Simultaneous polar heat waves

The average temperature in Antarctica was 8.6°F warmer than average. On the same day the average temperature in the Arctic was 6°F higher than normal. It is very uncommon to see high temperatures across both polar regions at the same time. Scientist were particularly surprised by the heat wave in Antarctica because temperatures there every made more stable overall compared to the Arctic.

I personally experienced the warm conditions in the Arctic several years ago when I was on a National Geographic explanation that traveled to within 400 miles of the North Pole and we still did not hit any thick ice concentrations. (See photo of that trip below - from left to right, my self, my wife Gail, Susan Isakof, Robert & Leslie Singer).

I hate to think that the same degree of warming is now affecting Antarctica.

What It Took To Discover the Endurance

Based on what I learned during my long Antarctic deployment with the US Coast Guard aboard the USCGC Glacier, as well as the subsequent research I did prior to writing my nonfiction book, Wind, Fire, and Ice, I seriously doubted the Endurance would ever be discovered. The main reason was because of prevailing ice conditions in the Weddell Sea, an area often referred to as “The Cold Factory of Antarctica”. It has been the graveyard of many ships, particularly during the “Heroic Age” of Antarctic exploration (1898 to 1922).

            During modern times, the Weddell Sea put even heavy-duty icebreakers in serious peril. In 1970 the USCGC Glacier, at the time the biggest icebreaker in the free world, was beset within 70 miles of where the Endurance was first trapped. In 1984 the USCGC Westwind barely escaped destruction when it was pinned against the massive Larsen Ice Shelf. The historian, Thomas R Henry, wrote in his 1950 book, The White Continent, “The Weddell Sea is, according to the testimony of all who sailed through its berg-filled waters, the most treacherous and dismal region on earth.”

In 1823, British sailor James Weddell discovered the sea later named after him and found it relatively ice free, so much so that he was able to sail to 74° South. That furthest-south record stood for over a century. The feat was so unusual that William Herbert Hobbs, geologist, and author of the article entitled, “The Pack-Ice of the Weddell Sea”, accused Weddell of being “a fake explorer”. Hobbs should have focused more on what typically happened to other early explorers, like the French explore, J. S. C. Dumont d’Urville , or the American explorer, Charles Wilkes. Neither were able to penetrate the Weddell Sea. The Norwegian skipper, Carl Anton Larsen, successfully sailed into the northern portion of the Weddell Sea in 1902, but the following year his ship, Antarctic, was crushed and sank when he attempted another voyage into the Weddell Sea. The same thing almost happened to Weddell in 1824, t when his ship, the Jane, failed to penetrate the heavy ice on the edge of the Weddell Sea, struck an iceberg, an came close to sinking.

Although the Weddell Sea as a whole is treacherous, its western edge, where the Endurance sank, is generally impossible to navigate. It is because the normal current pattern or gyre in the Weddell Sea forces ice against the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula. The ice there is invariably composed of multi-year ice—ice that formed in previous years but did not melt during the summer season. Salt leaches out of this older ice, creating something more like glacial ice, known to have the tensile strength of steel. Moreover, the violent storms typical in the Weddell Sea pile this multiyear ice into tall ridges, often 15 to 20 feet high. As a result, this part of the Weddell Sea is generally considered impassable, by even the biggest icebreakers, at any time of the year. Shackleton described the area as,“the worst portion of the worst sea on earth.”

            Most icebreakers are built to primarily handle sea ice created that same year. This kind of ice is softer and usually not too thick. The average icebreaker can plow through surface sea ice two to three feet thick without much of a problem. Heavier duty icebreakers can push through sea ice three to five feet thick. Using “back in and ramming” techniques, the heaviest duty icebreakers, like the Glacier are capable of busting through sections of ice up to 20 feet thick, but they’re not built for pounding through ice that thick day after day. Work like that requires tons of fuel and is more likely to damage the ship. Even though the Glacier was the most powerful icebreaker in the free world for many years, it invariably ended up in dry dock for repairs after each Antarctic deployment because of the beating it took.

According to an article in the spring issue of Wreck Watch Magazine, Mensun Bound, a renowned maritime archaeologist, first toyed with the idea of searching for the Endurance back in 2012. A fifth -generation Falkland Islander, Bound had been running successful deep-sea projects since the 1980s. He grew up in a community of 2000 people totally dependent on shipping for their survival, as well as an area rich in nautical history. Many of the clipper ships incapable of beating through the winds and currents around Cape Horn, sailed back to the Falklands and ended up as un-seaworthy wrecks in the local harbors.

According to Bound, essentially everyone on the island was a Shackleton enthusiast. In fact, his great-great-Uncle, Vincent Biggs, ran a bar and boardinghouse where Shackleton and Frank Worsley once stayed (and the notoriously cash-strapped explorer left with a balance due.)

Back in 2012, the Natural History Museum asked Bound to consider getting involved in a project to find the wreck of the Terra Nova, the ship that carried Scott on his last expedition in 1910. Before Bound had much of a chance to consider the offer, he was shocked to learn that the wreck had been located by another group. A friend then suggested, “Well, what about the Endurance?”

At the time, Bound considered the Endurance the “most unreachable wreck in the world.” He could not imagine finding an icebreaker capable of smashing through one hundred miles of ice, fifteen feet thick in many places, to even begin reaching the search area. In addition, he did not think the technology of AUVs (autonomous underwater vehicles) was yet sufficiently advanced. But the germ of the idea had been firmly planted.

By 2017, Bound believed the AUV technology had advanced enough to seriously consider searching for the famous wreck. His friend, John Kingsford from Deep Ocean Search, was given the task of finding a capable icebreaker. Subsequently, they were joined by Donald Lamont, ex-Governor of the Falkland Islands, George Horsington, a shipping specialist, and John Shears, a logistics specialist with the British Antarctic Survey. Funding was provided by the Flotilla Foundation, a registered charity focusing on marine ecology.

The first attempt to locate the Endurance began in 2019. Bound described the search as “more challenging than anything I’ve ever known in my long career in maritime archaeology.” After all, they were headed for an area Bound described as “old, gnarled, multiyear ice …very thick and virtually impenetrable,” in other words, normal conditions for that stretch of the Weddell Sea.

The S.A. Agulhas II, a South African icebreaker was selected for the mission, led by Captain Freddie Lighthelm and master ice pilot, Knowledge Bengu. Although very experienced, the duo had not previously sailed in the proposed search area. Before they could even get close, the 440-foot-long vessel had to resort to “backing and ramming” techniques to plow through the ice. Despite these efforts, the ship became stuck in the ice for several days. At one point it was “nipped” between two huge ice floes. Captain Lighthelm said, “At the nipping/connecting point, I could feel the vibration of the ship as it squeezed the hull, and I could then imagine how Endurance was crushed.”

The skipper constantly worried that massive chunks of ice might damage the props. He added, “my biggest fear would be to suffer mechanical damages whilst in the Weddell Sea,” given that there would not be any other ships around that could provide assistance. One of the crewmembers calculated that the nearest humans beyond the ship were in the International Space Station.  

By the time they reached the most likely area to find the wreck, Bound and his team were limited to only 50 hours of bottom time for the AUV’s to scan and search. (The ship had another urgent mission—to relieve scientists on the Antarctic continent before winter set in.)  Unfortunately, Bound and his team could only deploy one of the AUV’s because the electronics capsules on the only other one had earlier “imploded”. The functioning AUV started out its search pattern without any difficulties. However, about twenty hours later they lost contact. It could have been carried away by current or sunk to the bottom. Bound thought the most likely explanation was that it, “self-aborted its mission and returned to the surface.” Normally, this would not have been a problem, because the unit would have established satellite contact as soon as it surfaced, but not if it was stuck underneath the icepack, which likely was the case. Bound concluded, “Anyway you look at, the 2019 search to find the Endurance was a fiasco.”

Bound and his team viewed the “devastating” failure of the 2019 expedition as being “a big learning process.” However, they shouldn’t have been that hard on themselves, given that the odds were stacked against them. The results were about what one would expect. At least they were able to escape without getting trapped.

 The team subsequently thought they would have better luck with newer technology, specifically an improved Sabertooth vehicle manufactured by SAAB. The new AUV was designed to operate in both an autonomous mode and via a fiber-optic cable tethered to the surface. This combination allowed them to constantly monitor its location so that a second AUV could be sent to rescue it if necessary.

