Speaking at National Geographic in Washington DC last October

I’ve got some big important presentations coming up – three for National Geographic and one for TED’s Mission Blue, and I’m determined to do a good job. Apart from a bit of rowing, these are possibly the biggest events in my 2010.

But I’m having a quandary about which way to go with my visuals. Yesterday I watched these two TED videos in search of inspiration:

Ben Saunders skis to the North Pole

Lewis Pugh swims the North Pole

They have two very different styles, and I’m not sure which one works best.

Lewis’s style is more like what I’ve done in the past, keeping the speaking and the video as two very separate components. This is how I’ve always used video – as an opportunity to take a break in the presentation, and allow the video to do the speaking for me.

But National Geographic have suggested that they want me to do their presentation more Ben-style, with me commentating over short clips of video, and keeping the video fairly raw, without captions or music.

In favour of the Lewis approach is that at the moment it is more like what I am used to.

But in favour of the Ben approach is that it is more similar to what National Geographic want, so I will be rehearsing that style more over the coming weeks, and it may be less confusing for my brain if I use a similar style for both presentations.

Another factor is that the National Geographic presentation is significantly longer – around 60 minutes – compared with a strict limit of 18 minutes at TED. So you could argue that different approaches would work better in the different contexts.

So I’m opening this for comments. Which you think is more effective? If you were coming to either of the presentations, and I hope that some of you are), which would you prefer to see?

P.S. I hear that the National Geographic presentations in Seattle are nearly sold out – 2,500 tickets per performance. So move quickly if you plan on coming!

Map showing tracks of typhoons in 2009

Further to my blog about the perils of adverse winds and inconveniently-placed islands in the Western Pacific, I sat down and browsed through the wind patterns for the various months of the year on the COGOW website – and thought I’d found a solution. November to February looked just lovely – nice winds out of the East, whisking me gently towards Australia.

So I emailed Lee Bruce, my weatherman (not to be confused with Bruce Lee, who is somebody else entirely). And found out why he had not suggested this alternative. It’s typhoon season. About 5 cyclones near my route each season.

His understated opinion on this was: “Lots of possibilities when it comes to TCs. Waves can be 5m to 10+m, and changeable depending on your location and the cyclone’s movement and strength. Although the storm that hit Pink Lady [another rowing expedition routed by Lee, that ended rather dramatically] was not a hurricane in the strict meteorological definition, it was like tangling with a CAT 1 cyclone. So there’s enough to worry about with TCs, and I would lean toward avoiding that season if you can.”

Bruce Lee. Not my weatherman.

Ah.

I was almost tempted – which would I prefer? 100 days of frustration and discomfort, or 90 days of fair conditions + about 10 days of abject terror, spent strapped to my bunk as my boat rolls around in 30 foot waves. An interesting philosophical question that might reflect on general attitudes to life – which would you prefer? The crazy rollercoaster ride, or the constant grind?

But I suppose safety must come first. So typhoon season is best avoided, no matter how unappealing the alternative.

So it’s a big NO to typhoons – although a tycoon or two would be handy right now, as my fundraising endeavours continue to yield precious little.

During my interview with Anne Dujmovic of CNET in Portland last week, she asked me one of the best questions I’ve ever heard. Referring to a story in my book about my selection to the stroke seat of the Oxford Lightweights crew, she asked if I feel like I am now in the stroke seat of my life.

Yes, I do – and the more I thought about her question, the more I loved the metaphor.

Me in the stroke seat of the Oxford Lightweights, 1989

In a racing crew, the job of the rower in the stroke seat is to set the rhythm for the rest of the crew. The ideal stroke sets a steady, powerful rhythm, that enables the rest of the crew to perform at their best.

When you watch the Oxford/Cambridge Boat Race, the face you see most is that of the stroke. You catch glimpses of the Number 7, but most of the rest of the crew is hidden behind this stern pair. But they all have their jobs to do, and are all necessary parts of the crew. Seats 5 and 6 are often referred to as the power house seats – these are where the biggest, strongest rowers usually sit. Seats 3 and 4 are also power seats, although usually slightly smaller and possibly less experienced than 5 and 6. Bow and 2 are the technical seats – put a rough rower in either of these seats and they will knock the boat off-balance and make life uncomfortable for everybody, so these rowers have to be neat and precise.

