a single satellite image. The task is to flag any satellite images which contain foreign objects that may resemble Steve’s airplane or parts of a plane. Steve’s plane will show up as a regular object with sharp edges, white or nearly white, about 21 pixels long and 30 pixels in wingspan.

-Robin-

LONDON, UK (Team Geared Up) - With a 60,000-square-mile search area (5hr radius from Flying Ranch M) to look for the missing world record breaker Steve Fossett they’ve decided it’s time to call in the technology. TGU Blogger Darran spotted today on TechCrunch.com that Richard Branson has asked Google for help in providing image analysis to locate him.

“I’m talking with friends at Google about seeing whether we can look at satellite images over the last four days to see whether they can see which direction he might have been flying and whether they can see any disturbances anywhere that they can pin from space,” –Branson

It would be hoped that by algorithmically comparing images taken before & after the incident a plane or debris could be determined on the ground. Even more successful would be an image taken during the flight time 5hr window which would capture the intact plane flying and his flight path could be determined.

Today a black hawk helicopter joined the SAR effort along with an interesting piece of tech. A ‘Gippsland Air Van’, plane complete with Archer multi-spectral imaging system that should distinguish Fossett’s plane from the background, flew in to join the effort. The system can detect a plane with just 10 percent of shape intact.

The following video has been shot flying over Flying Ranch M, Nevada. This gives an idea of terrain:

Steve Fossett tribute videos have started on YouTube already:

As a follow up to yesterday, it is now thought if he crashed into a lake the Emergency Locator Beacon could have been lost - this doesn’t yet explain his watch not signalling.

-Robin-

LONDON, UK (Team Geared Up) - This post is playing out all over the interenet, so I thought I’d try and add value to it rather than regurgitate.

At 9:00 am, on Monday, September 3, 2007, Fossett took off in a single-engine plane from a private air strip known as Flying M Ranch ( 38°36′39″N, 118°59′56″W), near Smith Valley, 30 miles south of Yerington, Nevada, near Carson City and the California border. He was allegedly performing a “ground recon” of dry lake beds for a land-speed in a car project he was involved with.

• Branson interviewed on BBC24 has said he gave him a present of a Breitling Watch which he never removes. This watch has a locator beacon in it and is easy to set off from a push of a button.
• The plane has an emergency locator beacon in it. This will activate if the plane crashes unless damaged in the crash (e.g. explosion). If landed safely Steve could set it off manually.
• The plane has full radio capability if it was landed safely with power remaining in batteries.
• Steve did not land at any other airfields and had a 4-5hr fuel range.
• Steve is highly experienced in piloting. “No better man” was the quote from SAR team leader.
• “Steve always pushes the envelope” said Branson.
• Steve was 63.

So it looks like - Steve may have had a heart attack mid-flight, or something similar. A bad explosion would wipe out the locator beacon. If this is not the case then he may have brought the plane down somewhere to check out the ground firmness for his speed record and be unable to relaunch - why he would have then lost the locator beacon (broken?) and the radio power is unknown.

CAP rescue currently have 13 planes in the air searching a grid formation for his plane or debris. They are currently treating this as a rescue operation rather than recovery. There is still hope.

TGU will post any updates we get.

-Robin-