Today has felt like rather an eventful day – which is a good thing. The ocean can be a very monotonous place, especially when seen from the surface on a slow-moving rowboat.

It started with my first marine megafauna sighting. At about 8am today a whale came to check me out. He announced his presence by blowing out loudly through his blowhole, and proceeded to surface 4 or 5 times around my boat – at one point no more than 6 feet from my stern.

I wish I could tell you what kind of whale he was, but he showed only his dorsal fin – I didn’t see either his head or his tail – which makes identification rather difficult. I’d estimate he was about 15 feet long – just big enough to make me a little nervous during his closer investigations of my boat.

Later this morning I was on the satphone to record our weekly podcast with Dr Kiki Sanford at TWiT.tv. Our special guest this week was my weatherman, Lee Bruce. It’s not easy being a weatherman – from what I’ve seen mariners have a tendency to shoot the messenger, as if the weatherman had willed bad weather on them rather than just reporting the inevitable results of meteorological phenomena – but today I was able to thank Lee for some perfect conditions. After yesterday’s monsoon today has been gorgeous – bright and breezy with only a couple of showers late afternoon.

So after several days of trying and failing, the conditions finally allowed me to make it past 1 degree south – cause for a celebratory Larabar (love the new peanut butter and choc chip flavour!).

Tonight was the first night since I set out that the moon has not risen before I retired to the cabin. There were still a lot of dark clouds around, with just a few stars peeking out, so it is a very dark night until the moon rises in an hour or so. The extreme darkness, plus the rougher waters, plus my book getting to a part where a psychiatrist is teetering on the brink of a nervous breakdown, all conspired to make me feel a little off-kilter. So I’m quite relieved to be back in my cosy cabin.

So all in all it’s been a slightly unusual day. Mostly good, and I’m happy to be a bit further south after losing significant ground last night. All’s well that ends well.

Other stuff:

My TED presentation is now live on YouTube. I don’t have the URL here, but if you google on my name and TED Mission Blue YouTube, I’m sure you’ll manage to find it. Apparently some very nice comments have been posted so far, which is a relief. I was such a bundle of nerves – very unlike me – that I can’t really remember what I said, but it seems I must have made some sense!

Too bad they edited out the bit where I had to retrieve my notes from my bra. But probably just as well. Jennifer – I had never heard of “swiss army tits” before, but it’s a great phrase! Well, what else is a girl to do when she has no pockets…?!

No Alf sightings today. That is 2 days now since I saw either of my stowaways. Getting worried that they may be deceased. Defunct. Ex-spiders.

Huge thanks to all the people who have already contributed to the foundation fundraiser. Sorry that I don’t have a list of your individual names, but please know that I am very grateful and can’t wait until we have enough funds to start nurturing the next generation of life adventurers.

To contribute, please click on the Go Roz Go contest button in the top right of my website. We are now up to 1839.00 in our fundraiser thanks to all our donors. We have had donations from $1000.00 to $1.00, no donation is too small or too big. Every donation helps so please Chip In!

So Doug from California, you think I won’t make it until September? I’d better paddle harder!

Richard in Austin – great to hear from you! Hmm, not sure the Nauru song was one of your best – but as you say, maybe some warming up is necessary while you dust off the old vocal chords!

Thanks for the info on Nauru. Hmm, don’t think I’ll rush to go there. Am still sifting through the feedback on the “past vs present” question, but am about to time out on limit of discomfort here in cabin, and still have to try and clip shot of whale from video, so am going to stop here.

[Photos: 1) whale 2) today's cloud pic for NASA S'COOL project]

Today, to my immense regret, I finished listening to Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon. I will miss the soft Scottish accents, and am already pining for the dashing Jamie Fraser, surely one of the most pantingly sexy heroes ever to grace the pages (bytes?) of an audiobook.

The main character in the book, Claire, is on holiday with her husband in the Scottish Highlands in 1945, celebrating the end of the war, when she slips through a time portal and finds herself in 1741. At one point in the book she has to decide whether to stay in 1741 or whether to return to her own time. I won’t spoil it by telling you which she decides.

