Two men jumped into the “Atlantic challenge” and participated in the Atlantic Rowing Race 2005. So far, nothing extraordinary but these two guys are disabled; one of them is Franck Bruno, a former marine whose leg has been amputated and the other is his friend and a fellow amputatee.

    The race started from the Canary Islands and finished in the Caribbean.

    They used a rowing boat and 54 days, 23 hours and 32 minutes was the time that they took to cross the Atlantic. They endured a few storms, but they survived. Franck Bruno said: ‘Every day look alike, you have to row. They are tears, tears, suffering but we are in the middle of the elements, you have to clear your head and not try to understand. In the middle of the Atlantic we are nothing.’

    This true sporting feat has changed them for life. The ocean was turbulent, a real challenge, but they were able to bear it and accomplish this great feat.

ELLUL Acély/PROUILHAC Pauline

    Indeed, an Australian family has found on a beach on the island of Wedge, in south-west Australia, a message inside a bottle of gin that was thrown on June 12, 1886 from the German ship Paula. The bottled note is the oldest known in the world, ahead of another dating from 108 years ago.

    The discovery occurred when Tony Illman was walking with his family - on January 21 - through the dunes of Wedge Island and spotted a "nice old bottle". It holded inside a rolled paper and was held with a ribbon. The sheet contained a message in which the captain of the ship recorded the date, the coordinates of the ship and the details of its route.

    When they opened the paper, it had something written by hand in German. The message indicated that it was thrown over Paula's rail when he was sailing about 950 kilometers off the southwestern coast of Australia.

    Maritime archaeologist Ross Anderson (of the Museum of Western Australia) found out it was a bottle from the nineteenth-century Dutch gin. Anderson and German colleagues compared the manuscript with the record of Paula's navigation book. Incredibly, there was an entry on June 12, 1886 in which the captain recorded that a bottle had been thrown overboard.

PEREZ Caroline.