Agree with Wakinyan’s point that extended time at sea contributes to, if not crazy, at least hallucinogenic situations. All the more so if someone is not keeping a detailed log. A log will reduce things like “This week I think I remember last week that we saw an island.”, followed by the same confusion next week leading eventually to the belief “we saw islands nearly every week”.
Has there been any evidence of either of them keeping any sort of a log or journal or diary?
Beyond that, the less stable the person is to begin with, the greater the likelihood of problems. Given, *pace *Colibri, that Appel was a loonie before she set sail, it’s a good bet her recollection of the voyage is, at best, more fantasy than reality.
Add in some face-saving and some desire for instant fame, and any resemblance between the story and reality is pretty much accidental.
I’m not too interested in watching a bunch of vids, but has any material statement come out from Fuiava? If so, what’s the capsule summary of that? Any word on their physcological relationship? Captor/slave, extrovert leader / introvert follower, love birds? Or was Fuiava just an inert lump about like the dogs?
Was it six different sets of comm gear that failed? If she bought crappy gear (or failed to keep the stuff calibrated and maintained) for comms, I wouldn’t be surprised if any electronic navigation aids were crappy, too.
I recall that as well. She should have brought it with her but I haven’t heard any reference to it since.
She’s now saying that it wasn’t the communication gear that failed themselves, but that it was a faulty antenna that was the common factor in none of them working properly. I don’t know how credible that is, or how she found out that was the problem.
She has said very little in the interviews. Appel does almost all of the talking, and Fuiava chimes in once in a while.
Appel says she would work on the boat at night because during the day guys at the boatyard would tell her she was doing things wrong. (One suspects in this case they might not have just been being sexist.) Fuiava was the night security guard.
Sorry I just cannot help myself on this topic. comment on all the comms failure was due to a faulty antenna, Had to google marine antennas and from being a ham radio guy years ago I rememberd that the vhf and ssb antennas are two different systems a vhf antenna for marine is around 3 feet while the ssb marine antenna is listed at 17.6 feet.
not to mention that the sat phone uses its own short one foot or so antenna.
Thanks. This suggests that Appel doesn’t know how any of the systems actually work. Perhaps someone on the Ashland suggested to her that a faulty antenna was the source of her problems with one piece of equipment. When someone expressed incredulity that all her equipment failed to work she seized on that explanation for all of it not working, not realizing that it was ridiculous.
So… wait. Someone is trying to kill you with ramming attacks, and your answer is to surf over to the attacking craft, climb on board, and use their radio, secure in the knowledge that they don’t sprenkzie anglais to realize what you are doing?
For clarity, I am not seriously suggesting that the two ladies should sacrifice their pets to the shark god(s).
However, I am trying to imagine why the “experienced” sailor is claiming that she thought that the sharks could hear them turning on their beacon.
Are we to believe that the dogs remained absolutely still during these shark encounters? Did the dogs somehow realize that an Alpha Predator was on the other side of the hull, on the prowl?
Just watched the 5+ minute interview with Matt Lauer. They’re dropping brand names like they think they’re going to get a sponsorship deal from Garmin and Katadyn. Obvious attention whores are obvious.
I must apologize to shithouse rats everywhere for comparing Appel to them earlier. Shithouse rats are considerably saner.
Some tidbits from the NBC interview:
-Fuiava says that Appel told her to 'bunker down with the boys [the dogs]" when the “Force 11 storm” blew up, and since she was a heavy sleeper she slept through it (apparently for three days, which is how long Appel says the storm lasted). It seems there actually was a small craft advisory for squalls in the area, which Appel converted in her mind to a near hurricane:
-She confirms they were at Kritimati (Christmas Island) rather than just some island in Kiribati but says she was “denied access.” She previously said they didn’t seek to repair their mast there because their keel was too deep to enter the channel into the lagoon. If they were “denied access” presumably they were in touch with someone there. But who knows what she means. Maybe it was the gods of the sea that denied them access.
-It appears that it will be possible to confirm their route, since Appel brought at least one of their GPS units with them:
Let’s see if she allows independent evaluation of the GPS data.
This may qualify her for the heavy sleeper hall of fame.
Googling suggests the harbor has a depth over 50 ft, and handles ships up to 500 ft in length. So the “denied access” story perhaps works slightly better.
