Cape Town adventurer Chris Bertish will paddle into English Harbour on the Caribbean island of Antigua on Thursday‚ 93 days after leaving Morocco in an attempt to complete the first solo stand-up paddleboard transatlantic crossing.
Apart from achieving that objective‚ Bertish has broken the open ocean distance world record. And by the time he reaches his ultimate destination — Miami‚ Florida — he hopes to have raised R20 million for children’s charities The Lunchbox Fund‚ Operation Smile and Signature of Hope.
Speaking via WhatsApp to Andy Davis of zigzag.co.za‚ Bertish described some of the difficulties he had encountered during the voyage aboard his custom-made paddle craft‚ which is 6m long and has a 1.72m cabin‚ the exact length of the former professional sailor when he is lying down.
“I have had a lot of stormy‚ overcast weather ... which has been incredibly difficult to contend with‚” he said. “You can handle those kind of conditions if it’s only a couple of days. But not when it’s every day relentlessly for a few weeks and I am on a craft that is really close to the water.
“And the nights become monumentally long. They are like mental endurance marathons.”
He was also struggling with injuries‚ including a torn shoulder rotator cuff and burns sustained while heating water.
“My hands have been so badly damaged from paddling so much and the cuts and scrapes from various things have taken so long to heal‚” he said.
Bertish said one of the keys to his successful crossing had been not only visualising his arrival in Antigua but setting mini-goals and working towards them.
“If you only focus on the end goal it’s too overwhelming for the mind to really comprehend‚ so you lose motivation and it’s very easy to get despondent.
“(But) I can write everything about the day when I finish. I have visualised it and can map it out exactly. I’ve visualised ... tears of joy rolling down my face knowing that I have changed the lives of millions of people and inspired hundreds of thousands along the way.”
And Bertish made it clear that this voyage would not be his last expedition.
“This is just one project. There are more that I am planning in 2019 and 2020 which will take this project and ratchet it up to a whole new scale where I will be changing 30 million people’s lives instead of three million and I will be building 10 schools and 20 schools instead of three.” — TMG Digital/The Times
SA adventurer Chris Bertish conquers the Atlantic
Cape Town adventurer Chris Bertish will paddle into English Harbour on the Caribbean island of Antigua on Thursday‚ 93 days after leaving Morocco in an attempt to complete the first solo stand-up paddleboard transatlantic crossing.
Apart from achieving that objective‚ Bertish has broken the open ocean distance world record. And by the time he reaches his ultimate destination — Miami‚ Florida — he hopes to have raised R20 million for children’s charities The Lunchbox Fund‚ Operation Smile and Signature of Hope.
Speaking via WhatsApp to Andy Davis of zigzag.co.za‚ Bertish described some of the difficulties he had encountered during the voyage aboard his custom-made paddle craft‚ which is 6m long and has a 1.72m cabin‚ the exact length of the former professional sailor when he is lying down.
“I have had a lot of stormy‚ overcast weather ... which has been incredibly difficult to contend with‚” he said. “You can handle those kind of conditions if it’s only a couple of days. But not when it’s every day relentlessly for a few weeks and I am on a craft that is really close to the water.
“And the nights become monumentally long. They are like mental endurance marathons.”
He was also struggling with injuries‚ including a torn shoulder rotator cuff and burns sustained while heating water.
“My hands have been so badly damaged from paddling so much and the cuts and scrapes from various things have taken so long to heal‚” he said.
Bertish said one of the keys to his successful crossing had been not only visualising his arrival in Antigua but setting mini-goals and working towards them.
“If you only focus on the end goal it’s too overwhelming for the mind to really comprehend‚ so you lose motivation and it’s very easy to get despondent.
“(But) I can write everything about the day when I finish. I have visualised it and can map it out exactly. I’ve visualised ... tears of joy rolling down my face knowing that I have changed the lives of millions of people and inspired hundreds of thousands along the way.”
And Bertish made it clear that this voyage would not be his last expedition.
“This is just one project. There are more that I am planning in 2019 and 2020 which will take this project and ratchet it up to a whole new scale where I will be changing 30 million people’s lives instead of three million and I will be building 10 schools and 20 schools instead of three.” — TMG Digital/The Times
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