Kitesurfers To Cross From Alaska to Russia

A team of kitesurfers from Europe landed in Nome, Alaska, this week and are en route this weekend to the tiny town of Teller where they will set up base camp and prepare to make a world record: kiteboarding across the Bering Sea, a 56 mile stretch of Pacific Ocean between Alaska and Russia.
This is the Maurice Lacroix Bering Strait Expedition's second year attempting the record. The Bering Strait has a reputation for foul weather and last year even the calmer summer months of July and August proved unrelenting. Alaskan fishers of course are all too familiar with this type of ocean turbidity.
Deadliest Catch
Still the kitesurfing team is hoping to try again, though rough seas are already testing their mettle. The barge with their chase-boats had to wait two days in deeper water for storm waves to pass, before it could safely enter the Nome harbor.
"It’s Mother Nature playing havoc with our schedules," reported Swiss kitesurfer Geza Scholtz on the team's daily blog. The three kitesurfers on the team who will work together and with their safety crew during the crossing are Geza and his brother, Andre Scholtz, and entrepreneur Constantin Bisanz of Austria, founder of an online shopping club with operations in multiple European countries.

WIDE ANGLE: Bering Sea
“For this risky expedition, the focus lies on team spirit, trust, and the desire to overcome extreme obstacles, but it is also fun. The same goes for my business challenges – founding and establishing companies,” Bisanz said in a press release.
Early this year, for $220 million, Ebay acquired Bisanz's German company brands4friends, earning him the title "German Entrepreneur of the Year" from the Harvard Business School Association.
Now Bisanz and the Scholtz brothers face near-freezing water temperatures and a crossing they expect will take six to eight hours. From Nome the team is driving their equipment to Teller, population 180, where they will see first hand how the body of water they face is acting this time of year.
With luck they will have winds strong enough to ferry them across the strait, but not too strong to keep them stuck on shore. Maybe something like this: