Persons older adventurers raft on the side of the Atlantic

Talk about your older browsers! British adventurer Anthony Smith, 85, and a senior citizen crew sailed their tiny raft, year-Tiki, some 3,000 miles from the Portugal of the Canary Islands in Saint-Martin in the Caribbean. They arrived this morning.

Smith and his crew of three men wanted to show that older people can do when they set their minds and hearts to it. The crossing is a feather again in the British traveller and author already festooned with feather hat. A young man, Smith crossed the Iran by motorcycle and, as a man simply of middle age, through Africa on a personal balloon. He is the author of 30 books and lives in London.

According to the adventure expedition News bulletin, escapde last Smith began more than three years ago, when he placed the following advertisement in a London newspaper, The Daily Telegraph: "Fancy rafting across the Atlantic?" Famous traveller requires 3 crew members. Must be PAO [old age pensioner]. Only serious adventurers. "He has received hundreds of enthusiastic responses to tired of gardening men and play at the bridge with their wives.

Smith has built a Tiki of polyethylene pipes, attached together. Forming the bridge. In the cabin, he used a pork prefab shelter. Sponsors of the trip included a company of pipe called GPS PE pipes. Said Jeff Blumenfeld, editor of the news of the expedition, "-Tiki has given new meaning of the term"pipe dream ". ?

The raft adventures included being surprised, Ocean, by a huge cargo which has "won us close enough," according to the blog of the crew. "But nobody had the thumbs out as she went to yesterday."

-Tiki collected on the road, including flying fish that jumped on the bridge at night, "a squid very interesting and very small," including the crew, after having admired, eaten breakfast of wildlife. The four men, whose youngest is 45, remain variously on the flying fish and peanut butter.

They used their passage to raise money for WaterAid, an established the poorest of the world to drinking water and sanitation better. A spokesman of WaterAid said that the new Anguilla as a Tiki had raised enough money for the Organization to improve the lives of hundreds of people around the world.

Name of the raft is a play on Kon-Tiki, a famous raft in which Norwegian Explorer and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl in 1947 sailed through the South American Pacific Polynesian Islands, to show that the ancient peoples would have the same trip. Book of Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki expedition is a huge bestseller. Smith is writing a book of his own on-Tiki. He already told crossing day after day, on its Web site.

Arriving in Saint-Martin, Smith said the new Anguilla travel has been the trip of a lifetime, and that he would miss, among other things, standing night watch in the mid-Atlantic. He said do not miss the stars and the light of the Moon, the noise of the wind and waves.