The 2020-2021 Vendee Globe Race set off last Sunday from Les Sables-d’Olonne, France. The 24,000 nautical miles race, sailed every four years, is billed as the world’s greatest singlehanded, non-stop, yacht race. Notwithstanding the impact of the global pandemic, this year’s race is notable for attracting the largest fleet in the history of the race. There are also more woman skippers than ever before, and even one couple sailing in competition with each other and the rest of the fleet.
Fleet Size and Makeup
Thirty-three IMOCA 60 (“Open 60”) sailing yachts crossed the starting line, the largest fleet in the history of the race which began in 1989 when 13 boats participating.
The Royal Navy 
It is often referred to as the 
Recently, two kayakers off California inadvertently got between a lunge feeding humpback whale and its lunch. Videos of the encounter show the whale surfacing between the yellow kayak, almost appearing to swallow the kayakers and their boat. Fortunately, neither the two kayakers nor the whale appears to have been injured.
In July 2017, 
A commuter train car careened off the end of elevated train tracks yesterday near Rotterdam in the Netherlands. It was saved from plunging more than 30 feet to the ground when it landed on the sculpture of a whale’s tail. It was indeed a fluke.
The fishermen knew. They told stories of swordfish using their eponymous swords to stab sharks and other large fish and mammals. Scientists, however, were skeptical. Recently, however, more than six dead sharks have washed up around the Mediterranean, all apparently stabbed, usually in the head, by swordfish.
Boaters were recently surprised to find a man working in a fully outfitted office on a raft anchored in New York’s East River. The office was the brainchild of 
On Halloween, it seems appropriate to look at the legend of the 
On October 29, 1815, 205 years ago yesterday, the