No doubt inspired in part by Shackleton’s motto, “By Endurance We Conquer,” Bound and John Shears began to form a group for Endurance22. The Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust was given overall control of the new campaign. Bill Featherstone, Saul Pitaluga, and Bound became the Trustees. Overall leadership was again provided by Donald Lamont, Chairman of the Trust. The subsea team was headed by Nico Vincent and his deputy, J. C. Caillens. 

On February 6th, 2022, the Endurance22 expedition set off from Cape Town aboard the S.A. Agulhas II.  Unlike 2019, the mission had a much better chance of success because of strikingly different ice conditions. A shift in the current had forced most of the multiyear ice towards the distant eastern edge of the Weddell Sea. The icebreaker was able to cruise at five knots through soft, first-year sea ice with relative ease. However, even with remarkably good conditions, they got stuck in the icepack for a day.

Once the ship reached the search area—one closely correlated with the coordinates Frank Worsley, captain of the Endurance, had determined when the vessel sank 107 years earlier— the team launched the sophisticated Sabertooth AUV’s. This time the equipment problems were not with the multi-million-dollar AUV’s but with the new on-deck winch system. When pulling the AUV’s back onto the ship, sea water coating the tether cables froze so quickly that it was hard to spool the cables onto the winch drums. The winches struggled to maintain proper tension on the cables, which contributed to them getting pinched and rupturing the delicate fiber optics in the cables. Fortunately, Nico Vincent had decided to bring a less sophisticated, 25-year-old winch system as a backup. The old winch did the job.

With temperatures dropping to minus 35 degrees centigrade, it was difficult and dangerous work for the sub-sea team. Frostbite was a constant concern.  Sometimes it was so cold their tears would freeze their eyes shut.

The Sabretooth AUV’s were set to travel in a systematic search grid that covered portions of an 130 square mile area. For days they scanned the ocean bottom and found nothing.  They were running out of time.

Towards the end of their mission, with only eight hours of search time left, the AUV picked up an image of something on the seafloor that looked promising. The data cascade revealed something three to four meters high. Every other potentially interesting image they had picked up had been essentially flat.

            However, the AUV batteries had run down. They had to abort the search.

            After charging the batteries, the search resumed. The Sabertooth returned to the promising area in order to conduct a low-altitude pass.

 A high-frequency, high- resolution sonar scan produced a definitive image.

            The Endurance was discovered the afternoon of March 5, 2022, exactly 100 years after Shackleton had been buried on South Georgia Island. It was located at 58° 39’ S.  052° 26” W, lying proudly upright on the seabed, 10,000 feet below the surface, approximately 4 miles south of the position last recorded by Captain Worsley.

            Bound and John Shears were hiking to an iceberg frozen into the icepack when the discovery occurred. When they returned to the ship, they were told to urgently report to the bridge. Fearing something serious had happened, like the loss of a Sabertooth, they rushed to the bridge. When they arrived, Nico Vincent pushed a camera towards them showing a high-resolution image and said, “Gents, let me introduce you to the Endurance.” The entire ship broke into cheers. Upon hearing the news Bound said, “I felt the breath of Shackleton on my neck.”

            Prior to the discovery, Bound had predicted that the wreck would be well preserved because of the absence of destructive ship worms and marine parasites in the frigid waters of the Weddell Sea. (His prediction was spot on. The image that struck him the most was when he first saw the ship’s name across the stern, as well as the ship’s wheel standing upright. He added, “I was gob smacked by the clarity and detail of the Endurance’s preservation. You could even see its paintwork, count the spokes of the steering wheel, and read the dial on the sounding apparatus.”

Bound also predicted that the ship would be largely intact. He knew from the building plans of the Endurancethat it was one of the strongest wooden ships ever built, plus none of the crewmembers had ever claimed that the ship, although badly damaged, had ever been completely crushed. In contrast, Bound noted that less well constructed wooden ships containing auxiliary power would normally break apart around the engine room or boiler room upon impact with the seafloor.

Although some of the things lying on the outer deck could have been retrieved, like the ship’s bell or one of Frank Wild’s boots, nothing was touched. Instead, the ship was videoed and photographed in minute, 3D detail.

When the 25,000 plus photos have been processed and analyzed, then synched with the ship’s plans, it will be possible to have virtual reality tours of the ship.

 Per the Antarctic Treaty, the ship will remain pristine and undisturbed, but it will become part of the metaverse, where it will be possible for anyone anywhere to walk its decks and explore every aspect.

According to Alexandra Shackleton, the explorer’s granddaughter, she was once asked to define the qualities necessary for a polar explorer. She said, “First optimism, then patience, imagination and finally courage”. Bound and his team needed all these qualities, as well as a bit of luck, in their quest to find the Endurance. Bravo to them for achieving a discovery long thought to be impossible.

Following the discovery, Bound posted, “This is a milestone in polar history. However, it is not all about the past; we are bringing the story of Shackleton and Endurance to new audiences, and to the next generation, who will be entrusted with the essential safeguarding of our polar regions and our planet. We hope our discovery will engage young people and inspire them with the pioneering spirit, courage, and fortitude of those who sailed Endurance to Antarctica.”

VENDEE GLOBE SAILBOAT BREAKS IN HALF

FULL CIRCLE SAILING

Kevin Escoffier was skippering the PRB, a 60-foot monohull sailboat in twenty-five knot winds and five-meter waves when the catastrophe occurred. The forty-year-old sailor from Saint Malo, France was racing in the 2020 Vendee Globe, an around the world, solo, nonstop, non-assisted race—a competition for only the bravest and most experienced mariners.

     It only took four seconds between the time the sailboat nosedived into the wave and the hull folded in half. The bow bent upwards 90° and the stern sank below the surface of the raging sea. Escoffier had just enough time to send a MAYDAY text message before an oncoming wave fried his electronics. He grabbed his survival suit, but could not reach his emergency bag, already three meters underwater. 

     Escoffier was swept away when he triggered his automatically-inflating  life raft.  Sharp carbon fibers from his shattered hull threatened to lacerate his inflatable vessel.

     Race officials immediately notified his nearest competitor, Jean Le Cam, a sixty-one-year-old sailor aboard Yes We Cam. The veteran mariner from Brittany, racing in his fifth Vendee Globe, was given the coordinates of Escoffier’s last reported position, 840 nautical miles southwest of Cape Town. 

     Two hours later, with the guidance help from an emergency beacon on the life raft, Le Cam spotted Escoffier and yelled to him, “I’ll be back.” But maneuvering a 60-foot sailboat in growing darkness and angry seas was not easy. Le Cam needed to use his engine. Due to race restrictions, use of an engine is only allowed for emergency situations. He had to break a seal on the engine, but then had trouble starting it. By the time he got back to the vicinity of Escoffier’s last position, the adrift sailor was nowhere in sight.

     One can only imagine how Le Cam felt. He tacked back and forth five different times trying to find his fellow racer without any luck. Three other competitors, Borris Herman (Seaexplorer-Yacht Club de Manaco), Yannicx Bestaven (Maitre CoQ IV), and Sebastien Simon (ARKEA PAPREC) were called in to help. They set up a triangular search grid and methodically looked for the lost skipper.

     At first, Le Cam thought it would be best to wait until daylight and calmer seas before he searched further, but then he thought that in the dark he might have a better chance of seeing the emergency light on top of the raft. Based on Escoffier’s last known location and predicted drift patterns, Le Cam continued searching through the night. Moving slowly through confused seas, at times he was pushed backwards. 

     Early in the evening the next day, eleven hours after the catastrophic destruction of PRB, Le Cam was on deck when he saw a light flickering off the waves. As he approached it, it grew brighter. Finally, he saw the raft. Escoffier heard the flapping of sails and poked his head out from under the canopy of his raft. According to Le Cam, Escoffier said, “Will you be back?”  Not surprisingly, Le Cam replied, “No, we are going to do this now.” 

     After finding him again, Le Cam said, “You switch from despair to an unreal moment in an instant.”

     Escoffier recalled that Le Cam was 100 to 200 meters away when they had this exchange. He remembered Le Cam saying, “I will come against you.” But his rescuer’s boat was moving “a bit too fast,” Escoffier said, “and it was five meters away, I don’t know exactly, where he threw me a line with the buoy at the end which I caught.”

     Le Cam’s recollection was different. In the stress and excitement of the moment, perspectives differed. He recalled the raft being two meters, not five meters, off his stern when he threw Escoffier a line.

      What is more certain is that Le Cam’s boat was moving faster than the floating raft when the line was passed. Soft Inflatable’s are not meant to be towed. They quickly buckle and roll. Escoffier recalled that with both pulling on the line, he was able to get close enough to the boat that he was able to jump into the ocean and catch a rudder bar on the back of Le Cam’s boat. Holding on for dear life, he wrenched himself aboard.

