YACHTING

5,500 kilometers with a Canadian canoe

L'Auto announced that Lieutenant George Smith, a young Canadian who wants to go to Rome by canoe, has arrived in London. He has already been in an Indian canoe made of cedar wood, 4.50 m long, 1.90 m wide, and weighing 24 kilos, from Sydney in the Cape Breton Islands (Nova Scotia) to New York, a distance of 1,350 nautical miles. He then continued his transatlantic journey and will start sailing in a canoe again.
He will go down the Thames, follow the coast to Dover, cross the Channel from Dover to Calais at its narrowest point and, from there, go via the Somme Canal, then via the Somme itself, the Oise and the Seine to Paris. From Paris, he will reach the Mediterranean using the network of canals in southern France, touching Dijon, Lyon, Valencia and Marseille. From there, following the coast, he will go to the Tiber to moor his boat, as he says, "in the shadow of the Castel Sant'Angelo". This represents about 1,700 miles. When he reaches Rome, he will have traveled more than 3,000 nautical miles (5,560 km) by canoe.

Since his departure, Lieutenant Smith has found himself in storms several times. Thus it took him seven days to cross the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where he encountered waves twelve meters high. He had to throw off a hundred kilos of provisions to lighten the boat.

Later, on the coast of New Brunswick, he remained at sea for 52 hours, trapped in a thick fog. When the fog cleared, he found that he was under a lighthouse, wet to the skin, hungry and dead from sleep. The lighthouse keepers gave him hospitality. He arrived in New York by way of the Great Lakes region. He spent 43 days sailing. effective from Nova Scotia to New York.

The young officer is very proud of his canoe, "the most beautiful in the world," he says. He had it built before his eyes and had these words painted on it: "From Sydney (Nova Scotia) to Rome, via New York, London and Paris."

During his voyage, he ate canned meat; he drank only cold coffee and tea.