Scientists drown sailors in the name of science
At the Extreme Environments Lab in the north of England, elite sailors are quite literally thrown in the deep end, undergoing harrowing survival training in a pool as close to the Southern Ocean as you'll find under one roof.
"I think for quite a lot of them it's all a bit of a game to start with — they're all jumping in the pool and having a bit of a laugh," Alistair Hackett, who runs the three-day advanced sea survival course at South Tyneside College in Newcastle, told CNN. "Then we turn the waves on. Then we turn the rain on and it's pretty severe — you can't really breathe properly with it hitting your face. Then we turn the wind on and all of a sudden it's not quite like going to your local swimming pool anymore."
Shirley Robertson, a two-time Olympic gold medal winning sailor turned broadcaster, recently underwent the grueling testing for an in-depth report for CNN.