     Escoffier said that Le Cam was “very happy” when he was safely on deck. He told Le Cam, “I’m sorry to disturb your race, Jean,”. He added, “We had a big hug.”

     Le Cam knew better than anyone what it was like to be rescued by a fellow competitor. In 2009, during another Vendee Globe race, his IMOCA 60 sailboat capsized 200 miles west of Cape Horn. He huddled within his upturned hull for sixteen hours. He had no communication, and was close to dying from hypothermia, when he was rescued by a rival, Vincent Riou. 

     Riou’s boat was sponsored by PRB, Escoffier’s 2020 sponsor.

     When Le Cam was interviewed by the New York Times and asked about his unique position of having been rescued and then being a rescuer, he said, “It’s part of the job of a sailor to go to the aid of another. He added, “Above and beyond—it’s human nature to go to the people in need and help them. It’s part of life, physically or psychologically, to help another human. I am just part of that.”

Sailing in in Covid-19 Times

Sailing in Covid-19 Times

Last night I crossed the equator in my sleep. It wasn’t in a dream. Nor did I physically cross the equator— but my sailboat did – my virtual sailboat. 

From my perspective, the most amazing sailboat racing in the world is the Vendee Globe. Held every four years, this is a solo race around the world without any assistance. Top racers can do it in less than eighty days. I will not be able to do it anywhere near that quickly, partly because I got off to a slow start, or rather my virtual sailboat did. Not surprising, given that I’ve never done this kind of thing before. 

My goal was not to win a virtual race, but rather to have a new kind of experience— to be part of something I couldn’t possibly do in real life. When I was younger, I occasionally fantasized sailing around the world, but now that I’m seventy-seven years old and feeling my age, I have to consider other options. Offshore e-sailing, particularly in an era of Covid restrictions, is one of them.

 I felt a bit like a real traveler as I cruised by the Canary Islands and then Cape Verde.  I learned, for example, that the Canaries enjoy an excellent climate and Portuguese in the volcanically-formed Cape Verde islands.

Unlike a pure computer game, e-sailing involves interacting with real world conditions in real time. You need to know wind conditions in some detail. You need to chart your own course. You need to decide what kind of sails you are going to run up your virtual mast. And you need to find tune your heading relative to the wind with your virtual tiller from time to time— often, for best results. Or, if you’re like me, I set a heading before I go to bed and do not check it again until I have had a good night sleep. One morning I woke up and found my sailboat plodding along at a mere 0.9 knots. But I had slept well.

Conditions for the thirty-three actual sailors in the 2020 Vendee Globe are much different. They usually never sleep more than two hours at a time. It is estimated that on average they sleep only about 15% of the time they are cruising. Given their sailboats are built for speed rather than comfort, they take quite a pounding. When they are speeding along at 20 to 25 kn, noise levels generally run around 90 dB. Sometimes noise levels are as high as 130 dB. Plus, things are always breaking. Whatever repairs are necessary, they must fix them totally on their own, although they can receive verbal advice via satellite radio. (I understand they shoot for trying to do one repair each day.) And I suspect they end up being wet or damp most of the time.

After a virtual crossing of the equator, I cannot help but think about the one time I actually crossed it when I was a doctor aboard the Glacier. About one third of us aboard this Coast Guard icebreaker were “pollywogs” hoping to become “turtles.” We knew in advance that this ‘rite of passage’ would involve some type of barbaric, if not brutal, ceremony. I was given the option of opting out of the ceremony, but I did not want to pretend that I was better than anyone else. And I thought I might miss out on some fun. It was a great decision. True, the ceremony was barbaric and crude. For example, imagine a diaper-clad “Baby Neptune” grabbing your face and rubbing it in his beer-belly covered with axle grease. In fact, it was a hilarious occasion and superb for morale. I am glad that I was able to obtain some photos for my book that helped to capture the spirit of the event. 

Record Temperature in Antarctica

On February 8, 2020 a record temperature of 64.9 degrees was set at the Argentina Research Station, Esperanza. The previous record for this station on the Antarctic Peninsula was 63 degrees in March of 2015. The record temperature was roughly the same as the high temperature in Los Angeles that day.

The vast ice cap of Antarctica contains 90 percent of the fresh water in the world. When the land ice melts, as opposed to the sea ice, it has nowhere to go except into the ocean, leading to rising ocean levels. If just the ice contained in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet melted, sea levels would rise 3.2 meters. The Esperanza base is located in the Northern section of that ice sheet.

First Attempted Murder in Antarctica

Last week, near the end of the polar winter, a Russian engineer, Sergy Savitsky, reportedly stabbed a co-worker, Oleg Beloguzov, in the chest with a knife. Savitsky claimed that he did not intend to kill his co-worker, but the wound was deep enough to lacerate a portion of the victim’s heart. Beloguzov was rushed to a hospital in Chile and is in stable condition. Savitky voluntarily surrendered to the Bellingshausen station manager.

The motive for the attempted murder: Beloguzov had a habit of telling Savitsky the endings of books his co-worker wanted to read. His murderous rage may have been stoked by alcohol.

I visited the Bellingshausen Station in the summer of 1969 along with a half-dozen of my shipmates from the USCGC Glacier. A primitive lunch and two large glasses of vodka did not lead to an angry confrontation with our Cold War enemies, but rather to a spirit of international camaraderie.

I discovered while doing research for my book that the long polar night and confined quarters often leads to tense situations. Over time, minor grievances become major ones. But this is the first time I’ve heard of an attempted murder (the Filchner expedition in 1912 came close.) If we had spent the polar winter cooped up with the Russian crewmembers, major confrontations would have been hard to avoid, whether fueled by alcohol or not.

When the Glacier was trapped in the Weddell Sea icepack, like Shackleton, the forty crewmembers picked to winter-over on the ship were chosen based on their technical qualifications, without regard to their ability to peacefully co-exist during such a stressful situation. In my professional opinion, that was a mistake. The near murder of the Russian crewmember highlights the risks associated with ignoring the personality characteristics of wintering-over personnel.

Icebergs

I was recently watching a nature special about animals in Nova Scotia. Some of the shots of animals living along the coast included icebergs in the background. I was surprised to see an Arctic iceberg that far south, but it was small—about the size of a tennis court. Surprisingly, I did not see any icebergs this May when I sailed around the northern part of Norway—far north of the Arctic Circle. I learned that icebergs are less common off Norway because of the warmer waters of the Gulf Stream. And climate change has significantly decreased the amount of ice in the Arctic. Ships now routinely transit the fabled ‘Northwest Passage’.

If you want to see icebergs, the place to go is Antarctica. There are seven times as many icebergs there as in the Arctic. And the larger icebergs there dwarf anything seen in the Arctic. I was dumbfounded when I saw my first huge iceberg in Antarctica in 1969 during my five-month deployment aboard the USCGC Glacier—at the time the largest icebreaker in the free world. Imagine seeing and iceberg as large as Rhode Island or colossal ice sculptures in almost any conceivable shape.

Once an iceberg breaks off a glacial sheet, it is forever changing. It is hard not to be fascinated to some degree by icebergs. They are beautiful, but dangerous. Brilliantly obvious, but mostly hidden. White as fluffy snow, but with the tensile strength of steel. Seemingly stationary, but always moving.

In 2017 a section of the Larsen Ice Shelf broke off. It was headline news, because it was as big as the state of Delaware. This iceberg won’t cause sea levels to rise because it was floating in the ocean long before it broke off, but the land ice dammed up further behind it eventually could.

This huge free-floating ice mass will remain in the area of the Antarctic Peninsula—the area most frequented by tourists. It will drift in the circular currents of the Weddell Sea, break up and eventually disappear.  You could see a section of this berg during the upcoming summer season in Antarctica. (When it’s winter in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s summer down there.) And large parts—maybe the size of Manhattan—will be there next summer, too.

The Fram - World-Famous Record-Breaking Ship

Last week I was thrilled to see the totally intact Fram in the Oslo museum dedicated to it. The ship was designed by one of my heroes, Fridtjof Nansen - arguably Norway’s most famous citizen based on his accomplishments as a polar explorer, inventor, scientist, and Nobel Peace Prize winner. He designed the Fram to withstand the pressures of the polar ice pack. It became the model for all subsequent icebreakers, including the one on which I served, the USCGC Glacier. Like the Fram, the Glacier had a rounded bottom so that it would be forced out of the icepack rather than crushed by it. Nansen’s design clearly worked. The Fram survived three years frozen in the polar ice pack between 1893 and 1896. The ship also took Roald Amundsen to Antarctica when he became the first to reach the South Pole. To this day it remains the record holder for the ship that has traveled the combined furthest north and furthest south.

