I had long hoped to make a film about my Pacific row to help me get across my environmental message, so I was delighted to find the perfect film partner in Bill Chayes. As well as being an all-round great guy, he shares my vision for an environmental documentary, loosely based around my rowing adventures, that we can market on both sides of the Atlantic. … Continued
Monthly Archives: June 2008
Day 36: Sometimes I Sits And Thinks?
.and sometimes I just sits. Today I have mostly just sat – and that in itself is a rare treat. For anybody. The world is an increasingly hectic place, and we all seem to be so busy, busy, busy doing I’m-not-sure-what – that just sitting and doing nothing is a dying art. I certainly can’t remember the last time I did it. Maybe one Sunday … Continued
Day 35: Welcome To My World Part 5 – Ocean Nights
The last part of my mini-series on a day in the life of an ocean rower. Today – nights. Or more specifically, sleeping, or what passes for it on the ocean. Back in 2000-2001 I lived for 18 months in New York’s Greenwich Village (West 11th and Bleecker, if you want to know), regularly commuting between there and London. Something about all the transatlantic travel … Continued
Day 34: No Emergency Exit
Further to the watermaker issue, somebody suggested that maybe I should abandon my voyage. With apologies and all due respect to that person, this really made me smile. As I said in the podcast yesterday morning, this is not like a big city marathon, where I could just decide, “Hey, this isn’t going so well, maybe ocean rowing isn’t the sport for me after all” … Continued
Day 33: Waterworld
Today I ran a performance test on my emergency standby watermaker. Maybe it should have been a clue that the guy in the picture on the instruction booklet is sitting in a liferaft, and that the watermaker is called the “Survivor 06″ (message to Chris Rosamond – yes, the one you hoped it wasn’t!). This contraption really is designed just to keep you alive, and … Continued
Day 32: Welcome To My World Part 4 – Food
Today, my favourite subject: food. But first, a favour. I want you all to really, really enjoy your food while I am out here. Appreciate its freshness, its variety, the fact that you can go to the supermarket and buy just about anything, you can even go to a restaurant and have something special. You can have ice cream and other frozen treats. You can … Continued
Day 31: The Meaning of Freedom
This is a future-dated blog entry, posted the night before my launch on 24th May. It is an interview with my old friend Will Stockland, for Oxford’s Romulus magazine. THE FREEDOM OF THE OCEAN. AN INTERVIEW WITH ROZ SAVAGE: ROWER, WRITER, AND MARINE ENVIRONMENTAL CAMPAIGNER. Roz Savage left a successful career in the City of London as a management consultant to pursue her dream of … Continued
Day 30: The Watermaker is Dead. R.I.P.
Bad news today. I cannot get the watermaker to work. It ran well on Friday, then sputtered to a halt after a minute or so on both Saturday and Sunday, and today again gave up the attempt after a short and feeble effort. I spent a couple of hours alternating phone calls to Darren at Spectra Watermakers, and head down in the watermaker hatch. I … Continued
Day 29: A Special Guest Blog
My Pacific row is a project of the Blue Frontier Campaign, a US-based nonprofit that focuses on supporting grassroots (aka seaweed) efforts to preserve the oceans, and organizes forums to build consensus and collaboration amongst other organizations involved in marine conservation. Today I am honoured to feature a special guest blog written by David Helvarg, the President and Founder of the Blue Frontier Campaign, and … Continued
Day 28: Growing Gills
Four weeks out here already. Time flies when you’re having fun, hey?! If I’d written that after my first month on the Atlantic, it would have had a distinct whiff of sarcasm. The first month of the Atlantic Rowing Race was one of the most stressful, terrifying and depressing I had ever experienced. I was on a huge emotional rollercoaster, over-reacting to every change in … Continued