A heavy duty Edson emergency manual pump and an abundance of determination saved the life, and the race, for single-handed Transatlantic sailor, Neal Petersen.

Petersen was competing in the 1996 Europe I Star, an annual single-handed race across the Atlantic, in his 40 foot home-built yacht, "Protect Our Sealife". Eleven days into the race a Russian freighter rammed the bow of Sealife, causing severe damage.

Seawater flooded the first of three water-tight compartments of the vessel. Petersen assessed the damage. First he tried a preplumbed manual bilge pump, but it could not handle the job. He also tried to repair the hull, but he was unsuccessful. He then remembered the heavy duty emergency hand pump that Edson International had given to him in a previous race. He bolted the Edson pump to the bulkhead and found it could move one gallon of water with each stroke, which cut the amount of time he had to pump to less than fifteen minutes per hour. It took 250-300 strokes to empty the compartment each time.

The Edson pump enabled Petersen to stay in the race. Said Petersen, "It was a tough decision ... the excessive demands it was placing on my Edson pump left me uneasy--the pump was my only assurance of making landfall."

"Protect Our Sealife" crossed the finish line on July 12, 1996 in third place beating his previous time by three days. "None of this would have been possible without that Edson pump", said an exhausted Petersen.

Download Data Sheet: PDS-165AL-30-99

Contact Petersen's Web Page for more details at http://www.no-barriers.com/