In some ways the Fram was even better suited for surviving the icepack than the Glacier because it had a retractable rudder and two-bladed prop that was protected in the vertical position by the rudder. US Coast Guard icebreakers have suffered more than a few damaged props, particularly in the Antarctic where I was deployed.

Although the Fram was built of wood, it was built to withstand stresses three times stronger than the pressure it took to force it out of the ice. The bow and stern were strengthened with oak 1.25 m thick. The sides were 70 to 80 cm thick and had three layers: the two inner ones of oak and the outer one of greenheart. The hull was supported by 400 naturally-grown knee-shaped oak ribs bolted together. The pure grain of these naturally shaped oak knees made them far stronger. Using naturally shaped wood segments was a technique perfected by the ancient Vikings. There was no more than 30 to 40 cm space between the ribs.

As far as I know, the hull of the Fram was never punctured. In contrast, the Glacier’s hull was punctured by the tongue of a submerged iceberg. Although our outer hull was torn, the inner hull buckled but did not give way. It was a close call.

The Fram had a couple of things aboard that we did not have on the Glacier—an upright piano and a gramophone. Nansen knew that he had to provide all of the entertainment he could to help keep up morale during the cold dark polar nights.

Although the Fram was tough, it was small, measuring 128’ by 34’. And their “staterooms” were far from stately. I would have needed to sleep diagonally in one of those staterooms to completely stretch out my 6’ 2” frame. Only that would not have worked because that space would have been shared with at least one other sailor. In comparison, the small interior stateroom I had to myself aboard the Glacier was a veritable palace.

 A thrill to see Fram in Oslo. Designed by  Nansen. It survivedcrushing polar ice 1893-96. Took Amundsen to Antarctica. Furthest north to south travel of any ship ever.

The US Budgets to Build its First Icebreaker since 1976

At the present time, the US has only two icebreakers, the medium powered “Healy,” built in 2000, and the  heavy-duty Polar Star that was commissioned in 1976, sailed until 2006, and returned to service in 2013after being refitted. The new US icebreaker is scheduled to launch in 2023.

The Russians have forty icebreakers, including massively powered nuclear icebreakers. The US had no heavy-duty icebreaker between 2006 and 2013 and had to totally rely on other countries, particularly Russia, to provide icebreaker support for our stations in Antarctica.

Given our deteriorating relationship with Russia, it would be foolish to think we can rely upon them for support in the future. Without icebreakers to cut channels in the Antarctic ice for heavy cargo ships, our ability to function in Antarctica would be seriously compromised, as would our ability to continue to do important polar research.

Icebreakers take a heavy beating and are constantly in dry dock for repairs. The icebreaker that I was on, the Glacier, was never quite the same after the beating it took during our 1969/1970 deployment. In spite of many retrofits, it had to be taken out of service in 1987.

The need for our own icebreakers is particularly important now that the Northwest Passage is open to passenger ships and is strategically important because of the oil reserves there. Even though that passage is much more open, invariably ships will get into trouble and need the Coast Guard to come to the rescue. In 2013, when two smaller icebreakers ended up trapped in the icepack off Antarctica, are one heavy-duty icebreaker, the Polar Star, was the only one in the region powerful enough to save them.

More US icebreakers are required. Coast Guard Vice Admiral Charles W. Ray said, “our threshold requirement for your-round access and to protect national security, economic, environmental and maritime interests is three heavy and three medium icebreakers.” I am pleased to see that the US is finally starting to take our need for our own icebreakers seriously.

My Adventure at the LA Times Festival of Books

Sure, I expected going to Antarctica as a Doctor aboard an icebreaker would be an adventure, but going to a book fair? I was so organized prior to leaving for the Los Angeles Times Book Fair. I had everything mapped out and had even bought optional tickets in advance.

As I pulled into the first parking lot, the attendant was there to collect twelve dollars. I reached for my wallet only to realize that it was resting safely on my desk back home—an hour drive away. Damn, I thought, I won’t find any free parking nearby, I’ll have to go home. But then I thought, Maybe I’ll get lucky. I did, only four blocks away.

After ransacking my car and workout bag, I found three dollars in coins. I knew that would not even buy a hot dog. Rather than bemoaning my situation, I decided to label it “An Adventure” and proceeded accordingly.

Prior to the first lecture I sat two seats away from an elderly lady, meaning someone about my age. Although an introvert by nature, I thought this was not a good time to be shy or reserved. I started a conversation. She was also an author. As she was telling me about her most recent book, she opened up a large purse that was half-filled with food.

She asked, “Would you like a candy bar? I have lots of food.”

“Actually, I’d love one,” I said, “turns out I forgot my wallet today.”

“Then take another one.”

I couldn’t resist.

Then she said, “I could give you five dollars.”

I was amazed by her generosity, but declined her offer. Besides, I knew a true adventurer could survive a long time with only two candy bars.

As I left the lecture hall, I noticed that one of the exhibitor was passing out free iced coffee. Bingo! – a two course lunch.

I checked out other exhibitors and found one selling a book called “The Last Places on Earth.” I started talking with the author, Gary Mancuso. We had a very pleasant conversation and shared some of our thoughts about Antarctica.

I told him, “I’d like to buy a copy of your book, but I forgot my wallet.”

He said, “Do you have your cell phone and PayPal?”

“I do,” I said, “but I don’t know how to use it for PayPal.”

Between the two of us, we figured it out and I left with a signed copy. I thought, “That’s cool. I learned something new.”

Following a third lecture, I was getting thirsty. It was a hot sunny day. Voilà—I found another exhibitor passing out cold diet drinks. I sat in the shade and polished off my second candy bar. I was good for another half hour, but then my stomach started crumbling. I wanted some real food.

I checked out some of the food trucks. Everything was twelve dollars or more. Even the hot dogs cost eight dollars. Then it occurred to me, “You’re on a college campus. Think like a starving student.”

I went in search of ramen.

One dollar later I was seated at a table in the shade outside and enjoying  tasty noodles. Feeling chatty, I began a conversation with a young schoolteacher sitting nearby. He was there to learn more about children’s books. I told him about forgetting my wallet and how happy I was to be eating ramen. We shared thoughts about times in both of our lives when we had been quite poor and the positive aspects of such an experience. He offered to give me some money. I thanked him and told him he was the second person to have made such an offer.

 I said, “It’s amazing how nice people are, particularly when you need them.” I laughed and added, “I’m a retired doctor. I’m not poor anymore.”

There was a woman in the crowd behind us who apparently did not hear that last comment. She came striding towards me with a five dollar bill in her hand and yelling, “Here, take it.”

I said, “It’s okay, I’m fine.” I waved her off and turned away, embarrassed. For a second I stared into my cup of noodles.

Then I heard the fellow next to me say, “She left that.”

There almost under my nose was a five dollar bill. I turned to protest, only to see the woman disappear into the crowd as she yelled back, “It’s okay. I’m a mother.”

Adventures come in all sizes. I’m so glad I forgot my wallet.

Will Steger: World-Class Polar Explorer & Educator

Last week I had a great conversation with Will Steger. We both grew up in Richfield, Minnesota—a suburb on the southern border of Minneapolis. Our houses were about 150 yards apart. We reminisced about the fun we had as kids building forts, digging tunnels, playing Monopoly in my basement, and rafting on Woodlake before it became a marsh. We grew up in in a stable and safe neighborhood adjacent to open fields, hills and ponds— the kind of neighborhood where people never bothered to lock their doors because it was so safe, although Garrison Keillor noted, “Of course those locks were frozen shut six months of the year.”

Us kids learned to adapt to long winters and sub-zero temperatures, but Will took it to a completely different level. When he was nineteen years old, he bought a plot of wilderness land in northern Minnesota where he built a house and learned more of his survival techniques, including how to handle a sled dog team. He said he needed the sled dogs because his house was two miles from the nearest road.

I lost touch with Will when I went off to college and medical school and settled in California, but then I started hearing about his exploits, like the first confirmed dogsled journey to the North Pole without resupply in 1986 and his unsupported dogsled 1,600 mile south to north traverse of Greenland in 1988. In 1990, he received worldwide recognition for leading six members of the International Trans-Antarctic Expedition across Antarctica the long way— from the Antarctic Peninsula in the West to the Mirny Russian Base in the East, a distance about 1000 miles more than the distance between New York and Los Angeles. During his traverse of Antarctica, Will described “the coldest conditions imaginable on the planet,” like “-120° wind chills.” To my mind, his heroic, first-ever, dogsled crossing of the frigid, stormy and hazardous Antarctic continent ranks up there with the accomplishments of Sir Ernest Shackleton.

