Featured Image Credit: YouTube/Ocean Research Project
Topics: Community, Guinness World Record
Brenna Cooper
Topics: Community, Guinness World Record
Keen sailor Matt Rutherford once completed a feat which many sailors labelled a 'suicide mission' by doing a solo circumnavigation of the Americas.
Rutherford has plenty of experience at the helm of a boat, having once been a part of a research crew which located and towed a 'ghost ship' while sailing in the Bermuda Triangle.
The ghost ship discovery came while Rutherford was on a 2013 excursion with Ocean Research Project in the Atlantic.
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Given the reputation of the Bermuda Triangle - also known as the 'Devil's Triangle' - finding an unmanned boat floating aimlessly is pretty creepy.
However, Rutherford wasn't fazed and jumped onboard to make sure it wasn't carrying injured passengers, before contacting the owner and making a failed attempt to tow the boat back to shore.
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Now most of us may shudder at the thought of sailing into an area steeped in so much mystery and legend; but it's not even the scariest thing Rutherford has done, given the fact that he once sailed alone for 309 days around both North and South America.
Rutherford completed the impressive circumnavigation two years before the ghost trip saga, heading out in a 27-foot sailboat in 2011.
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After departing from Chesapeake Bay, USA, Rutherford sailed north towards Canada before navigating the treacherous waters of the notorious Northwest Passage. He then sailed down through the Pacific, turning at Chile's Cape Horn before heading back up to his starting point in Annapolis, Maryland.
Now, of course, Rutherford's trip sounds relatively straightforward to you or I when written down, but this would be a huge understatement when it comes to the magnitude of his accomplishment.
After all, your journey wouldn't be branded a 'suicide mission' for nothing.
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The expedition would later be the subject of documentary Red Dot on the Ocean: The Matt Rutherford Story.
Watch the trailer below:
The film captures Rutherford's story and life as a 'self-taught' sailor as well as revealing some of the astonishing video footage recorded from his death-defying voyage.
Perhaps the most dangerous part of the trip involved travelling through the Northwest Passage due to the harsh weather and the risk of floating icebergs or finding yourself run aground in the freezing wilderness.
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"When Matt Rutherford took off I thought he was a crazy man," sailor and journalist Herb McCormick says in one clip, before the footage cuts to Rutherford explaining how he was completely surrounded by icebergs at one point.
"You realise before you leave that you die," he adds in a later interview. "You realise you might not come back when you leave the dock."
The trip would go on to win Rutherford two Guinness World Records, one for the first non-stop solo circumnavigation of the Americas and the other for being in the smallest boat to travel through the Northwest Passage.
Not a bad turn of events for a trip which had been written off by so many!