Even though the stroke might be the most visible face, they can’t do what they do without the complete support of the rest of the crew. A good stroke can’t make a bad crew good, although a bad stroke can turn a good crew bad.

And the coxswain? The little guy who sits in the stern of the boat, who keeps the boat on course and exhorts the crew to do their best. The cox is the strategist, the “brains” of the boat, who knows just when to call for a push for ten, and when to ease back. A good cox knows how to motivate the crew, just what to say and when, to get the maximum performance out of them. And he will take advice from the stroke, who provides feedback on how the crew is feeling.

So in our community here on this blog, I suppose I am in the stroke seat. I set the pace, and the other members of the community (you!) back me up. I couldn’t do what I do without you being there, pulling for me. Occasionally somebody catches a crab (rowing terminology for when a rower catches their oar in the water and the handle whips round, knocking them flat, or even sending them flying clean out of the boat). Even the stroke can catch a crab. It can happen to anybody, and brings the boat to a messy halt. But then we get our oars sorted out, get the ejected rower back on board, and get the boat moving again.

We are at our most effective when we are all pulling in the same direction, our movements synchronised, and the boat lifts and flies across the water. Everybody moving in unison. We are poetry in motion.

And the coxswain? The voice that provides us with motivation, and keeps us on course, and urges us to be the best that we can be?

Well, I leave it up to you to decide how to apply that part of the metaphor. Interpret according to your own inclinations.

And of course, this is just in the context of this community. You are also in the stroke seat in your own community, your office, your family, your organisation. It’s all about teamwork, and each of us doing what we can to rally and focus action towards progress.

If we all pull together, we CAN save the world!

See those little dots in the top right? That's Tarawa. And all those arrows pointing northwest? That's bad news!

These were almost the first words that my new weatherman, Lee Bruce, uttered when we met for the first time on a Skype call last week. What he means is that the winds between Tarawa and Australia make it impossible to get from one to the other. As Australia is my stated destination, this was bad news.

I knew that I had my work cut out this year, especially as last year I’d had to make landfall in Tarawa rather than my first choice of Tuvalu. Tuvalu, which lies about 660 miles south of Tarawa, would have set me up better for this year’s row, but it was a big gamble to try and make it there. My watermaker had broken, so I had no way of generating fresh drinking water. I was living off my limited reserves of water ballast, so the potential downside of missing Tuvalu was too big a risk to ignore. Death from dehydration in mid-Pacific was not an appealing prospect.

So Tarawa it was, but as Lee so succinctly put it, this has put me in a very difficult starting position for this year.

If you look at the wind chart left, you can see the problem. Once I pass the Solomon Islands and get into the Coral Sea (the green and yellow area) the winds pick up. And they are all out of the southeast.

What this means is that while I am rowing, I will always be rowing beam-on to the waves, which is not fun. And whenever I stop rowing (for eating, sleeping, podcasting or blogging) I will be blown off course.

Me with Mick Bird in 2007, poring over charts in Dog River Coffee, Hood River, Oregon

But there is some good news. Sometimes, just sometimes, the wind in Tarawa comes out of the north, or even north-northwest. If I can set out into such a wind, I can make some useful southerly progress before the unhelpful southeast winds kick in again.

And other people have managed to make it. Looking at the stats, Mick Bird rowed from the Marshall Islands to Cairns via the Solomons in 1999. The Marshall Islands are west and north of Tarawa, so are an even worse starting point than mine. I’ll be seeing Mick Bird next week in Vancouver, WA, so will be interrogating him to find out just how he managed it.

Jason Lewis pedalled from Tarawa to Australia in 2000, although they had to be towed the last stretch in order to reach an official Australian port of entry. (See Solomons leg and Coral Sea Crossing in his online logbook.)

Last week I exchanged a few emails with Jason, and he had this to say: “I was considering altering course for Thursday Island in the Torres Straits to clear customs and Immigration. As I’m sure you know, Cairns is the nearest such venue to the south, and the Aussies are sticklers for mariners entering via designated ports. They will come to you if pushed, but they’ll charge you arm and a leg (Cooktown, a mere 200 miles from Cairns, would have cost something like seven grand US).”

