Episodi

  • The Pacific islands convinced him to leave France and sail away

    The Pacific islands convinced him to leave France and sail away
    Sep 7 2026
    The Pacific islands convinced him to leave France and sail away

    On July 21, 1929, a battered 39-foot sloop called Firecrest sailed alone into Cherbourg harbor, closing out a voyage of 700 days and 40,000 miles. Within months of that hero's welcome, the man aboard was already drawing plans for a new boat to sail away again. What made a decorated war hero and French tennis champion choose the islands of the Pacific over the life waiting for him at home?

    In this episode, we follow Alain Gerbault from a tennis court in France to the decks of two boats he sailed alone across every major ocean, asking what a man discovers about home once he has spent seven hundred days trying to get back to it.

    Person: Alain Gerbault
    Location: Bora, French Polynesia
    Date: December 16, 1941
    Case: the circumnavigation and disappearance of a French solo sailor into the Pacific
    Status: died of tropical fever in Dili, East Timor; buried six years later on Bora

    - Gerbault sailed Firecrest, a 39-foot Dixon Kemp-designed sloop built in 1892, single

    To listen to this podcast ad-free and access premium episodes, try our subscription with a 14-day free trial at obomedia.com.

    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
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    21 min
  • The Broken Mast That Forced Her to Rebuild a Route

    The Broken Mast That Forced Her to Rebuild a Route
    Sep 7 2026
    The Broken Mast That Forced Her to Rebuild a Route

    A yacht with no mast, one sailor aboard, and a thousand nautical miles of open water between her and the nearest land - in a sea where the cold alone can kill in minutes. When rescue is days away and the record you set out to break may already be gone, what do you build from the wreckage to get home?

    In this episode, we follow Lisa Blair's path from hostess in the Whitsundays to solo ocean racer, tracing her early passages and milestones up to the moment her 2017 non-stop, unassisted Antarctic circumnavigation attempt was interrupted by a dismasting, asking whether that knockdown was the crisis of her voyage or only the beginning of a longer test.

    Person: Lisa Blair
    Location: Southern Ocean, approximately 1,000 nautical miles from land
    Date: Day 72 of the 2017 Antarctic circumnavigation attempt
    Case: the dismasting of the yacht Climate Action Now
    Status: not stated

    - She began working as a hostess at age 25 on a charter vessel in the Whitsundays.
    - In 2008 she completed her first ocean passage as crew, delivering a yacht from Australia to Hawaii.
    - In 2011 she served as watch leader, bowman, rigger, and helmsman aboard Gold Coast Australia, which won the 2011-12 Clipper Round the World Yacht Race overall.
    - She borrowed a yacht one week before the 2014 Solo Tasman Challenge and completed the race.
    - Her boat, a Hick 50 built in 2003 and originally named Funnel-Web, was renamed Climate Action Now.
    - The goal of the 2017 attempt was to become the first woman to sail solo, non-stop, and unassisted around Antarctica, beating the standing record of 102 days.
    - On day 72, the yacht knocked down in the Southern Ocean and the mast was entirely gone.

    To listen to this podcast ad-free and access premium episodes, try our subscription with a 14-day free trial at obomedia.com.

    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
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    30 min
  • The leg‑irons that reshaped his skin and stole his childhood

    The leg‑irons that reshaped his skin and stole his childhood
    Sep 7 2026
    The leg‑irons that reshaped his skin and stole his childhood

    He was fourteen when the sea took him and twenty-four when he came back, and by then he had forgotten how to sit in a chair or hold a knife and fork in his own country. The boy who left Plymouth Sound on the Hannibal disappeared somewhere in a decade of leg-irons, a stolen name, and a war he fought without ever choosing a side. What does it take to make a man a stranger in his own language?

    In this episode, we follow James Scurry from a Devonshire fife player to a conscripted soldier in Tipu Sultan's army at Seringapatam, asking what ten years of captivity actually costs a person once the irons come off.

    Person: James Scurry
    Location: Seringapatam, Kingdom of Mysore
    Date: 1780 to 1790
    Case: ten years of captivity in the dominions of Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan
    Status: escaped in 1790, returned to England, wrote a memoir published posthumously in 1824

    - Scurry was captured at fourteen when the Hannibal was taken by the French admiral Suffren and handed to Hyder Ali five days from Madras
    - He and fifteen other young men were circumcised, converted, and conscripted at Seringapatam, where he was given the name Shamsher Khan
    - In 1785 Scurry witnessed roughly thirty thousand Mangalorean Catholics marched to Seringapatam, their officers mutilated and paraded backward on donkeys after refusing to hand over their daughters
    - He left a wife and daughter behind during his escape in 1790, traveling through forests and testing multiple forts before reaching English encampments
    - His memoir, written in 1794 and published in 1824 as The Captivity, Sufferings and Escape of James Scurry, remains a primary first-hand account of imprisonment under Tipu Sultan

    To listen to this podcast ad-free and access premium episodes, try our subscription with a 14-day free trial at obomedia.com.

    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
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    16 min
  • The carbon-fibre gondola that carried him around the world

    The carbon-fibre gondola that carried him around the world
    Sep 7 2026
    The carbon-fibre gondola that carried him around the world

    A sixty-four-year-old man lies down inside a box barely larger than a bathroom, two meters by two meters, as a balloon the height of a twenty-storey building lifts off a paddock in Western Australia. He has eleven days of food, water, and oxygen, a thirty-three-thousand-kilometer loop around the planet ahead of him, and only one attempt allowed. Every person who tried this before him needed several tries to survive it — so what happens when the ground crew redirects him straight toward the Antarctic Circle?

