JeanneBaret

My dear friend,

    Perhaps when I use the term “Solo human powered polar circumnavigation” you are not so sure what I mean by the use of those terms.  I am confident that pretty much everyone is a bit foggy of what that means.  In actuality, there is not complete agreement among the experts of what any of these terms mean.  There is not even a consensus of what constitutes a true circumnavigation of the Earth.

    Therefore, with this post we will take a brief look at a few circumnavigations in the annals of history to get a little better idea of what the terms mean in application.  In subsequent posts, I will expand on these topics as they come into view.  The whole business is surprisingly complicated.  It is not something that we want to fully analyze in a single blog post.  If you look at the Wikipedia page on the topic, you will see what I mean.  It is a fairly lengthy article, and it does hardly more that scratch the surface of the subject.

    In the 1500’s there were a number of adventures that made attempts at circumnavigating the Earth in wooden sailing vessels, including Ferdinand Magellan and Sir Francis Drake.  There is no lack of debate about who completed what journey, what ship they were on, and if it constituted a single voyage or not.  Ever since then, men have debated about every circumnavigation that has ever been attempted.  Is it a circumnavigation in the truest sense of the word?  Was it completed in a single set of consecutive uninterrupted voyages?  Was it completed in the same vessel?  Were the crew members all the same? On and on are these types of questions are bantered about.  They are all good questions; however, there seems to be a great deal of splitting hairs among the experts and the onlookers and very little regard for the actual accomplishments.

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