It made me wonder why we (some of us, anyway) love historical novels so much, and if we secretly yearn for a less complicated time.

Let’s look at the pros of the respective eras.

NOW:
- Modern medicine
- Sanitation
- Education for all
- Comfort, heating and air conditioning
- Rapid travel
- Greater social and geographical mobility
- Easy access to food and clean water
- Better justice and legal systems (e.g. no witchcraft trials)
- Technology (mobile phones, computers, etc)

THEN:
- Less hurried pace of life
- Closer to nature – and more nature to be close to
- Stronger social and family structures

Hmm, I’m struggling. There’s definitely something appealing about historical times, but either this is nostalgia for a world that never actually existed, or I’m just not managing to put my finger on what it is we are yearning for. On the face of it, it seems we are so much better off now than we were then.

But really, how much happier are we?

So I have 3 questions for you:

1. Would you rather live now, or live then?

2. If you’d prefer then, what is it about that era that appeals to you?

3. How can we combine the best of the past with the best of the present, to create the best possible future?

Okay, these are rather big questions, especially the last one. But I’d be really interested to hear your views. Don’t worry if you don’t have an answer to (3) – even feedback on (1) and (2) would be very interesting to me.

My next book promises to be rather different – “Red Mars”, by Kim Stanley Robinson. It’s about the colonisation of Mars, and starts in 2026. All this zipping around between the centuries (not to mention planets) is getting quite dizzying.

Other Stuff:

After days of relentless sunshine, this morning was overcast and this afternoon brought torrential rain. Always too much of something. Ooh, and as I was typing this, I heard a huge rumble of thunder. Maybe I’m best off hanging out in the cabin for a wee bit longer.

No sign of Alf today. Neither Alf I or Alf II. They’re hiding from the rain if they’ve got any sense.

Hello and goodbye Nauru. I passed about 20 miles to the south of it today. Couldn’t see it, especially in all the rain and murk. I don’t know anything about Nauru – can anybody enlighten me with a few facts?

Thanks for the feedback on the moonbow. Glad I wasn’t just seeing things. Always good to get a sanity check once in a while out here.

Hi to Sybil, Nick, Bill, Matthew, Dave, Gigi, Paul, Ellen, Joan, Stan, Rachel and Ken. Thanks for your comments – and your support!

And thanks especially to UncaDoug for the trail of carrot$ strewn across the Pacific. Joan – have alerted Nova to the wonky Widget. Thanks for issuing the rallying cry for the foundation fundraiser. It’s important to me so I hope that this summer we can make big strides towards making it happen.

Steve – StarWalk is my favourite iPhone app for starspotting, but my phone is staying safe and sound in its waterproof bag for the duration of my crossing!

Special thanks today to Lemon Lady Karen Morss for the lovely jams and marmalades, made from her own fruit and made in her own kitchen. I had some of the plum jam today with crackers and some very average cheese I bought in Tarawa. The jam made up for the deficiencies in the cheese. And thanks for the inspiring quotes too, Karen – much appreciated!

Today ended in rather discombobulating fashion. The wind decided to start pirouetting round all the points of the compass, and to kick up to around 18 knots at times, then die away to nothing. This capriciousness made steering very difficult. On more than one occasion when I took a snack break I returned to the oars to find the boat had done a full 180 about-turn. It was most disconcerting to find the sun or the moon on the wrong side of the boat.

I’ve tried various steering mechanisms over the years. On the Atlantic I had foot steering but found it awkward to row with my foot cocked at a strange angle. For the first stage of the Pacific I experimented with an autopilot, but it wasn’t robust enough to stand up to conditions on board. During my unintentional capsize drills of 2007 the autopilot ended up split down the side with its O ring hanging out like disembowelled intestines.