 Will’s exploits have given him first-hand knowledge of the effects of global climate change. He first saw Antarctica on July 26, 1989 from the window of a Twin Otter charter plane. (Too bad he missed the thrill of crossing Drakes passage on a ship to get to Antarctica.)  As he crossed the spine of mountains on the Antarctic Peninsula, he was shocked to find open waters dotted with tabular icebergs in the Weddell Sea. Normally there is dense sea ice in that area year-round, particularly along the western edge of the Antarctic Peninsula.

The first time I saw the Weddell Sea in January 1970 aboard the USCGC Glacier the sea surface was seventy-five to one hundred percent covered with pack ice—and we were not only further north than the location Will described, but also it was during the Antarctic summer. During the Antarctic winter, there is a fourfold expansion of sea ice around the continent, meaning Will should have been seeing solid icepack even before he reached the northernmost portion of the continent. A sixty-year record of temperatures now show that winter temperatures on the northwestern Antarctic Peninsula have increased by 11°F and annual average temperatures by 5°F.

Will also experienced the effects of global warming in 1995 when he led a team of five scientists and educators on an epic 1,200 mile expedition between Russia and Ellesmere Island, Canada. They traversed the polar ice pack utilizing dogsleds and canoe sleds. The feat was much harder than he had anticipated because of the unexpected absence of polar ice. The going was much slower when they had to paddle through open waters. There is now so little sea ice during the summer that cruise ships can routinely sail the Northwest Passage.

When I spoke with Will last week he indicated that one of his inspirational heroes is also one of mine, the Norwegian polar explorer, inventor, researcher and humanitarian, Fridtjof Nansen. After his legendary polar explorations, Nansen went on to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for the work he did to help resettle refugees. Like Nansen, Will expressed the need to continue to contribute to society following his major accomplishments as an explorer. He said, “Nansen’s (commitment) was refugees, mine’s education.”

Will has done an excellent job fostering education. In 1991, he co-founded the Center for Global Environmental Education. Two years later he founded the World School for Adventure Learning at the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota). In 2006, Will established the Will Steger Foundation to educate and encourage people to search for solutions to climate change. In 2014, he established the Steger Wilderness Center to demonstrate among other things practical solutions for creating a sustainable planet.

Over the course of his career, Will has received multiple awards and acknowledgments. In 1995 he received, for example, the John Oliver La Gorce Medal from the National Geographic Society. The medal is awarded for “accomplishments in geographic exploration, in the sciences and for public service to advance international understanding.” Other recipients of the award include Amelia Earhart, Robert Peary, Roald Amundsen and Jacques Cousteau. I think Will richly deserves to be held in the same high esteem as these world-famous recipients, but it bothers me that he is not nearly as famous as most of them. For example, this past week I asked several people if they had ever heard of Will Steger. They had not, but they had all heard of Jacques Cousteau. I am a scuba diver, a Francophile and a big fan of Jacques Cousteau, but up much bigger fan of Will Steger, and unlike the other luminaries I just mentioned, Will is still very much alive and engaged in tremendous work.

I encourage you all to learn more about Will Steger and his educational activities, particularly his efforts regarding climate change. He’s very well known in Minnesota, but not so much in California where I live. Each year he gives more than 100 invited presentations for private and public events, mostly through the activities of the Will Steger Foundation. I’m hoping to get him included in the lecture series I go to in Los Angeles.

The Causes for Climate Change and the Post-Truth Era

“Post-Truth” Is the Word of the Year according to the Oxford English Dictionary, defining it as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion that appeals to emotion and personal belief.” It is easier to discard an objective fact if it is something one cannot see, touch or feel. Most people don’t notice that ocean levels have been increasing by three millimeters a year. Also, some can be convinced by other plausible causes for global warming, such as sunspots or non-man-made climate changes that occurred eons ago.

So what can be done about people who disagree with 97 percent of the world’s scientists who believe that global warming is secondary to human factors or who think that the last three years of record heat is merely an anomaly? One way is to sidestep the global warming issue and focus on something that can be seen and felt—air pollution. Most everyone will agree that air pollution is man-made. They also likely would agree that air pollution is detrimental to one’s health, particularly respiratory diseases. And if you can get people working to improve air pollution, they will also be improving a factor that contributes to global warming. Encouraging the use of electric cars, for example, decreases carbon dioxide emissions.

Another reason to focus on air pollution is we know something can be done about it to significantly remedy the problem in a relatively short period of time. Modified car engines and strict emission standards do make a difference. The first time I came to Los Angeles was in 1968 when the air quality was particularly bad. It was so bad that I seriously considered not taking a residency at UCLA in 1972. Before I accepted the position offered at UCLA, I called the Air Pollution Control Board and asked them about air pollution in Westwood where UCLA is located. They told me that of the permanent monitoring stations, the one in Westwood routinely measured the lowest levels of air pollution. I accepted the residency and have been happy living in Southern California ever since.

Even though there are so many more cars and people in LA now, and smog in the LA basin is inevitable, the air quality is actually much better than when I first moved here. In fact, it is 90 percent better than it was in 1960 and far better than in cities like Beijing that don’t have nearly as many cars as Los Angeles. In fact there are seventy-eight cities in China that have worse pollution than Los Angeles. It’s so bad in China that people actually buy cans of fresh mountain air just to get a few whiffs of non-polluted air. China is now actively interested in cleaning up their foul air, as evidenced by such things as their signing the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Trump has threatened to undermine this international agreement that the US also signed. Let’s hope it is an idle threat.

Larsen, Shackleton and Global Warming

The Larsen C Ice Shelf has been in the news lately because a section of it larger than Rhode Island is on the verge of breaking off. This ice shelf is the fourth largest in Antarctica. The rapid acceleration of the 300 meter deep fissure in this ice shelf is undoubtedly related to global warming. Temperatures are rising faster in Antarctica than any other place on the globe. The main concern with the loss of an ice shelf is that it acts as a dam holding back land ice and it is the melting of the land ice that will have the most dramatic effect on sea levels.

The ice shelf is named after Carl Anton Larsen who was a Norwegian ship captain that discovered the ice shelf which bears his name in 1893. He was the first person to ski in Antarctica and the first to discover fossils there indicating that Antarctica was once part of a large warmer continent.

Larsen and Shackleton had parallel and intersecting lives. Like Shackleton, Larsen's ship, the Antarctic, was crushed in the Weddell Sea ice pack in 1903, forcing him and his crew to row lifeboats to Paulet Island where he and his crew survived over the winter by eating seals and penguins before being rescued by an Argentinian ship.

Larsen founded Grytviken, the whaling station on South Georgia Island, where Shackleton ended up after his heroic 800 mile journey from Elephant Island by lifeboat and foot. Shackleton and his men most likely would have died if they had not been able to reach this nearest outpost of civilization. Shackleton and the whalers made several attempts to sail to Elephant Island to rescue the bulk of his crew, but kept having to turn back because of storms and the impenetrable icepack. Three months later they finally succeeded.

Larsen championed the building of a Norwegian Lutheran Church in 1913 that remains in use to this day. It is the same church where the funeral services were held for Shackleton when he died in 1922. Shackleton was buried on South Georgia Island. Larsen died two years later while whaling in the Ross Sea.

A Voyage For Madmen

In 2002 Peter Nichols published the book entitled “A Voyage For Madmen” about the Golden Globe Race in 1968. It was the first round-the-world, single-handed, nonstop sailboat race and the forerunner of today’s Vendee Globe. Of the nine entrants in the Golden Globe, only one finished— the British sailor Robin Knox-Johnson— who became the first person to sail around the world nonstop. It took him 312 days whereas the leader of the Vendee Globe today, the Frenchman Armel Le Cleach, is expected to complete his circuit of the globe on January 19, 2017 a mere seventy-five days after the race began.

My interest in the Vendee Globe stems primarily from the time I spent in the Southern Ocean when I was a doctor aboard a Coast Guard icebreaker, the USCGG Glacier. After sailing between South America and Antarctica six times, I could not imagine racing in these same waters in any kind of sailboat, much less the 60 foot yachts now used in theVendee Globe, particularly after the 300 foot long Glacier almost capsized in waves as tall as an eight story building while we were in the Southern Ocean.