    In this episode, we trace Fyodor Konyukhov's solo balloon circumnavigation of the globe in 2016, asking whether a single human being, alone in a carbon-fibre capsule above the Southern Ocean, can turn a near-fatal detour into the very thing that wins him the record.

    Person: Fyodor Konyukhov
    Location: Northam, Western Australia
    Date: July 12, 2016
    Case: the solo round-the-world balloon flight of the morton
    Status: completed in 11 days, 3 hours, 11 minutes — faster than any previous solo circumnavigation

    - The balloon, named the Morton, held 15,500 cubic meters of hybrid hot air and helium and was custom-built by Cameron Balloons in Bristol, England
    - It lifted off at 9:48 a.m. on July 12, 2016, and crossed the finish line above Bonnie Rock, Western Australia, 272 hours and 11 minutes later
    - A weather-routing decision pushed the balloon toward 60 degrees south, near the Antarctic Circle, ad

    To listen to this podcast ad-free and access premium episodes, try our subscription with a 14-day free trial at obomedia.com.

    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
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    15 min
  • The broken self‑steering gear that forced him to hand‑steer and kept him at sea

    The broken self‑steering gear that forced him to hand‑steer and kept him at sea
    Sep 7 2026
    The broken self‑steering gear that forced him to hand‑steer and kept him at sea

    Somewhere off Australia, deep in the Southern Ocean, the mechanical device that should have held a thirty-two-foot wooden ketch on course failed completely, leaving one man alone at the tiller for every waking hour that remained of his voyage. His hull was leaking. The nearest land was thousands of miles away in every direction. What happens to a solo sailor, and to the boat he cannot abandon, when the one machine built to make the voyage survivable simply stops working?

    In this episode, we follow Robin Knox-Johnston's 1968–1969 non-stop solo circumnavigation aboard Suhaili from Falmouth to Cape Horn and back, asking what it actually took, mechanically and physically, to keep a failing boat moving when turning back was the only reasonable option.

    Person: Robin Knox-Johnston
    Location: Southern Ocean, aboard the ketch Suhaili
    Date: April 22, 1969
    Case: the compass that vanished from Suhaili after her return to Falmouth
    Status: recovered and returned to Knox-Johnston in 2022, fifty-three years after it disappeared

    - Knox-Johnston left Falm

    To listen to this podcast ad-free and access premium episodes, try our subscription with a 14-day free trial at obomedia.com.

    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
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    16 min
  • The Pacific islands convinced him to leave France and sail away

    The Pacific islands convinced him to leave France and sail away
    Sep 7 2026
    The Pacific islands convinced him to leave France and sail away

    On July 21, 1929, a battered 39-foot sloop called Firecrest sailed alone into Cherbourg harbor, closing out a voyage of 700 days and 40,000 miles. Within months of that hero's welcome, the man aboard was already drawing plans for a new boat to sail away again. What made a decorated war hero and French tennis champion choose the islands of the Pacific over the life waiting for him at home?

    In this episode, we follow Alain Gerbault from a tennis court in France to the decks of two boats he sailed alone across every major ocean, asking what a man discovers about home once he has spent seven hundred days trying to get back to it.

    Person: Alain Gerbault
    Location: Bora, French Polynesia
    Date: December 16, 1941
    Case: the circumnavigation and disappearance of a French solo sailor into the Pacific
    Status: died of tropical fever in Dili, East Timor; buried six years later on Bora

    - Gerbault sailed Firecrest, a 39-foot Dixon Kemp-designed sloop built in 1892, single

    To listen to this podcast ad-free and access premium episodes, try our subscription with a 14-day free trial at obomedia.com.

    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
    Mostra di più Mostra meno
    15 min
  • The Broken Mast That Forced Her to Rebuild a Route

    The Broken Mast That Forced Her to Rebuild a Route
    Sep 7 2026
    The Broken Mast That Forced Her to Rebuild a Route

    A yacht with no mast, one sailor aboard, and a thousand nautical miles of open water between her and the nearest land - in a sea where the cold alone can kill in minutes. When rescue is days away and the record you set out to break may already be gone, what do you build from the wreckage to get home?

    In this episode, we follow Lisa Blair's path from hostess in the Whitsundays to solo ocean racer, tracing her early passages and milestones up to the moment her 2017 non-stop, unassisted Antarctic circumnavigation attempt was interrupted by a dismasting, asking whether that knockdown was the crisis of her voyage or only the beginning of a longer test.

    Person: Lisa Blair
    Location: Southern Ocean, approximately 1,000 nautical miles from land
    Date: Day 72 of the 2017 Antarctic circumnavigation attempt
    Case: the dismasting of the yacht Climate Action Now
    Status: not stated

    - She began working as a hostess at age 25 on a charter vessel in the Whitsundays.
    - In 2008 she completed her first ocean passage as crew, delivering a yacht from Australia to Hawaii.
    - In 2011 she served as watch leader, bowman, rigger, and helmsman aboard Gold Coast Australia, which won the 2011-12 Clipper Round the World Yacht Race overall.
    - She borrowed a yacht one week before the 2014 Solo Tasman Challenge and completed the race.
    - Her boat, a Hick 50 built in 2003 and originally named Funnel-Web, was renamed Climate Action Now.
    - The goal of the 2017 attempt was to become the first woman to sail solo, non-stop, and unassisted around Antarctica, beating the standing record of 102 days.
    - On day 72, the yacht knocked down in the Southern Ocean and the mast was entirely gone.

    To listen to this podcast ad-free and access premium episodes, try our subscription with a 14-day free trial at obomedia.com.

    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
    Mostra di più Mostra meno
    18 min