So I have ended up with the simplest of all steering mechanisms – two bits of string tied to the rudder and trained through eyelets back into the cockpit. usually this is all I need – it’s not a big deal to stop rowing and correct the course when you only have to do it once a day, if that. But it’s a bit more of a pain when the wind decides to dance the docie-doe (spelling?!) all around me. Let’s hope it’s back to better behaviour tomorrow.

Other Stuff:

Alf the spider ran up my leg today. He’s quite pretty actually, with nice black and white markings.

The birds are back in town. I came out on deck this morning to find about 6 noddies in residence. At least they poop less prolifically than boobies, although there was still a distinct aroma of guano about the boat today.

Abigail – thanks for the cartoon! Mum had to describe it for me, as she couldn’t send it, but I absolutely get it. SO true! I know there is so much interesting wildlife out there (although sadly not as much as there used to be) but it’s all down there and I’m up here and rarely do the twain meet!

If you haven’t checked out my eBay store recently, please do. I know Carina has been hard at work adding new items for sale – including the e-book of my Atlantic blogs, the raw material on which my book was based. The e-book also includes photos, the official race press releases, and notes from my mother. And it’s an absolute bargain at $4.25! (I think, but working from memory here – anyway, I remember it was incredibly cheap!)

[photo: another blue, blue day]

Is it possible to have a moonbow? Like a rainbow, but created by the light of a bright moon rather than by the sun? If so, I think I’ve seen one tonight. But maybe it was just my eyes playing tricks on me.

It’s a beautiful night. Dead calm – just the slightest rolling swell on the ocean. Above, cumulus clouds encircle my boat, while the sky directly overhead is completely clear, as if the clouds are shying away from the brighness of the moon. It’s nearly a full moon, and it’s highlighting the stacked piles of cumulus in dramatic monochrome. A sprinkling of silver reflections dapples the black ocean waters.

A few silent birds were flitting around my boat, as if wanting to roost here for the night, but lacking the courage to make a landing.

And on the western horizon, where some rainclouds were lurking, it really did look like a moonbow. An arc, darker above and lighter below, and maybe just a hint of colour. If anybody can tell me if this is a known phenomenon, I’d love to know.

Other stuff:

I think today was the hottest day yet. I didn’t take a temperature reading, but with the complete lack of wind it was devastatingly baking out here.

Speaking of hot, This Outlander book is pretty racy stuff. Several times I found I was rowing rather faster than usual during particularly, ahem, engrossing parts of the book, and had to cool down by taking an ocean plunge – the ocean rower’s equivalent of taking a cold shower. Blimey!

At least one spider Alf spotted today. He lives!

Thanks for all the comments, quotes, suggestions and words of encouragement. All very much appreciated!

Huge congrats to my good friends Sam and Ella on the birth of their first child, Nell Freya Truscott Allpass. Delighted to hear the good news! And at over 9lb it looks like she’s off to a flying start to emulate the athletic achievements of her parents.

Suwin – congrats on your plastic straw epiphany. Yes, they are insidious things. And so unnecessary. The headdress that they gave me when I left Tarawa included some plastic drinking straws, as part of their point about sustainability. Let’s ban the straw, or even go back to paper ones (are they still available?), which at least are biodegradable.

I hear from Brennan that the Eco Heroes website was an unexpected victim of the Iceland volcano. Yes, seriously. Brennan’s co-coder, known online as Evil Bobby, was on vacation in Amsterdam with only occasional internet access when the volcano struck. So his part of the delivery unavoidably fell behind schedule.

But hopefully it has gone live today. If you have pre-registered, you will have received an email to let you know what to do next. And if you haven’t pre-registered, please go immediately to ecoheroes.me and sign up!

Despite the ferocious heat, I made some good progress south today. These conditions won’t last forever, so I’m making the most of them while I can. Cairns? Thursday Island? Madang in PNG? Who knows? Don’t forget to place your bet in our arrival date/time sweepstake!

[Photo taken today for my friends at YachtPals]

Today I crossed the Equator again, but no bubbly this time, as I lost my Pollywog-hood (Pollywogness? Pollywoggery?) last year. Too bad, as it was definitely cocktail hour when it happened.

