Wednesday, March 3, 2010

1990: Herald and freedom for Mandela

Now, I wonder which bits of this page A3 article - "Herald and supplies dropped to rower" - were written by NZPA, and which by the Herald staff reporter?

Transtasman rower Shaun Quincey had drinking water and two copies of the Herald dropped to him yesterday.

Quincey has been 42 days on the water, trying to become the first solo rower to complete the voyage between Australia and New Zealand.

A shortage of drinking water threatened to scupper his bid until Taupo rescue pilot John Funnell came to his rescue.

He flew a fixed wing aircraft on a nine-hour round trip from Taupo with emergency provisions including 38 litres of drinking water, coffee, two Heralds and a toothbrush.

Quincey had been in radio contact with them after the drop and was "delighted with it", said Mr Funnell. "He said to us 'You guys don't know what this means to me."'

[...] He was running dangerously low on water, with only four litres left. He said it was critical for supplies to be dropped to him if he was going to finish the mission.

- NZPA, staff reporter

Yes, it was good timing; he was also running low on toilet paper.

7 comments:

  1. Original NZPA article: http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/latest/6877720/emergency-rations-dropped-to-trans-tasman-rower/

    "He flew as fixed wing aircraft on a nine-hour round trip from Taupo with emergency provisions including 38 litres of drinking water, coffee, a newspaper and a toothbrush."

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  2. "Yes, it was good timing; he was also running low on toilet paper."

    There's enough shit on those pages already.

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  3. God, they're so insecure. "What, the newspaper was one of ours? Fuckin A! Someone still reads the Herald! Put it on A3!"

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  4. Completely agree with James W. Maybe they're trying to beat their own record of the number of times they can name-drop themselves in a week?

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  5. Why were there two copies? So that his seperate personalities could both complete the cryptic crossword? And if it was two different versions, surely the older one is instantly redundant. The only thing worse would have been giving him a gunrack...

    I get the feeling that this pilot just grabbed whatever reading material was floating around his staffroom. I think he could have done better. If you are going to take the time to collect 38 litres of water, then also take the time to nip off to Whitcoulls and buy the poor guy a copy of Malcolm Gladwell's back catalogue.

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  6. Wouldn't the fact there were two copies dropped to the oarsman support the "sanitary purposes" hypothesis?

    Considering the size of the average Herald edition, which might last most of us on normal diets some several weeks, I suspect the extra copy was in case he dropped it in the water and ended up with a few handfuls of soggy pulp.

    Be prepared: as the boy scouts say.

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  7. I suspect that soggy pulp Herald is better between the bum than dry coarse Herald. He's probably got enough bum rash from all that rowing.

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