My friend Richard Kohler is paddling unassisted from Cape Town, to Salvador in Brazil. He left Cape Town on 18 December 2022, and is now within reach of his destination. He has about 15 days left.
He’s running an interesting setup on board, with some flexible panels and Victron equipment - which I have been monitoring remotely via satellite data for his trip. If you’re curious I can write about it a bit more?
The boat he is paddling is a custom built carbon fibre super sized surfski that he designed. It has a small living area in the front of the boat - large enough to lie down in, and make some food. When Richard is paddling he sits just behind the cockpit.
In terms of power equipment he has:
2x 75 watt flexible Solbian panels on the starboard side on the front
2x 160 watt flexible Solbian panels on the rear of the boat
This is Richard’s second attempt - his first attempt in December 2021 was cut short because an MC4 connector that was in a difficult place corroded because it was lying in seawater… He then had to abort about 500km west of Lüderitz, and paddle across the south easternly winds to Walvis Bay. That was a very tense time!
The boat was then put in storage for a year, before the current attempt. When we started everything up again the Venus GX was very unhappy - so I’ll do a post about that, and how I fixed it.
