Chengdu, 4 April (ZXS) -- Sichuan explorer crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a canoe: Life is an adventure at any time
Written by Liwen Wang
When the reporter met Liu Yong in Chengdu recently, the Sichuan explorer who crossed the Atlantic by canoe had basically recovered and began to gradually resume cycling and rock climbing training. He has dark skin all over, except for the whiter skin around his eyes. Liu Yong said with a smile, the sunglasses marks on his face like "panda eyes" were a gift left by the Atlantic Ocean for two months.
On January 2023, 1, Liu Yong and five French companions set off from the island of Hierro in the Canary Islands, Spain, on the eastern coast of the Atlantic Ocean, and set off in a canoe to embark on an unpowered paddle across the Atlantic Ocean. It took nearly 30 months and nearly 5,2 kilometers of human oars... Liu Yong and his entourage arrived in Guadeloupe, the Caribbean region on the west coast of the Atlantic Ocean, on March 5300, local time, and successfully completed the expedition.
The 53-year-old Liu Yong was one of China's most active climbers and the first Chinese judge of the prestigious Golden Ice Ho Award in the international climbing community. "In the past 30 years, I haven't stopped training for a day, I have been preparing for the adventure every day, and I can always pack my bag and go." Therefore, Liu Yong chose to challenge himself and cross the Atlantic.
During this expedition, Liu Yong and his companions divided into two groups, huddled in a small boat that could only bow, and maintained 2-hour non-stop rowing. But when the wind strikes, the canoe can be pushed back far away, and hours of hard work can "drift away".
Every day, Liu Yong and his entourage faced different difficulties. Seasickness gradually eased for nearly 28 days, the blisters burned by boiling water were soaked in sea water for a long time, encountered strong winds, static winds and even headwinds, downpours made the canoe spin in place, autopilot and communication equipment failed... Liu Yong remembers a dark night vividly: he had just removed the safety rope to change shifts, but he was hit by a huge wave coming from an unknown direction, and he was able to escape by pulling the safety rope.
"It's a one-way ticket, and once you depart, you have no choice but to go ashore." Liu Yong introduced that cross-ocean rowing may not seem difficult, but it is one of the extreme sports with the smallest number of participants in the world. Because it neither relies on the power system nor the sails by the wind, but only by human oars to reach the destination. Participants need to have physical fitness, endurance and skill, but also courage and willpower.
Although the process was arduous, Liu Yong regarded the canoe as an "interesting laboratory of sociological scenes". As a professor at the Mountain Tourism Research Institute of Sichuan Institute of Tourism, Liu Yong treated the expedition as a participatory experiment. While rowing, he carefully observed the communication and collision between his companions; Turn on the recorder during breaks and dictate observations and daily itineraries. During this trip, he saved nearly 100GB (gigabytes) of video materials and more than 10,<> words of adventure logs for sociological and anthropological research.
"I am collating this data and materials to share this expedition and related academic results with the world." Liu Yong plans to launch "Atlantic Diaries", anthropological and sociological monographs and essays, adventure documentaries, etc.
Talking about the next expedition plan, Liu Yong confessed that life is always an adventure for him, and if any adventure opportunity comes by chance, he will carry his bag and set off again. (End)