SolOceans - News - SolOceans / OceanoScientific Campaign® : Start of Liz Wardley Next Saturday (11/26/2009)

SolOceans / OceanoScientific Campaign^® : Start of Liz Wardley Next Saturday

Thursday November 26th 2009 News RSS

On Saturday 28 November 2009, Liz Wardley (PNG - Australia) will take the start of the Around-the-world Reference Tour of the SolOceans - OceanoScientific^® Campaign 2009-2010. She will be solo sailing onboard a SolOceans One-design, a high-tech 16-metre (52.5ft) sailing yacht all in carbon and series produced by JMV Industries at Cherbourg (Normandy - France). First, Liz Wardley will undertake a coastal course along the shore of Calvados (Normandy - France). She will then head towards Wellington, the Capital of New Zealand that she will reach after 50 to 55 days solo sailing against the clock. The second leg, also a 50 to 55-day leg, will complete this circumnavigation, from Wellington (NZ) towards Cherbourg (Normandy - France), round Cape Horn.

Reference Around-the-world Tour of the SolOceans - OceanoScientific® Campaign 2009-2010 - November 25th, 2009 At the helm of the SolOceans One-design, Liz Wardley (PNG) will open the way for the SolOceans round-the-world race, on its racecourse between Caen (Normandy - France) and Wellington (NZ), and then Wellington back to Cherbourg (Normandy - France). It will also be the first OceanoScientific^_® Campaign made for the international Scientific community studying Climate Change, particularly in collaboration with the SMOS Satellite ( Studying Ocean salinity) that was placed in orbit on 2 November 2009.
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Photo Jean-Marie Liot - SailingOne

Liz Wardley (Skipper Sojasun) will open the way to the SolOceans racecourse, the new single-handed around the world race, the only race where all sailors - men and women - and their sponsors/owners will be on equal footing. The start of the first edition will be given from Caen la mer on 23 October 2011.

The SolOceans One-design is a real scientific vessel series produced. She meets the standards defined in November 2006 by some of the most distinguished researchers working on Climate Change in the French Institutions: IFREMER / INSU-CNRS / METEO FRANCE joined then by the Germans from IFM-GEOMAR, and soon by METSERVICE in New Zealand.

The SolOceans One-design is equipped by a quite unique equipment: the OceanoScientific^® Kit. Some of its hardware and software were specially conceived at Caen (Normandy - France) by SailingOne (designer of the SolOceans race and of the SolOceans One-design) and developed in France and Germany.

Thus, the SolOceans One-design will start her very first OceanoScientific^® Campaign in total autonomy, either when collecting scientific data or when transmitting them via satellite. This was possible thanks to three years of intense works. As a consequence, new innovations were added to the equipment intended for traditional research, commercial or fishing vessels.

One of the eight scientific mission of the SolOceans One-design will be to transmit to researchers via satellite sea surface salinity data of the oceans she will be crossing, in order to help calibrate the very first measures made by the SMOS Satellite, that was placed in orbit last 2 November by the Agence Spatiale Européenne (ESA), in collaboration with CNES. It is a world first, either on a satellite point of view or on a nautical point of view.