Starting from Portugal, Gábor Rakonczay plans a 70 to 90 days trip across the Atlantic to the island of Antigua.Continue reading
Extreme sports athlete Gábor Rakonczay is preparing for his retirement expedition: the classic east-west ocean rowing is planned to cover 5,000 kilometers in 65 days across the Atlantic Ocean.
Gábor Rakonczay will fly to La Palma on Sunday for his last major retirement expedition on December 16, marking the end of an 18-year career in extreme sports. “Ultrarunning and many other projects will be in my life, but I am finishing the high-risk adventures. Now the goal will not be a record, not speed madness, but to live every moment,” said Rakonczay. He added that when organizing the last expedition, safety and planning the time on the ocean was important.
“I have done several rowing projects and I have condensed the experience I gained during them into a boat, an expedition,” said the athlete, who will set off in a special canoe with a cabin. The boat was originally designed and built by Nándor Fa (Hungarian boat designer), and Rakonczay rebuilt it based on the experience of the 77-day ocean crossing in 2012, adding a new cabin, capital weight, steering system and state-of-the-art technical equipment.
He said that
the boat had been lying in his parents’ garden for a long time and when it was found, he thought it was a fitting way to end his career. It was named ’42’ because it was at that age that he decided to put an end to that ‘extreme’ lifestyle.
He had already tested the boat on a 1,400-kilometre trip in January, when he rowed from Portugal to the Canary Islands.
“You have to end a career in good time, with a plan, not overnight,” he stressed, and then gave a vivid account of the journey ahead. Starting from the Canary Islands, the expedition will cross the Atlantic to Antigua. The ocean is an average of five kilometers deep, with huge waves even at rest. Thanks to modern technology, the journey can be followed, with satellite phones, trackers and internet access on board, from where he will post surprise updates on its social media platform every five hundred kilometers.
Gábor Rakonczay is the only person in the world to have canoed across the ocean.
Asked by MTI, he said that there is no routine in this “genre,” and he is just as excited and prepared as before. The difference between his last big journey and his previous ones is that he will not be in a hurry. “If the journey is more days than planned, it will be more days. I will be calm, I want to live every moment. Otherwise, there will be eighty days’ worth of food on the boat, he indicated. He also revealed that after the journey, he will have this boat transported home and preserved.
The milestones of Gábor Rakonczay’s 18-year extreme sports career include four ocean crossings with sailboat, two ocean crossings with canoe, two Greenland crossings, a 44-day Antarctic expedition, and a world championship win in the ultra-running race. He is a two-time Guinness World Record holder, winner of the American Adventure of the Year Award and the Hungarian Design Award.
Via MTI, Featured image: Facebook/Rakonczay Expedíciók