Although the yachts racing in the Vendee Globe have the advantage of satellite imaging and sophisticated GPS navigation that we did not have aboard the Glacier in 1969, we at least had a thick   steel hull design for breaking sea ice instead of a fragile carbon hull, as well as someone constantly at the helm to watch out for icebergs. Solo sailors in a nonstop spend a good deal of time in the Southern Ocean sailing north of the Antarctic Exclusion Zone (AEZ) where, according to sophisticated satellite tracking techniques, Antarctic icebergs could be present. However, these sailors sometimes have to come close to the AEZ in order to avoid storms or to catch the best winds. If they cross into the AEZ they are severely penalized, disqualified, or in the worst case actually hit an iceberg.

Vendee Globe sailors need to rely extensively on autopilot systems since they obviously cannot spend all their time at the helm. Five of the twenty-nine initial entrance in the 2016/17 Vendee Globe were knocked out of the race after striking and Unidentified Floating Object (UFO). Three of those events occurred while sailors were in the Southern Ocean and could have been caused by “growlers” (car-sized pieces of an iceberg) that could have escaped detection by modern tracking techniques, although one of these collisions probably was with a container that fell off of a container cargo ship. The skipper of this latter ship had to sail 220 miles in stormy seas and was on the verge of sinking before he was rescued.

Another skipper was not so lucky. The UFO collision he experienced tore off part of his keel and hull. By the time a cargo ship was able to rescue him, the water was over his floorboards and his yacht could not be saved.

Three Vendee Globe sailors had to abandon the race after losing their masts during violent Southern Ocean storms, but all of them were able to safely make it to ports with makeshift sails or with the assistance of another vessel.

Given the conditions some of the sailors experienced between the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn it is surprising that even more sailors have not been knocked out of the race. For example, New Zealander Conrad Coleman’s boat Foresight Natural Energy was on its side for several hours in 60 knot winds and according to him “being dragged sideways across the tops of the foaming crests with the keel pointing skywards” before regaining control of his yacht. And his potential disaster occurred when he was near Point Nemo—a place that marks the midpoint between New Zealand and Chile and the Pitcairn Islands and Antarctica—the most isolated spot on the planet.

Eleven of the twenty-nine sailors who began the Vendee Globe have had to drop out. And four sailors have yet to round Cape Horn and head up the Atlantic for the last portion of the race. How many more will be forced to abandon the race remains to be seen.

Although it has been tough for the sailors in this Vendee Globe race, it was much tougher for those in the 1996/1997 race. Winds in excess of 80 knots hit the race leaders while they were in the Southern Ocean. One sailor capsized, lost his mast and remained on his upturned hull for thirty-six hours before he was rescued by a fellow competitor. Two others capsized and had to wait four days before they were rescued by another ship.

The sailor in second place at the time of thestorm, Canadian skipper Gerry Roufs aboard Groupe LG 2,  told the Race Directors, “The waves are not mere waves they are the Alps.“

I had not seen Roufs’ quote until shortly before I wrote this blog, but it made me shudder because his words so closely mirrored my experiences aboard the Glacier. In my book about my experiences aboard the Glacier that I essentially finished several months ago I wrote about how the U.S. Navy described waves taller than 40 feet as being ‘Mountainous’. But I felt that term was more akin to smaller mountain ranges like the Berkshire Mountains, whereas the kind of waves that we faced in our final crossing of Drake Passage were “more like the Alps.”

Rouf reported that his boat capsized three times. On January 7, 1997 his radio beacon stopped emitting. The upturned hull of his boat was spotted six months later. The wreckage of his boat was formally identified on August 29, 1998 off the coast of Chile.

USAA and Total Vehicle Loss Insurance

One of the perks of being assigned to the Coast Guard in 1969, besides my adventuresome deployment to Antarctica, was qualifying for USAA insurance. At that time, and for many years thereafter, I thought USAA was the best of the best. Sadly, that no longer seems to be the case. The average guy in a military service does not make that much money which makes them particularly vulnerable when their car is totaled and they need to rely on USAA to give them the money they need for a replacement vehicle. The following saga will give readers an idea of what they can expect from USAA and, if they can afford to persevere, how they might eventually prevail.

On September 28, 2016 I was lucky to walk away from a near head-on collision when a truck suddenly turned left in front of me as I was cruising through a major intersection. I knew I would not be held liable for the accident because I had the right-of-way. When I spoke with USAA they told me that my thousand dollars deductible would be waived because the accident was not my fault. My car was towed to a local body shop that turned out to be one preferred by USAA.

Several days later I was informed by USAA that my car was considered a total loss. This left me with two options. I could have USAA pay to repair the car, but then the car would have a “salvage title,” meaning the resale value of the car would be substantially less, or I could buy new car. It didn’t strike me as being much of a choice. I started shopping for a replacement vehicle.

My USAA insurance policy declared that I was covered for the “Actual Cash Value” (ACV) of my vehicle. Since the basic idea behind insurance is to “make one whole,” I assumed actual cash value meant I would receive the actual cash I needed from USAA to buy a vehicle comparable to the one I lost. USAA quickly made it clear to me that they interpreted “Actual Cash Value” as meaning something quite different— something much closer to the wholesale value of the vehicle. They made it very clear that they would not reimburse me for the typical retail price of a car sold by a dealer. Since car dealers do not sell their vehicles for wholesale prices, I knew I was in trouble. I argued, “If I had theft insurance with you and someone stole my TV, would you expect me to go to a store and demand that they sell me their TV at a wholesale price?” They essentially told me, “It’s not the same thing.”

After doing some research I found that on average the dealer price for an exact replacement of my vehicle— a 2014 Infiniti Q 50— was about $29,000. I couldn’t find any vehicles like mine for sale by private sellers.

On October 11, 2016, I received a letter from USAA stating that they had determined that the actual cash value of my vehicle was $24,632 plus a California sales tax of $2,216.88. Two days later they sent me another email confirming that figure, along with the documentation supporting their conclusion, from and evaluating agency they use called CCC1. CCC1 quoted the sales information on twelve supposedly comparable vehicles. The problem was that only one of the twelve vehicles had the upgrades my car had. It was not an ‘apples to apples’ comparison.  Also, the data they provided was from the Department of Motor Vehicles database, which I could not access. Consequently, I had no way of knowing the condition of the cars sold. For all I knew, half of them could have been salvage vehicles. In any case, the average sold price, not listing price, of the vehicles described was $26,729 (11 of the 12 vehicles had been sold.) So how did they come up with an evaluation of $24,632? I could accept the notion that used cars are generally worth less than a dealer’s listing price, but the price for which they actually sold was I thought a good indication of their true value. CCC1 somehow concluded that the true value of these sold the vehicle was significantly less. There average downward “adjustment” for these sold vehicles was $1,998, which was the main figure they used for downgrading the value of my vehicle. I thought, I guess they think all of the buyers were so stupid as to overpay by almost $2000.

I did some research on CCC1. They claim they can save insurance companies money by using their proprietary database. As far as I could tell, USAA was going to exclusively rely on the valuation data supplied by CCC1. USAA evidently was one of CCC1’s clients. I thought, Who would CCC1 rather keep happy, me or USAA? Call me a skeptic, but I was beginning to think that the system was rigged against me.

The other problem I had with CCC1’s evaluation of my car is that they described the condition of my car as being “average” in the six different categories they use— Mechanical, Tires, Paint, Body, Glass, and Interior. I spoke with USAA and told them that the condition of my one-owner, dealer-maintained car was somewhere between very good and excellent in all categories and should be reassessed accordingly. USAA told me that all cars in California are evaluated on three levels: “Below Average, Average and Exceptional.” They described “Exceptional” as essentially being showroom ready. They indicated that the condition of my car had been determined by a guy at the body shop. A USAA employee had not personally examined my vehicle.

I later spoke to the guy at the body shop who had evaluated my vehicle. He suggested that he had evaluated my car based on guidelines provided by USAA. He admitted that based on these guidelines maybe one percent of the cars he evaluated were “exceptional.” I began to think that this body shop that USAA had recommended might have a bias that did not favor me. In any case, categorizing my vehicle as “average,” rather than somewhere between average and exceptional, clearly favored the insurance company. Most companies, such as Kelly Blue Book and Edmonds allow for ratings between average and excellent.

When I later spoke with USAA, they suggested that this three-level criteria was approved by the State of California. I contacted the insurance division of the state of California and asked them if it was a matter of official policy that cars are evaluated per these three “low average, average, exceptional” criteria. They denied anything of the sort. The state official I spoke to said, “Ask them (USAA) what’s the insurance code that they are talking about.” I did and USAA could not provide me with either insurance code information or written proof that the State of California explicitly approves their three-level rating system.  I thought, Does USAA actually think that there rating system is fair?