I got no help from the elements today. Dead calm conditions, apart from during a couple of brief squalls this afternoon, and very little current. So it was all my own work (said with tone of pride).

So now I have crossed from N to S once again. And this time I intend to stay S, although how much S is still open to debate. I’m not worrying too much about it for now. I will just keep pushing south, which I need to do regardless of whether I am aiming for Australia or PNG, and I’ll just see how far south I can get before the prevailing winds kick in again. And take it from there.

For now life on board the Brocade is just tickety-boo.

Other Stuff:

There seem to be TWO Alfs. This morning I saw one spider on each side of the fore cabin roof. This is good. I like to have two of everything on board – just in case.

There was a lot of marine activity around my boat this morning. Patches of frenetic splashing at the surface, with birds swooping in to presumably scavenge the leftovers. Can’t tell you exactly what was happening, as it was all below the surface. But as it started about 2 minutes after I’d got out of the water for my morning swim, it freaked me out a bit. Am very much hoping this is not typical shark feeding behaviour, or my swims may be curtailed.

My skin is now falling off in large swathes. I’m quite glad I can’t see much of my back. From what I can see it is an interesting tapestry of red bits, brown bits, bubbly bits and peely bits. But what I can’t see doesn’t worry me. And this, my friends, is the fundamental problem with communicating most of our environmental problems.

Book review: very much enjoyed “Unexpected Thunderstorms” by William Boyd, one of my favourite authors. Set in the less salubrious parts of London, it’s gritty and urban, but a good murder mystery with interesting characters – none of whom are all good or all bad, but a very human mixture of the two. Recommended.

Am now enjoying “Outlander”, which I think was recommended to me by David Wilmot of Ocean Champions. I extracted a whole load of book recommendations from him when he and his wife hosted a dinner party so I could meet J Maarten Troost, author and one-time resident of Tarawa. I still haven’t read the resulting book – The Sex Lives of Cannibals. Must do so!

And finally, spare a thought for my sister, who is setting out to walk 500 miles across Spain (the Way of St James) for Shelterbox, an impressive organization that sends aid boxes and deployment teams to areas hit by disasters. Good luck, Tanya!

[photo: nothing but a rainbow to mark the Equator]

How uncomfortable does one have to be to be outside one’s comfort zone? Just wondering, as today life on board the Brocade started to feel just a little too luxurious.

I set up my bimini and strategically placed sarongs to hide me from the sun, and donned large sunhat and sunglasses. With the broad-brimmed hat and my white rowing gloves, I feel like some kind of debutante from the 1950s… who has forgotten to put her dress on.

I took my fan out on deck and positioned it just in front of my rowing position. And when even all these precautions were inadequate to keep me cool, I jumped in the water for a cooling swim, followed by a sponging down with fresh water – which I can afford to use extravagantly, for a change, because my watermaker is working beautifully so far.

So all in all, I was almost comfortable. Well, apart from the blisters, cramping hands, aching back and sore butt.

This made me start wondering if I’m getting soft in my old age. I remembered that epiphany I had on the Atlantic Ocean when I realized that it was okay that I was so miserably uncomfortable. I had wanted to get outside my comfort zone – and by definition, that is going to be uncomfortable. Duh!

But if my comfort zone has now expanded, and/or I’ve found a way to make my ocean rowing escapades more comfortable, then I’m not outside my comfort zone any more.

I’m not masochistic enough to make this deliberately more uncomfortable for myself. That would be rather silly. But am I really learning anything new if this is becoming same old, same old?

Or maybe I should be more careful what I wish for. And just say thank you, life, for not making me go through an experience like the Atlantic again. And long may this relative ease continue.

Other Stuff:

Thanks for the jokes – much appreciated! Nice to know you’re thinking of me. Special hello to Will Stockland – my wine drinking and philosophising buddy. Looking forward to a catch-up in Oxford later in the year.

