Chasing Shackleton TV Series

[Tucky]

Paul, my thanks to you as always, for your thoughtfulness, and willingness to share. I'm there when you Kickstarter Sailrocket

And people, please buy the video or watch it on a legitimate site- I'm baffled at the logic used to justify theft here.

 

[MR.CLEAN]

You do realize that this was broadcast - for free - over the airwaves, right? Available to anyone with an antenna? By PBS, a public channel supported by taxpayer funds?

Probably a good time to redefine what you think of as 'theft', and you might want to pay attention to the upcoming Aereo case at the Supreme Court.

Also a good time for TV networks to fix their broken-ass model.

 

[jhc]

If you don't want to "steal" it you might just click on the link i have provided in this note:

http://video.pbs.org/video/2365145041/

You can watch other shows without guilt on pbs also!

Amazing concept, but you just never know what will happen, when you have an open mind.

 

[Tony-F18]

Buying the DVD might be a good option as well, I assume it contains a lot of bonus material :

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B00G2C3LPG

 

[MSafiri]

Thanks for the tip, need to check the region code though, if all goes well, buying this evening....

Buying the DVD might be a good option as well, I assume it contains a lot of bonus material :
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B00G2C3LPG

 

[MSafiri]

Larso, can you share some info about the food you took on board and eaten during the crossing? I remember you guys said it was difficult to imagine to eat that stuff for 15 days. What were you guys eating? made from what? was it custom prepared? and how your body coped with the, obviously, different food?

Thanks alot & cheers,

MSafiri

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

I was wondering the same thing as MSafiri about food.

Larso, thanks for taking the time to give your back story on this documentary. I enjoyed watching it and none of your replies were too long.

To be honest... half my mind was still going "65 f*****g knots... hell yeah!!!". The fact that we had just successfully completed the whole Sailrocket thing by continually pushing on was obviously on my mind.

Completed? You're not done, are you? It will go 70 knots. And you've gotta give that poor guy with the RC airplane another shot. It must be humiliating, beaten by a sailboat and all.

Thanks Paul, as always for showing up, and answering questions. I enjoyed the show a lot, if sorry for some of the editorial decisions. Of course I'd really like to see a Sailrocket documentary. Kickstarter?

3rd vote.

 

[paularsen1]

Larso, can you share some info about the food you took on board and eaten during the crossing? I remember you guys said it was difficult to imagine to eat that stuff for 15 days. What were you guys eating? made from what? was it custom prepared? and how your body coped with the, obviously, different food?

Thanks alot & cheers,

MSafiri

The food does need some explaining. The original idea was that we would all eat the original food. It needs to be mentioned that Shackleton and his men... for the purpose of this trip, were relatively well equipped with food and starving was not an issue. Actually cooking and keeping it down might have been the bigger problem. We aimed to have the same food and quantities that they took. Some of the provisioning seemed quite odd i.e. 47kg of 'nut-food'? That's a hell of a lot of nougat... but we took it. One of their favoured long-life, expedition foods was something called 'Pemmican' or 'Hoosh'. It's basically half fat and half meat product. Like a very fatty ground-up biltong. It's high in both fat and protein.



YOU COULD BE MISTAKEN FOR THINKING THERE'S A NICE JUICY FILLET STEAK IN THERE! YOU WOULD BE MISTAKEN.



THE SECOND PICTURE SHOWS BAZ WITH A TRAY OF COOKED PEMMICAN AFTER IT HAS COOLED DOWN A LITTLE. YOU CAN SEE THE FAT CONTENT.

I'm not sure if Shackleton had originally brought it for the men or for the sledging dogs. Either way, he brought it for the men long after the dogs had gone. It's pretty hard going eating it cold and on its own and is best heated (think cold chips/fries compared to hot ones). Our stuff was prepared by the Royal Marines and for some reason we had to use specific, organically raised cattle. Something to do with modern chemical contamination interfering with how long it could safely be preserved. So enough was sourced and made to feed us all for the expected duration of the trip. It was then loaded onto our original support vessel in Weymouth in the UK. For one reason or another that vessel diverted to Honduras and on very short notice we had to do the ol' switcharoo and find a new support vessel. Thankfully Ben and The Australis were up for it as in the end they did a superb job. The trouble was that all our food and a ton of equipment was in Honduras. Some of it could be shipped and some couldn't i.e. flares, methanol for the fuel cells, meat product etc. So we had to start again on some of this stuff including the food. Some of it we tried to source down in Ushuaia. We laughed at the false economy we left behind in nougat after we cleaned out every shop in town in a few hours trying to source 47kg's. The marines managed to make enough Pemmican for three of the team to eat on the crossing whilst the other three would eat simple army rations. We took about the same calorific amount as they had and the same amount of water stored in similar oak barrels.