One of the agents at USAA told me I could do research on my own to find comparable values for my car. If my data showed that CCC1’s values were unfairly low, they suggested that they then would make adjustments. Over the next month, I provided them with several sets of comparable values that they completely ignored. For example, I quoted them three comparable vehicles in my area with similar mileage selling for an average price of $30,844.

I thought I came to the perfect solution when I went to USAA’s own car buying service and quoted them only the good buys per their TrueCar Market Price Analysis. I later spoke with one of their agents and asked him why the value of my car could not be upgraded.  After all a “great price” for a vehicle comparable to mine per their TrueCar system was more than $29,000. The agent told me they could not accept values from their own car buying service because it was not available to everyone, yet he said he would not accept values from any other car valuation service, such as Kelly Blue Book or Edmonds, because those publicly-available services included a certain degree of dealer profit that USAA would not accept. I asked him if there was some other service he could recommend that I could use for an independent evaluation. He could not give me one. I thought, Like it or lump it, I’m going to be stuck with CCC1’s evaluation.

I later learned that if I wasn’t happy with the price USAA was offering, I could hire a certified independent evaluator to do market research and determine the comparable value of my car. I assumed I would have to pay for this person. But then I thought, It won’t matter what an independent evaluator determines if USAA won’t allow for a dealers reasonable profit.

On October 18, 2016 USAA upped their offer to $24,782 plus taxes. On October 19, they sent me a threatening letter stating that I had to approve their moving my car to a storage facility or “any storage charges incurred after October 24, 2016 will be your responsibility.” About the same time an agent called me and told me that I was going to have to pay the $1000 deductible because they had not yet received the Highway Patrol report showing that the other driver was at fault. Rather than wait for the report, they were reneging on their promise to not charge me the $1000 deductible. I was struck with how quickly they responded on issues that would cost me additional money versus how slowly or unresponsive they were to the numerous emails I was sending them. Meanwhile, I had to continue paying auto insurance for my stored vehicle. When the Highway Patrol report finally arrived, I was told I would not have to pay the $1000 deductible.

I later spoke with another agent who told me that I should not have been sent the threatening letter about storage fees because the body shop I was using was one where USAA could store cars indefinitely at no additional cost. I thought, It seems like they have a cozy relationship with this body shop.

On November 8, 2016 I finally received an ‘apples to apples’ valuation of my vehicle from CCC1 that included information on a number of other comparable vehicles. USAA offered $25,482 plus taxes. I continued to complain that this was not a fair price.

When I closely looked at the new list of comparables from CCC1, I noticed that there was one 2014 Infiniti Q50 that had similar features to mine, but with significantly less mileage. Surprisingly, CCC1 downgraded the value of this vehicle compared to mine when it should have been upgraded. Obviously, the data provided by CCC1 is not entirely accurate.

I had previously insisted that CCC1 provide me with data on cars that I could actually buy versus cars that had already been sold. I decided to try and buy the previously-mentioned vehicle with less mileage. To make a long story short, after an intense, hard-nosed negotiation with the dealer, I struck a great deal and bought the vehicle for $27,000. I insured the car with USAA before I drove it off the lot.

So now I had a decent car to drive and still owned my totaled car that was taking up space on the body shop’s lot. USAA could not use my car for parts or anything else until I gave them title to my car. I was not about to give USAA title to my car until they paid me the ‘actual cash’ I had paid for my replacement vehicle, particularly since I knew that I had bought a car for about $2,000 below market value.

I subsequently spoke with another USAA agent. By then it was apparent to them that I was not going to simply accept their last offer and stop pestering them. This agent arbitrarily, as far as I could tell, upgraded one aspect of my car’s value to the “exceptional” level. He bumped up the value of my car to $26,302 plus taxes. I thought, A low-level agent can make adjustments within CCC1’s parameters. Maybe a supervisor can do better.

On November 18, 2016, I was finally able to speak to a supervisor, Christopher Oppen. He basically said that USAA was complying with all state guidelines and was doing nothing wrong whatsoever. After a long discussion, he agreed to upwardly adjust my valuation by $698, ostensibly because I’d been a USAA member for forty-seven years. I assumed he had chosen that exact amount because he by then knew that I had already bought a car for $27,000. I agreed to accept that amount. It was still sixty-three dollars short of the ‘actual cash’ I had to pay (because of taxes), but I was not going to quibble.

Although I was finally satisfied with the results I had achieved, I remained unsatisfied with the intense effort— countless emails and phone conversations, etc.—it had taken me to get a fair settlement. I didn’t think the average guy expending a reasonable amount of effort would fare as well in a system that seemed to be decidedly tilt in USAA’s favor. I thought, The people who have served this country deserve better.

With the thought of clarifying USAA’s standard policy, I asked Oppen to tell me in writing what USAA really means by “Actual Cash Value.” On November 21 he sent me an email saying “USAA provides Actual Cash Value (ACV) which is what your car is worth minus profit the dealer turns for selling the vehicle above market value.” And the market value is what CCC1 determines. I called him back and asked if USAA could officially amend their policy using the definition he gave me. He said he would pass on this recommendation to upper-level management. When I last spoke to him on December 21, 2016 he stated that USAA would not be making any of the changes he had suggested. I was not surprised.

As far as I understand the law, insurance companies have a duty to make their policies crystal clear in terms of what they cover and what they do not. In my opinion, USAA’s definition of “Actual Cash Value” is misleading. Even if they amended their policy per the definition given by Mr. Oppen, it wouldn’t change how USAA operates, but it would give a clearer signal to people who buy their policy that they’re going to face a complex situation. If Oppen’s modified definition had been incorporated, I had hoped that it would lead to policyholders at least realizing that they cannot simply replace their totaled car by going to a car dealer, paying retail, and having USAA reimburse them for that amount.

A key portion of the definition given by Oppen deals with the “market value” of a vehicle. The legal definition of “market value” is the highest mutually agreed-upon price between the buyer and seller in a normal, non-urgent situation. I seriously doubt that the values provided by CCC1 are based on the highest prices in mutually agreed-upon sales between a buyer and car dealer.

In spite of the problems I’ve had with USAA, I still think there a better than average insurance company. But I no longer view them as being the best. In my experience, dealing with an insurance carrier about almost anything is difficult.  State Farm now has a higher approval rating in social media when it comes to automobile insurance, but they are only a half star better. Anyone who thinks that dealing with an insurance company is going to be simple, straightforward and satisfying is, in my opinion, naïve. But if you know how insurance companies operate, your chances of succeeding with them are much better. The bottom line is you will probably have to negotiate long and hard with them before you can get a fair settlement. Unfortunately, many people for many reasons are forced to settle for less.

In most cases, replacing a totaled vehicle involves dealing with a car dealership. Car dealers are professional negotiators. Unless someone is a hard-nosed and very knowledgeable negotiator, the car dealers are going to strike a better deal. One of things USAA could do to help their policyholders would be to assist car buyers in the negotiating process. It would save them money and make their policyholders happier.

In these days of social media, USAA is apt to lose market share if they do not upgrade their operations. The word about what they are doing eventually gets around. Apparently what USAA does in terms of under valuing a replacement vehicle is fairly common in the insurance industry, so much so that Liberty Mutual is now advertising that they guarantee to replace a totaled vehicle with a brand-new vehicle. Oppen told me that this is true, but it applies only to vehicles with less than 15,000 miles and involves paying an insurance premium. I told him that at least their parameters are clear.

The next time I buy a new car, I probably will pay the premium and buy a policy from Liberty Mutual. I like clarity. After my car is beyond 15,000 miles, I would switch to another insurance company— which ever one most highly rated at the time that probably would not be Liberty Mutual. A former employee of that company called them “Slippery Mutual.” In spite of its flaws, I think USAA is a better company. If they make a few changes, they might once again be the best.

In summary, I would advise the following for best settlement results:

1. If USAA claims they are following a state directive, check with your state’s Department of Insurance.

2. Closely look at CCC1’s data. It may not be accurate. Insist that they include cars you can actually buy, or reflect all the features your car has.

3. Do your own market research in order to determine a fair settlement value.

4. Assume you will be sending multiple emails and having multiple settlement discussions with different agents.

 5. Be patient. It may take a month or more before USAA gives you a more acceptable settlement offer.

6. Know that low-level agents can make some concessions, but larger ones can only be made by supervisors.

7. Don’t give USAA title to your totaled car until you have reached a satisfactory settlement.

8. If you’re not a skilled negotiator and you’re going to be buy your replacement vehicle from a    dealer, go with someone who is, or at least someone who is level-headed and objective. And by all means do good market research before you go to the dealer so you know the realistic value of the car you plan to purchase. If necessary, insist on using a computer at the dealer to do additional research, particularly if you end up buying a car different than the one you had   originally planed.