Doug – okay then. Knock, knock…

Grumble of the day: laptops have to go on your lap. And they’re hot. This is very uncomfortable. One feature I really liked in Greg K’s vessel “WiTHiN” was its built-in keyboard table. Must try to figure out where I can put one in here.

My sunburn has now reached that interesting warty-toad stage, where it forms into bubbles of liquid, presumably in an attempt to allow the skin beneath a chance to heal. Hmm, attractive!

Alf the Spider (my stowaway from Tarawa) was spotted today, early afternoon, on the bulkhead of the fore cabin. So he’s still alive. Not visibly losing weight, although I’m not sure how you can tell with a spider. I just dread finding him one day with his eight little legs curled up in the air. Becoming quite fond of the little chap. Not much for conversation, but he is at least company.

Apologies for erratic behaviour of the RozTracker. I don’t really know what is going on – no problems evident from this end – but hopefully Evan and the Archinoetics heroes are onto it.

And as a final reflection on my comfort zone, I am feeling that it is time for me to start transitioning into the next phase of my life, to take on a new challenge. Hopefully this will be the Foundation that we are fundraising for at the moment through the Go Roz Go contest. The purpose of the foundation will be to nurture the next generation of people pursuing their life purpose – be it in adventure or anything else. If you can, please help support us. No contribution too small – it all adds up!

Onboard electronics can be both a blessing and a curse.

First, the blessing. Today was brain-boiling hot, with nary a breeze to ease my sweaty discomfort. At 3.20pm the thermometer was registering 42.7 degrees centigrade on deck. Not sure what that is in fahrenheit, but in plain English it’s bloody hot.

So the electric fan that has been doing such sterling service in my cabin got pressed into action out on deck. Luckily it has a nice long lead. Its brand name is “Roam”, which seems appropriate – surely few fans will have roamed so far.

The fan really helped, as did regular spongings of water from my bucket. The water was warm – everything is – but still better than nothing.

But now the curse. Tonight I rowed for a couple of hours after sunset, enjoying the slightly cooler air – until the snoozles kicked in. I had bathed and brushed and flossed and had no sooner got into my cabin than the phone rang.

To understand the full impact that this had, you need to know that my phone NEVER rings. Only a handful of people have the number, and as it’s about $10 a minute to call a satphone, and I’m hardly ever in the cabin to answer it, understandably the phone is really only for emergencies.

So this was not good.

It was my poor long-suffering mother, wanting to know if I was still alive. I was able to reassure her on this point. But apparently my positioning unit has not been reporting my whereabouts, and I had been too busy trying to stay cool to tweet as much as usual today. So one way and another, there had been no news from Brocade for 18 hours.

Time was when sailors would set off around the world and nobody would hear a peep out of them until they arrived – or didn’t – at their intended destination. Months could go by with no word. But not any more.

So in future, to save my mother from more worry, I will try to be more regular with my tweeting. I know Twitter has been appropriated for many things, but is this the first recorded use of Twitter as a marine safety tool?

Other stuff:

This afternoon, and more frequently around sunset, I saw schools of small fish breaking the surface of the calm blue ocean. They were only a few inches long, and if conditions hadn’t been so deathly calm I probably wouldn’t even have noticed them amongst the waves. The fish were silver, and were jumping clear of the water. They looked a bit like sardines – could they be? Or what kinds of fish live at the Equator and behave like this?

I managed to make some progress south today. Am now less than 40 miles from the Equator. Fingers crossed I don’t get pushed north again,

There is a little spider who has been with me since I left Tarawa. I don’t know what he is finding to eat, but he still seems pretty full of energy. I managed to grab this photo of Alf, but he moves fast so it’s hard to catch him on camera. I hope my little stowaway manages to survive the voyage. It’s nice to have the company.

I found the Alan Alda quote I was looking for the other day – I love this one:

“You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover will be yourself.”

I am in hiding – from the sun. This might sound a bit pathetic for an intrepid adventurer – but there again I’ve never made any particular pretence at being intrepid, and when it becomes simply too painful to have the sun shining on me, I’m not too proud to hide out in my cabin until sunset. Like a vampire.

