Exactly.
Recall their current recruiting slogan: “A global force for good.”
I’m always amazed by how credulous posters here are, coming up with bizarre but completely pointless conspiracy theories for major news events.
A few years ago, when a 2-year-old girl in China was filmed being left to die in the street while 18 people veered around her body (or drove right over her), two respected posters here claimed that the whole story was some sort of a massive hoax that managed to fool everyone except them. And when the hiker who had an 800 lb. boulder fall on him had to saw off his own arm to escape, several posters here thought that he deliberately sawed off his arm as some sort of publicity stunt or because he had some weird amputation fetish.
And now I’m really suspicious. It might be just barely possible to survive on oatmeal and pasta for five months, but at the end of that, you’re going to be in seriously poor health from lack of protein and vitamins.
Now that you mention it, I bet they knew about an abandoned boat in the middle of the ocean, and had themselves helicoptered out there just days before the “rescue” took place. And did you know that one of the women was a quadriplegic, um-kay!
Wait, weren’t you the guy who thought that the hiker who had the 800 lb boulder fall on his arm should have been able to simply lift it off of himself using his free arm?
ETA: Yes, that was you:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=3397879&postcount=45
:rolleyes: Perhaps every news story isn’t some massive conspiracy.
An excellent observation. After all, “oatmeal and pasta” is assuredly an accurate and comprehensive description of the entire inventory of food they had on board. Now that we’ve seen that in print, we know with absolute certainty that there were no canned fruits or vegetables on board, no nuts or beans, and certainly no vitamin supplements. None whatsoever. Just oatmeal and pasta, three times a day for five months.
“What third crewman? There were only two people aboard. Not three. Nope.”
At 8:20 in the video I linked to Appel lists their supplies as “beef jerky, oatmeal, rice, pasta, dried fruits, nuts…pretty much a vegan and vegetarian diet.” (Where they managed to get vegan beef jerky is a bit of a puzzle.) No doubt they had other dried foods like beans as well, and could easily have been taking vitamin supplements. And I will bet anything they had crunchy granola. 
(They would certainly have needed vitamin C if they wanted to prevent scurvy.)
It’s worth noting that the BBC article cited by the OP actually says this:
OK, so the “such as” clause indicates that oatmeal and pasta here serve as nonexclusive examples of the types of food they had aboard. So what else might they have had? :dubious:
OK, now we’ve added nuts, fruit, and rice to their diet. And the “mostly” leaves plenty of room for other nutritious stuff.
You’re probably correct in your claim that a five-month diet of nothing but oatmeal and pasta might be survivable. You are almost certainly incorrect in your premise that these two women were only eating oatmeal and pasta during their journey. Hopefully this revelation eases your suspicions.
Edit: ninja’d by a moderator.
In general, published news reports can’t be used to draw much in the way of conclusions on stories like this. Because of limited space, they leave a lot out, which confuses things.
As I mentioned, listening to the full interviews clarified a lot of things (although a lot is still confusing.) The news media has been reporting that the women were “adrift for five months,” but that’s clearly not the case. They apparently had considerable ability to navigate for well into their trip.
My question involves the dogs. I admit I live in a land locked state and have been on boats of any kind less then 10 times in my life, so I clearly know nothing about sailing.
But a sailboat does not seem like an appropriate place for 2 large dogs, especially for an extended period of time. Is it common practice to sail with large dogs?
If someone is so vegan that they refuse to eat meat even if their survival depends on it (not referring to this pair, but generally speaking) - well, that comes across as arrogant or unreasonable, not sympathetic.
Navy is there already and already funded, what this did for them is actually a benefit.
People bring dogs all the time where they shouldn’t be.
Not only so vegan that they won’t eat fish, but so vegan that when fish actually jump right into their boat, they won’t even feed them to the dogs that they’re sharing their own precious food supply with. OK, maybe their ethical principles are just really strong, but yes, that’s pretty extreme.
And to be clear on my skepticism: It’s not that I doubt that there are genuinely people this clueless and incompetent out there. It’s that, if people that genuinely clueless and incompetent get into a situation this bad, the odds are overwhelmingly against them surviving, much longer odds than the odds of someone faking it somehow.
Sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.
But they’re also too incompetent to pull off a successful hoax, IMO.
Appel is clearly an unreliable reporter. She exaggerates, as when she said that she was sure their boat would have sunk “within 24 hours” of when they were rescued, but now is talking about going back to salvage it. I also doubt that their accounts of their experiences with sharks have a strong connection to reality.
Some things are being left out. I am still very curious about how they crossed the equatorial currents if they were drifting. But I think the broad outlines of their trip are probably true.
Right.
But it would be a mistake to give the message to these so-called sailors - and other wannabes - that you should set off on long voyages without adequate competence or preparation, because the US Navy is standing by to save you when things go wrong.
Whatever or however vegan people may be, I wish they would stop imposing their views *on their carnivorous pets. *
Parts of that video interview put me in mind of a conversation several years ago with an NPS ranger in Yellowstone Park.
She said that a small but increasing park problem concerns “New Age” visitors and their run-ins with Yellowstone wildlife. They tend to take the view that the warnings about bears, bison, etc. - which all visitors read - shouldn’t apply to them: “I’m a sensitive, ‘natural’ creature just like the grizzly bears. We natural creatures recognize and identify with our kindred spirits. So while its proper for normal people to heed the standard warnings, the bears will understand that these don’t make sense for someone like me.”