Limping Into Melbourne

[Rusty356]

I have a friend who is limping into Melbourne (I think) under a jury rigged sail in his ROBERTS 36 named "WATERBIRD". He's solo circumnavigating from St. Maarten, Netherlands Antllies. His name is Daniel Petrasek. Daniel's boat capsized about 900 miles off the Australian shore during a storm in the Roaring Forties last month.



Unlike Jessica Watson, Daniel has no "Official Sponsor", PR man or support. He's a Freelance Travel Photographer and he has some wonderful pictures of his trip. He's been bootstrapping his solo circumnavigation effort for the last two years, stopping in New Zealand, the Falkland Islands and Cape Town, S. Africa to work and provision the boat.

He will probably make it to Australia within a week or two. It would be very nice if the people of Melbourne could extend Daniel a warm welcome when (if) he gets there.



[url="http://www.polarka.com/zpravy/zpravy.html"]http://www.polarka.com/zpravy/zpravy.html[/url]

[Rusty356]

[quote name='PeterJMelb' post='27209' date='Jun 3 2010, 07:17 PM']Hello Rusty.



I look forward to reading about his arrival.

I too hope he makes it.

So far I have seen nothing in the local Melbourne papers.[/quote]



Daniel has arrived! He finally made landfall in Portland, AU sometime on May 26th with the message "lost the mast, but life is good".

[glen]

That is great news about landing and a real shame about the mast! <img src='http://www.melbournechat.org/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':laugh:' />

[Rusty356]

[quote name='glen' post='27233' date='Jun 4 2010, 10:15 AM']That is great news about landing and a real shame about the mast! <img src='http://www.melbournechat.org/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':laugh:' />[/quote]





Yes, Daniel is one very lucky sailor. He capsized one night during a Force 11 storm in the Roaring Forties about 900 miles out. When the boat finally righted herself, the broken mast and rigging took the life raft and windgen to the bottom of the ocean right along with it. Luckily, the mainsheet saved the boom and Daniel was able to jury rig a sail using the boom for a mast to get away from the storm.