Virgin Global Row is a solo expedition by Olly Hicks to circumnavigate the Antarctica in his boat called The Flying Carrot.
The expedition will last about 18 to 22 months which is roughly 2 years. Olly will be on the sea for majority of the time except for over-wintering on South Georgia where it gets extremely cold even to survive.
Here are some of the juiciest details regarding the boat that Olly will take with him.
- The Flying Carrot is the most advanced rowing boat ever made!
- The equipment inside the boat is also state-of-the-art
- The hull and cabin structure is made of Kevlar foam sandwich that provides it with bouyancy as well as strength (Kevlar is also used in bullet-proof jackets)
- It is designed by?Phil Morrison specially for Olly’s height and size
- ?The stern cabin is divided into two sections, the rear-most being 100% water tight, providing sleeping accommodation and housing for electronic equipment, while the other is a wet self-draining compartment designed for food preparation and shake-down before dry cabin entry.
- The bow cabin will also have an emergency ?grab-bag? with all survival communications equipment, should the stern cabin be compromised.
- The boat operate with electrical power stored in marine batteries and these batteries are charged from three sources, the wind generator, solar panels and a fuel cell.
- The boat additionally contains these equipments and gadgets : ????Satellite phones (For calling the land and other ships)
2 x PDA?s (For sending blog updates to blogger)
A laptop (For communications, mapping and weather routing)
Video cameras for filming material for youtube.com/virginglobalrow
A water-maker to convert sea water into drinking water.
A VHF radio systems
An Auto-pilot system
2 x GPS systems
Radar reflector (to make ‘The Flying Carrot’ look bigger to other ships)
Sat-C emergency communications.
GPS tracker (The trackers locate the boat in the Southern Ocean and add the signal to Google Maps allowing Olly to be tracked online). - You can also ask a question to Olly.
- Olly also maintains a blog, a YouTube video channel as well as Picasa album to share his thoughts, videos and photos.
- The food that Olly carries will provide him with roughly 6000 calories a day – enough for him to replenish his energy fot rowing and maintaining the boat.
- On-board entertainment equipment includes 3×80 GB ipods – with audio books and music.
- The stern cabin, 100% water-tight by design and containing all the communications equipment, is an extremely confined space when fully packed with supplies but during bad weather Olly will confine himself to this space for some days at a time.