I wish you good luck.

The Deep South is no Picnic.

I like the words of Vendée Globe sailor Alan Roura aboard La Fabrique and his realistic description of typical sailing in the Southern Ocean:

“The Deep South is no picnic. I have never been so frightened, taking routes or diversions to round the big lows, enduring front after front with crossed seas and breaking waves, some of which are 8 to 10m high. Going from 20 to 40 knots of breeze without having the time to realize that the boat has already broached. The South has its secrets and calls for you to sail in a way that you need to learn. Above all it forces you to never think you’re more powerful than the ocean.”

Vendee Globe- The Everest of Sailing

Some of my blog posts are more urgent than others and this is one of them. The Vendee Globe is undoubtedly the hardest and most demanding sailing race in the world. It is a single-handed, non-stop race around the world in 60 foot sailboats. The race is now in its thirty-ninth day and this posting is urgent because the leaders are soon approaching Drake Passage – a passage that I crossed six times when I was a doctor aboard the USCGC Glacier. I know the kinds of conditions these built-for-speed sailboats could end up facing and pray they are not confronted with anything like the mountainous seas we faced aboard the Glacier during our last crossing.

The Vendee Globe race was founded by Phillipe Jeantot in 1989. Since 1992, it has taken place every four years. The race is open to 60 foot monohull yachts conforming to the Open 60 criteria. The race begins in Les Sables d’ Olonne, France, then down the Atlantic and around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, Australia’s Cape Leeuwin, and South America’s notorious Cape Horn before heading back up the Atlantic to the French port where they began. Competitors in this race are not allowed to receive any outside assistance, nor are they allowed to draw alongside a dock, quay or another vessel, but they may stop at anchor. Many of the sailors choose to withdraw from the race.

In the 1996-97 race one of the sailors, Gerry Roufs from Canada was lost at sea. His boat was found five months later off the coast of Chile. The sailors are often far from any normal emergency response, particularly during the long treacherous stretch of the race in the Southern Ocean, although two capsized boats were rescued by Australian rescue teams in the 1996-97 race. A third capsized boat in this same race was rescued by one of the participants, Raphael Dinelli, who was later awarded France’s Legion d’honneur.

During the 2000-2001 race 24 -year-old Ellen MacArthur almost won the race, but ended up second after striking a semi-submerged container and being delayed in order to make repairs. Yet she arrived to great fanfare as result of being “the youngest ever competitor to finish, the fastest woman around the planet – and only second solo sailor to get around the globe and less than 100 days.”

Sebastien Josse finished fifth in the 2004-05 race in spite of hitting an iceberg—a constant threat while sailing in the Southern Ocean. The 2008-09 race was won by Michel Desjoyeaux, who set a new record of 84d 3h 9’ 8”. This record was eclipsed in the 2012-13 race by François Gabart, who completed the circumnavigation in 78d 2h 16’ 40”.

The race is fascinating to follow on the Vendee Globe website where you can see video footage of segments of the race while it is happening. Some of the sailboats exceed speeds of 25 knots and can sailmore than 500 miles during a 24-hour period. Videos taken off the stern of the boats give one a very good sense of the speeds they can attain.

I’m looking forward to more excitement and incredible feats during the remaining portion of the 2016-17 race.

Blue Iguanas and Stem Cells

Blue Iguanas are an endangered species native to Grand Cayman Island in the Caribbean. I just returned from there after having some bone marrow removed from the posterior crest of my pelvis. The stem cells that my body produces, specifically Mesenchymal Stem Cells, will be separated out from my bone marrow and cultured by Regenexx—a company specializing in Regenerative Medicine. The harvested stem cells will multiply in a culture medium 100 fold or more. In six weeks I will return there to have the stem cells injected into my bone-on-bone arthritic knee. If all goes well, the injected stem cells will grow into cartilage that will lubricate and cushion my knee joint and save me from having artificial knee surgery.

There is no guarantee this procedure will work. According to 2015 data contained in Regenexx’s Registry, they treated 1,825 patients with knee arthritis with their proprietary, three-step Regenexx-C stem cell procedure. The average age of their patients was fifty-seven years old. Most were male and only slightly overweight. Their data showed that an average of forty-six percent had significant (50 percent or better) improvement within three months. An average of fifty-five percent was similarly improved after one year. They’re not promising miracles and I’m not expecting any, but for me the rewards exceed the risks (primarily a healthy chunk of change.) Nothing beats naturally-formed cartilage—it’s tough and slipperier than ice on ice.

So why does one have to go all the way to the Cayman Islands to get this kind of treatment? Good question. If I was younger and pumping out a lot of stem cells, I could receive one of their proprietary treatments in the US from a handful of physicians specially trained in their technique. However, I’m seventy-three years old. My body is chewing up stem cells far faster than I can produce them and the success rate of their procedure is directly proportional to the number of stem cells injected into an ailing joint. A few thousand cells probably wouldn’t help me much. My knee is too damaged. Thus, I need to harvest and grow my stem cells. And the closest place to legally grow them is in the Cayman Islands.

It turns out the Federal Drug Administration has determined that growing one’s own stem cells is in effect creating a new drug. It takes about 500 million dollars and ten years to create a new drug approved by the FDA. Regenexx tried to get FDA approval to culture stem cells in the US but failed. They then decided to move their cell-culturing facilities to the Caribbean. I’d love to have lots of double-blind studies and FDA approval for a stem cell treatment, but I’ll settle for the fact that Regenexx closely tracks their results in an ongoing registry.

I heard that one of the Manning brothers—I assume it was Peyton—had a stem cell treatment in Europe that allowed him to continue playing football. If the story is true, and a guy with three neck surgeries was able to return to football and win a Super Bowl, then I would be mightily impressed. But not impressed enough to try an expensive treatment myself. I needed to do much more research and investigation into stem cell treatments before making a decision on a mere anecdote. I’d recommend you do your own research and make decisions based on consultation with your own physician. These treatments are not covered by insurance. Hopefully, someday they will.

There are a number of stem cell clinics in the US, but they’re less experienced then Regenexx and none do stem cell cultures that I know of. And many are outright scams. These disreputable clinics may inject you with stem cells, but they won’t tell you the stem cells are from sharks or sheep. Or maybe even from blue iguanas.

Shackleton's Voyage: Part One

Sir Earnest Shackleton’s ship, the Endurance, was crushed and sank in the Weddell Sea icepack on November 21, 1915. He and his twenty-seven man crew subsequently lived on the icepack that continued to drift in a northerly direction somewhat parallel to the eastern edge of the Antarctic Peninsula. When the icepack finally melted beneath them, they took to their three longboats. They rowed continuously for several days in these open boats before finally reaching Elephant Island off the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Shackleton spent less than two weeks on the island. Midwinter was approaching. There was no time to waste.

     On April 24, 1916, Shackleton and five of his crew sailed for South Georgia Island, 650 nautical miles (1,050 kilometers) away. There was a whaling station on this island, which Shackleton and his crew knew about because they had stopped there on their way to Antarctica. It was the closest outpost of civilization. And a razor-thin hope for salvation.

     Elephant Island was a remote island, far away from any shipping lanes. No backup ship would be coming to rescue them and they had no radio to inform the world about their plight. The only ship available was the ship they lost. Even if there had been a plan for a rescue ship to come searching for them, they would have been almost impossible to find. All any potential rescuer would have known was that they probably were somewhere within the million square miles of the Weddell Sea.

     The craft that was going to undertake this desperate voyage to South Georgia Island was the James Caird, one of the longboats converted into a makeshift small sailboat by the ship’s resourceful carpenter, Harry McNish. He reportedly did carpentry work using only ‘eyeball’ measurements. Shackleton chose five men to join him: Frank Worsley, the captain of the Endurance, served as navigator, with McNish, the Bosun, John Vincent, and two seamen, Thomas Crean and Tim McCarthy. The remaining twenty-one crewmembers remained on the island—with little hope that Shackleton and his small crew would ever survive.

     The worst danger the James Caird faced on this voyage was colliding with a large piece of berg ice. Such an event would have likely sunk them. Consequently, Shackleton immediately turned north and tried to get as far away from the icepack as he could, before turning east towards South Georgia Island. Luck was with them. They never hit any significant ice. But then they had to deal with the terror of Drake Passage in a twenty-two foot, double-ended boat. (To be continued in subsequent blog postings.)