The usual suspects, Betao Pandiani from Brazil and Igor Belly from France, completed the last leg of their journey from Chile to Australia in a modified beach cat. OZ catsailors might be interested to know that the cat is for sale in Bundaberg, probably to save the freight cost.

For those who don't remember, their last adventure was the first crossing of Drake's Strait in a beach cat (or any open boat), from Cape Horn to Antarctica. Their last one in the US was a few years ago when they slightly extended the Tybee 500 and went on sailing to Greenland.

More information is available here and here

Beto is the MAN.

The Bundaberg newspaper The News Mail published an article on them last Monday. Beto and Igor apparently have a film crew doing a documentary on their travels but Australian media is not being contacted as far as I can determine.
I was told they were staying just three days before flying out so they may have gone home already. No word on a sale of their cat

Scan of article here :

http://s136.photobucket.com/albums/q183/hihosilver1953/?action=view&current=BBBSAtoOZcopy.jpg

Still chasing metro and regional media to see if they are giving or can give coverage to the story. Major media have no word on the trip and find it difficult to get onto Beto and Igor who were keeping a low profile. Am not sure they are still here and haven't flown out

The information that they would sell the cat was just a detail in a post from a well known sailing reporter (Murillo Novaes) in a discussion group. The post cited as source the person responsible for covering the trip, but you know how things are, people plan one way then change their minds, one never knows.

Have they flown out already? I was hoping the local radio and TV would cover them after I gave several the tip off but the story has died. We had national media coverage of two guys who paddled a purpose built kayak to New Zealand. This story blows that one away completely and was why I hoped Bundaberg and then national media would go with the story.

I don't know. The issue with press coverage is because their sponsors are mainly interested in the Brazilian market, so they probably didn't make a real effort to receive local coverage. They are making a DVD (for sale), appear on TV shows, etc., as usual.

Can you pass on to their organisors and management team they are idiots for not grabbing a magnificent opportunity, one going absolutely begging, to gain Australian and very probably World Wide media attention.

Just one call to any national Australian media agency would have meant free coverage

This adventure if given decent public relations could have had flotillas of Australian media boats and news helicopters/aircraft tracking their every movement from hundreds of kilometres out to sea to the coast and their arrival on land.

Australian media would have outbid each other and paid BIG dollars for exclusive coverage. We could have had daily coverage of them as they sailed closer to Queensland which the networks would have passed onto global networks BBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, Reuters.

This story is one marketing/PR gurus would give their all to grab and run with.

The sponsors could have the opportunity to generate Free publicity and world wide sales not just to Brazilian domestic markets.

pay/cable networks would love this story and benefit from any world media attention it garnered.

Excuse my frustration, but after three decades in media/PR I can't believe this story failed to gain the world wide coverage it deserves.

Absolutely, I'll try to post your exact words in their blog.

I guess the only explanation would be if they sold all the rights to a movie or TV producer as they did in some other adventures. In this case their relation with the media could be limited by contract.

Now that I think of it, they got extremely thin coverage in Brazil as well. If the reason is not the sale of rights, there must be some other reason. Those guys are professionals and know how to market their "product".

Done. Let's wait for a reply.