Could a man currently crossing the Pacific solo in a 27-foot sailboat have just become the person who’s gone SUPing on an inflatable paddleboard further from land than any other human in history?
Quite possibly.
“It is month one, day 31 of sailing across the Pacific alone and… um… I lost my sailboat,” says sailing_songbird, aka former schoolteacher Luke, at the start of a TikTok video that has gone viral.
Except he hasn’t lost his sailboat – it’s just become stuck in the infamous Intertropical Convergence Zone, or doldrums, where the wind notoriously vanishes every so often. So with nothing better to do, he’s pumped up his board and gone for a paddle, well over 1,000 miles away from the nearest land. That’s the most open of open water you’re likely to find.
@sailing_songbird ♬ original sound - R❤️♾️
“I’m stuck here in the doldrums,” he explains in his video. “There is no wind. So I pumped up my inflatable paddleboard and I’m getting some exercise in. It is incredibly disorienting to be out on a paddleboard with absolutely nothing on the horizon except a super cool sunset.
“I am well over 1,000 miles from any piece of land and it’s so quiet,” he adds. “This definitely feels like one of the more incredible things I’ve been privileged enough to experience.”
And he posted an image of a pin dropped on Google Maps to prove his location.
Note that we’re saying Luke is using an inflatable paddleboard. In 2017, South African Chris Bertish completed the first solo, unsupported stand-up paddleboard crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, but he was using a specially constructed board, called the ImpiFish, that was Four feet wide and 20 feet long and most definitely not inflatable.
Maybe another sailor since has decided to leap of their boat and do a little bit of paddleboarding in the middle of the Pacific or Atlantic on an inflatable board, but Sailing_songbird appears to be the first to have documented it.
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