“It’s rare that an athlete turns pro and they have a business on Day 1,” Levy said. “We feel we have the luxury — and Katie feels this way, too — in being very strategic and trying to put together a plan first and then find the right partner companies that fit what she wants to do moving forward.”
In other words, Ledecky won’t race into partnerships for a quick paycheck. She’ll have some leverage and can seek long-term deals, perhaps looking for companies that might want to stick with her for the next Olympic cycle as well.
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The Sailing Page
Captain Cook, Alistair MacLean, c. 1972
James Cook: 1728 - 1779
Three global voyages:
- 1768 - 1771
- 1772 - 1775
- 1776 - 1779 (killed in Hawaii
Prologue
Nelson and Cook are the two most revered names in the annals of the Royal Navy.
Chapter 1: The Able Seaman
- the greatest combination of seaman, explorer, navigator and cartographer that the world has known
- born in 1728; obscure village in Yorkshire
- apprenticed to John and Henry Walker, shipowners, Whitby, specialized in the colliery trade
- participated in the US revolutionary war
- left Canada for the last time in 1767
Chapter 2: The Vanishing Continent
- to observe the passage of Venus between the sun and earth on 3 June 1769
- previous voyage, 1762, unsatisfactory to useless
- Royal Society now wanted to try it again
- but the real reason: Royal Navy's admiralty attempt to stifle French colonialism
- a third reason: at the time, a widely held belief that there was a very large continent in the southern hemisphere, a temperate continent that extended up almost to South America and New Zealand; occupied most of the south Pacific
- the Earl of Pembroke, a Whitby collier; renamed the Endeavor Bark, but no one ever called her anything but the Endeavor
- 100 souls on board
- plan to view the transit of Venus at Tahiti, which was fine, as long as Cook turned south to look for the big continent
- Plymouth to Madeira, September 13; to South America, to Cape Horn
- January 12, 1769: incredibly bleak desolation that is Tierra del Fuego
- through the Le Maire Strait and round Cape Horn
- April 13, 1769, eight months after leaving England, arrived at Tahiti
Chapter 3: Charting New Zealand
- Tahiti and transit of Venus
- six weeks at Tahiti
- then, the secret mission: to turn south -- go as far south as latitude 40 degrees in search of the Southern Continent
- 1,500 miles south; to 40 degrees south
- frustrated that nothing was found; Alexander Dalrymple's theory was badly dented
- then they spotted what was to be called New Zealand
- Cook knew it was New Zealand; New Zealand was known to exist but that was about all
- Tasman, the only other Pacific explorer who came anywhere near Cook's stature as a navigator and seaman, had visited New Zealand 126 years earlier -- epic voyage from Batavia in the Dutch East Indies, to the discovery of Tasmania -- Tasman assumed it was joined to Australia
- no one had seen New Zealand since Tasman
- Tasman did not circle New Zealand; did not know it was an island; did not even investigate the passage between North and South Island, now known as Cook Strait
- first Europeans to set foot on New Zealand; Tasman did not set foot on New Zealand; Maoris were unremittingly hostile
- Maoris still hostile
- Poverty Bay: three times Cook tried to stay on land; never successful; sailed away
- Cape Runaway
- the exploration and charting of New Zealand continues
- three ways home
- by way of Cape Horn -- long and dangerous passage; south side of Australia
- via the Cape of Good Hope -- not interested; had already been done by Tasman
- up eastern coast of Australia, west south of New Guinea, and south of Malaysia/Indonesia to Cape of Good Hope
- Bass Strait
- the Great Barrier Reef
- Batavia: Djakarta, after the Dutch lost control of the East Indies after WWII
- Cape Town, March 14, 1771
- arrives England, July 12, 1771
- upon return, Cook promoted to Commander and given command of the HMS Scorpion
- prepared for a new expedition to the South Seas
- still looking for that Southern Continent
- two more Whitby collier-type vessels purchased for the trip
- departed July 13, 1772, almost exactly one year later
- returned to England, July 30, 1775, after slightly more than three years
- it was, and still remains, the greatest voyage of exploration in history (this book was c. 1972, three years after Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, 1969)
- upon return, made a Fellow of the Royal Society
- given the Copley Gold Medal (advancement of health; scurvy)
- promoted to post-captain in command of HMS Kent, a 74-gun cruiser
- the Admiralty turned attention to the North-West Passage; had tried before
- 1742: a Swede serving in the Russian Navy, had established that a strait existed between Asia and what is now known as Alaska
- two-pronged attack: one from the Atlantic Ocean; one from the Pacific Ocean
- the Atlantic approach: the frigate Lion
- the Pacific approach: the Resolution and the Discovery (a new one, another Whitby collier)
- July 12, 1776, four years after the end of the previous voyage; set sails for the Pacific
- to Tahiti
- to the Friendly Islands in April; remained there until mid-July, 1777; stayed there because the Admiralty set the date for the Atlantic prong to meet up with the Pacific prong in the summer of 1778
- December 7, 1777: discovers a new island; names it Christmas Island
- January 18, 1778: sighted Hawaii -- Cook called them the two westernmost islands the Sandwich Islands after his friend, patron and First Lord, the Earl of Sandwich -- but they are now known as the Hawaiian Islands
- February 2, 1778: headed northeast for New Albion -- the west coast of North America; reached it March 6, 21778, between the 44th and 45th parallel
- due to foul weather missed both the mouth of the Columbia River and Juan de Fuca Strait, which leads up to present city of Vancouver
- up to Alaska
- unable to find the North-West Passage; ice setting in
- returned to the Sandwich Islands, arriving there October 24, 1778
- Cook deified by the Hawaiians upon his arrival
- but problems arose
- Cook taken prisoner by the Hawaiians
- clubbed/killed by Koa, the high priest
- Cook was 50 years old
- buried at sea, February 22, 1779
- the Resolution and the Discovery tried on more time to find the North-West Passage; unsuccessful
- returned to England, October 4, 1780
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