Comment by giraffe_lady

Comment by giraffe_lady 2 days ago

Solo sailors became a semiprominent microniche on youtube during the pandemic, you can watch this sort of thing in incredible detail that way if you want. Sam Holmes did this trip (and many others) and has IMO the best channel about this kind of sailing. He has nerves of steel and is not necessarily to be emulated in all practices but a great watch. FWIW I'm a long-time recreational sailor but I've only done a few long passages and none of them solo.

nataz a day ago

Man, I really enjoyed Sam, until he started doing things that I thought were unnecessarily risky (or in some cases plain inconsiderate). That said, ballsy MF. Solo sailors remind me of free solo climbers. Their risk assessment/acceptance is so far off normal it's almost alien.

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bergie 18 hours ago

We also stopped watching his videos when he abandoned a couple of boats that ended up ashore.
This year he apparently did a transatlantic just a couple weeks before we did ours[1], but haven't seen him around.
1: https://lille-oe.de/2025-01-24/

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giraffe_lady a day ago

I haven't watched all his videos especially the more recent ones but there have definitely been some wtf moments for me too. And yeah he's not ignorant at all it's pretty funny to watch him verbally run through an accurate & extremely alarming assessment of the dangers of something and then go like eh it'll probably be fine.
"Well we're going to take an unplotted shortcut here through the uh, <<checking notes>> graveyard of the atlantic, according to the charts it's 7 feet deep and we have a 6.5 foot draft so fingers crossed the charts are up to date" type shit.
IIRC he has some very serious chronic health stuff and that may have something to do with it. I don't love the risky sails when he has a passenger though. But also who the fuck am I, a weekend lake sailor, to judge. At this point he's got to be among the most experienced solo sailors on the planet. I feel a similar way about slocum or the pardeys and they are more his peers than I am.

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