So as if the navigational and meteorological challenges weren’t great enough, apparently there could be a financial challenge too. If I have to be towed to Cairns, that will cost me. But if I land anywhere other than at a designated port of entry, that will cost me too. And if I land up on Thursday Island, that will also have financial implications. My boat ends up in a very inconvenient place, so if I decide to go ahead and do the Indian Ocean (which is still very much under discussion, but won’t be decided until/unless I get to Australia) I would have to get my boat shipped from Thursday Island to the Australian mainland.

At the moment I have raised only $5,000 of my bare-bones budget of $20,000, let alone the $100,000 I had really hoped for. So getting clobbered for any of these extra expenses would be way beyond my means.

There are many possible scenarios. Australia, Thursday Island, Papua New Guinea… PNG would be the easiest to get to, as it lies downwind from Tarawa. That’s where Erden Eruc ended up after 331 days at sea in 2009. No doubt by then any piece of dry land looked pretty good. I’ve got nothing against PNG – but it’s not where I said I was going. And I like to deliver on my commitments as nearly as I can.

So I will try for Australia, but I wanted to manage your expectations. It’s not impossible – just nearly.

Other Stuff:

Interesting metaphor here. The further off course I go, the harder it is to get back on track. Ecologically, are we getting ourselves into a situation where we can’t get there from here?

Private Property: an oxymoron?

These words of Chief Seattle, sent to me by cherished member of the Rozling community – Naomi of New York, who found them whilst browsing for a beginner’s yoga class – resonated deeply with me. Some of you might already have seen them when she posted them in a comment on my blog, but I wanted to make sure that they were also seen by those who get my blog by email rather than checking in at rozsavage.com.

These words seemed to appear at precisely the right moment. During the last couple of months I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationship that humans have with the Earth. My cogitations have been given sharp focus by my two major upcoming speaking engagements, for National Geographic and at a one-off ocean-themed TED conference in the Galapagos. The latter, especially, has become a kind of existential quest. 18 minutes to present my message to the world. So who am I? What am I here for? What is the point of being me? Deep stuff. Important and energising, but also ever-so-slightly mind-boggling. This is part of the reason that my blogs have been rare and superficial. There has been a lot going on in my head, but during this formative period I’ve needed to keep myself to myself, until my thoughts are more fully formed.

And a lot of my thoughts have revolved around the interconnectedness of everything. No matter what your stance on climate change (and I become more and more reluctant to engage with that politically-loaded pair of words) there can be little doubt that we are changing the face of this planet as we resort to ever more extreme methods to extract the natural resources laid down many millennia ago. I am no scientist, but from a purely common-sense standpoint I cannot see how our current path can be sustained for more than a few decades – at most.

Two key questions are:

Do we have unique status?

Or are we just another animal?

My belief is that the answer to both is YES.

Yes, we are unique. We have free will. We have the ability to see into the future. We have amazing minds – and the ability to change the entire appearance of our habitat, in ways that are visible even from space.

But yes, we are also just another animal. When I am on the ocean I am keenly aware of this. Sure, I have GPS, satellite phone, and a supposedly unsinkable boat. But the ocean has no respect for my hopes, dreams, and schedules. Out there I am completely subject to the laws of physics and/or nature. There is no “conquering” of oceans – if the ocean is gracious enough to allow me to pass safely, then I am grateful. But it cares no more that I am a human than if I were a piece of plastic trash.

Anyway, enough of my existential angst. Over to Chief Seattle, who allegedly spoke thus in 1854 (and no matter the provenance of the speech – see notes at end – see if it resonates with you):

A contemporary photograph

“The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? The land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water how can you buy them?

“Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people.

“We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man, all belong to the same family.

“The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each ghostly reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water’s murmur is the voice of my father’s father.

“The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give to the rivers the kindness you would give any brother.

“If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell you our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers.

“Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth.

“This we know the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

“One thing we know our God is also your God. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.

“Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills is blotted by talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is it to say goodbye to the swift pony and the hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.

“When the last Red Man has vanished with his wilderness, and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? Will there be any of the spirits of my people left?

“We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother’s heartbeat. So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land for all children and love it, as God loves us all.

“As we are part of the land, you too are part of the land. This earth is precious to us. It is also precious to you. One thing we know there is only one God. No man, be he Red Man or White Man, can be apart. We are brothers after all.”