I will reiterate that the originals weren't starving. Whilst they actually really enjoyed eating the pemmican, it was pretty hard going for us. It's not that bad and I was, I guess, pleasantly surprised when I first tried it. I mean it wasn't disgusting by any stretch... but making a meal of it would be a bit much. I likened it to the dripping at the bottom of a roast tray. It's kind of nice to pick at when it's hot... but try and make a meal of it when its cold and it's not so enjoyable. The original guys referred to it as 'ambrosia' (food of the gods). They would mix it with walnuts and dry biscuits etc.

So we set off from Elephant Island with enough Hoosh for three, army rations for the other three, 47 kg of 'nut-food' in a sack in the cockpit and 80 litres of water in two oak barrels. Things were still pretty flat on the first night as we sailed out of the lee of Elephant Island in a Southerly wind. The first meal of Hoosh was cooked up by Baz on the Primus burner. We all took a slug of it. It tasted better than it looked... but that's not saying much. All in all... it was a disaster. It's ok when it's steaming hot but in those conditions it quickly cools off and congeals... and then it gets bloody everywhere. It's worst than black Sika-Flex because you are trying to eat it. Everything it touches becomes greasy and slippery. Now you have to remember that it's not like we can clean up with hot water and detergent... or grab some tissues or a rag. What we are wearing is what we have... along with one cup, plate and wooden spoon each. There's no space, let alone a sink. That thick greasy stuff got in your beards, on the decks, on your shoes and hence eventually down below. The pots were a nightmare to clean. It also took ages to heat up as our Primus stove was now playing up in the cold. Like I said. It was a disaster. We laughed at Tim, Baz and Ed having to eat this as our army ration option began to look pretty fine. The next day it began to get rough and sea-sickness crept in. Overall I think the guys handled it extremely well considering what an intense little 'vomitron' they were riding in. I sure know I threw up. I usually do. It doesn't stop me from functioning but I certainly don't try to hold things down unnecessarily. The motion of the AS sure made everyone just hunker down in a nauseous state. Everyone had to force food and water down for the next few days. Cooking let alone eating Pemmican wasn't even considered. In fact, I don't think we saw it again for the rest of the expedition. The combination of the nausea and the cold started to really wear down some of the crew so they all switched to the army rations. In the end we hardly had enough so we actually, in some respects, had less food than the originals. When we were really struggling Baz would knock up some hot, sweet powdered milk which went down really well.

In some respects you could criticise this aspect on the grounds of authenticity... but on the other... I honestly don't think it made much if any difference. As mentioned, they weren't starving and besides being conditioned to eating that stuff, they actually liked it. Compared to seal and penguin... this was the good stuff. I'm sure that they also had better protocols for how they liked it and served it. We mad a bit of a mess of it. The fact that our Primus began playing up didn't help either. For a while we struggled to get a good,clean flame out of it. When you're already feeling a bit green, firing up a smokey, fumey flame down below in tight confines doesn't increase anyones appetite. We ate simple dry biscuits, drank hot-sweet milk and overall ate basic food.

I'm sure, that if we were really in survival mode then we would have viewed the pemmican differently... as we would have the 47 kg of nougat (of which we ate about 1kg at most). You could actually survive for a long time on the food we had onboard. The water might have quickly become a bigger problem.

 

[Grinder]

Thanks bro. I'll never complain about our ocean racing good again. Ever.

 

[Pertinacious Tom]

After smearing it with grease and vomit, I hope the boat was towed outside the environment and burned.

 

[MSafiri]

Interesting to read that you guys switched back the 'modern' food so fast! also that you were not eating more sweet. Reading the account of several antartic expeditions (I hate cold, but would jump on the 1st op to get down to the South Pole, facinating place), after a while they dreamed about sweet............of course those guys were down there for lot longer................and I think I would side with Grinder, "never complain about food on board, ever"

thanks alot for sharing this info. reading all your comments can and does make the film even more interesting.

 

[Grinder]

Food. Sorry.

(null)

 

[MR.CLEAN]

It took our cook over a week on the Endeavour recreation voyage to figure out how to properly cook salt-pork and salt-beef out of barrels, until then we all lost a shitload of weight. A lot of the survival skills related to food preservation and cooking are mostly gone!

 

[Presuming Ed]

Ex Royal Marine Bruce Parry did a recreation of Scott vs Amundsen in 2006. Filmed as"Blizzard. Race to the Pole". IIRC, the team trying the Scott methodology - including hooch for sledging rations - found that they weren't getting sufficient calories.

Of course, for some of us who grew up with Swallows and Amazons, pemmican is what Bully Beef is called.

 

[SloopJonB]

I thought pemmican was more like jerky - bully beef is canned corn beef - at least to those of us of Brit extraction..

 

[Presuming Ed]

Sorry, I was unclear. In thw world of the Swallows and Amazons, tinned corned beef (bully beef) was called pemmican, esp in Winter Holiday, to make it all more realistic. Better drowned that duffers if not duffers won't drown, and all that.