[Another version, with cautionary notes, is online here]

[Wikipedia link]

Early 2010 is a busy time: speaking engagements, a new eco-mission to develop, and an expedition to organise, pending my departure for Pacific III on April 15.

I do miss writing blogs about the state of the world and general musings on the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. And I will come back to my meaningful meanderings in due course. Truth is, there is a lot of musing going on, and much concern over the state of the world, but my thoughts are still gestating and I don’t want to go public prematurely. But the gestation period must soon end, as I’ve got a number of speaking engagements coming up so I need to have my act together. To continue the birthing metaphor, this baby is overdue and it’s time to induce.

Yes, my halcyon Hawaiian period of quiet contemplation (mixed in with a few interviews and business meetings) is about to end. Tonight I head for colder and higher climes in Colorado for the Vail Symposium. I’ll be doing a couple of TV interviews and a school presentation too – all in one day. Thursday Feb 4 is going to be a busy one.

More details on the Vail Symposium (lecture and after-party) available here.

Then up at the crack of dawn the next day to head to San Francisco for the San Francisco Ocean Film Festival. I’m starting to feel like quite a regular at this event, but this year will be a first, in that I actually have a film to show. Rowing The Atlantic will be screened on the afternoon of Friday Feb 5, followed by Q&A with me and the filmmaker, JB Benna of Journeyfilm.

Lots of other amazing aquatic films being shown too.

Presidio Yacht Club, Fort Baker, Sausalito

On Saturday Feb 6 I will be giving a brunch-time presentation at the Presidio Yacht Club, the point from which I embarked on my solo row from San Francisco to Waikiki in 2008. I set out at midnight, although it was getting on for 2am before I managed to clear the Golden Gate Bridge when the “slack tide” proved not to be quite as slack as a rower might have wished. It seemed like forever that I was looking up at the underside of the GGB, trying to get clear. The ecstasy of crossing that hurdle had me whooping and cheering like I’d crossed the finish line, rather than the start line of a 2,500 mile row….

Anyway, I hope that my presentation will not be a similar feat of endurance. The event starts at 10.30am, at the Presidio Yacht Club in Fort Baker, Sausalito. The presentation itself is free of charge. Brunch will be available at a cost of $10. The Rear Commodore is talking big talk of spinach quiche, fruit compote, sticky buns, juice, coffee, etc. If you would like to partake of this fine repast, please email [email protected] Books will be on sale afterwards for purchase and signing. Presidio Yacht Club presentation details here.

On Sunday night I’ll be meeting one-time resident of Kiribati, J Maarten Troost (author of Sex Lives of Cannibals), for dinner in Monterey, courtesy of Ocean Champions director David Wilmot and his wife Maureen. Maarten was a source of helpful information last year, when it became apparent that I was going to land up on Tarawa in Kiribati rather than my original target of Tuvalu.

After that I have a few smaller presentations at schools, book clubs, etc, pending a two-night gig for National Geographic in Seattle, on March 22-23.

National Geographic Endeavor

And the grande finale to my early 2010 speaker series will be a presentation at a special, one-off, ocean-themed TED in honour of Dr Sylvia Earle. A year ago she made a heartfelt plea on behalf of the oceans (watch the video here), and it won the TED Prize. So in April, a five-day TED conference focused on the many facets of the ocean will take place on Lindblad’s National Geographic Endeavor in the Galapagos Islands. Talks will be promoted through TED.com with a call to policy makers and citizens alike to create more marine protected areas. Although attendance on the ship will be strictly limited, all the presentations will be made available online afterwards. I’ve pushed back my departure date from Kiribati in order to be there.

Galapagos, oceans, TED – an invitation I simply couldn’t refuse!

Other Stuff:

I’ve been busy beefing up the Adventure section of my website. I was getting a lot of FAQs from aspiring ocean rowers, adventurers, and journalists, so it seemed best to put it all online for general reference. Not quite finished yet, but even now you’ll find some new stuff under the Adventure drop-down menu at rozsavage.com.

Just over 3 days left to go on the auction of Copenhagen memorabilia in the Savage eBay Store. For things such as a limited edition Climate Express umbrella, the baseball cap I wore for the walk from Big Ben to Brussels (which endured all kinds of weather but still glows as orange as ever), and a commemorative pack of United Nations playing cards, each with a personal story, check it out soon!