I got caught out this morning. There had been a lot of rain overnight (with steady drips from a small leak in my cabin, the source of which I cannot locate) and this morning was still heavily overcast and grey.

Silly me – I know it’s still possible to get sunburned through cloud. But it seemed such substantial cloud. Anyway, by the time I realised what was happening it was too late. I hadn’t put on my lovely organic Green People sunscreen and now I am paying the price. At times like this I curse having had a ginger-haired father. I have many things to thank him for, but my tendency to turn lobster-red in the tropics is not one of them.

Even though it is now nearly 5.30pm and the sun sets in just over an hour, there is still enough strength in it to make my skin feel like red-hot needles are being poked into it. So it seemed a good time to take cover and write a blog.

I’ve thought about going totally nocturnal. Now I have a fan in my cabin, this could in theory work quite well. During the day I have plenty enough solar power to keep the fan going nonstop, so the cabin is comparatively tolerable. And the nights are cooler – with no risk of sunburn.

Trouble is, I am whatever the opposite of a night owl might be. Come the darkness, comes the doziness. My body just wants to shut down and go to sleep. I can stay up all night when sufficiently stimulated by good company and good wine – but neither are available out here.

Any tips from nightshift workers on how to turn my body clock upside down?

Other Stuff:

Today’s audiobook – not so good. Called Blackout. By Connie Wills. I can’t wait for it to end, in fact. Seems like forever the 3 time travellers have been running around trying to figure out how to get back from World War II to 2060. The book could have been a third of the length. And should have been. As one book critic once wrote of another book, “The main problem with this book is that its covers are too far apart.”

And the narrator isn’t much better. She has the most peculiarly affected English accent, so that passengers is pronounced “parsengers”, passages as “parsages”, and she generally sounds like a cross between Sybil Fawlty and a particularly priggish schoolmarm.

But as perseverance is the name of the game, I will grit my teeth and see it through.

Its one redeeming feature is that I am learning a bit more about London during the Blitz – the sustained aerial bombing campaign waged by the Luftwaffe during World War II. Solidarity in the face of adversity became the “spirit of the Blitz” – when Londoners of all social strata united in their determination not to let the ongoing bombardment dent their morale.

Makes me think that environmental issues would be a lot more easily tackled if we had an identifiable enemy to unite against. If my enemy’s enemy is my friend, humanity needs a shared enemy so we can stop pointing fingers at each other and get on with tackling the REAL problem.

Oh but hang on, the problem is us.

Enjoyed this morning’s podcast with Dr Kiki Sanford, with special guest Marcus Eriksen. We enjoyed uninterrupted satphone connection, and a really interesting conversation about plastic pollution. Check it out. Oh, and Marcus, I forgot to ask you to pass along my thanks to Anna’s mum for the cookies. They were yummy!

Amongst other things, we discussed what can be done to clean up the North Pacific Garbage Patch. Probably not much. But we can avoid making it worse. If you’re still using bottled drinking water and accepting plastic bags at the grocery store, please rethink. Add up how many bottles or how many bags you use in a year. Or a lifetime. And then think how much plastic you could save if you invest in a few reusable bags, a water bottle, and a water filter system you keep in your refrigerator. Just because plastic bags don’t cost you anything, doesn’t mean they don’t cost anything at all.

And while you’re at it, sign up for Eco Heroes at ecoheroes.me, and join our merry band of heroes all doing their bit for a greener, cleaner future. Thank you!

And finally – see that button in the top right of my website? Check it out for our fun contest to bet on when I make landfall. Don’t wait – we are only running the contest for a few more weeks. After that it will get too easy so we’ll end it long before the end of my voyage. Carpe diem!

How can I describe the aloneness of being out here? I suppose it is something that very few people experience, apart from solo sailors, climbers, polar explorers and of course ocean rowers. Who else can look around them and know that there isn’t another soul within hundreds of miles?

Often I feel this as a good thing. Like when I’m rowing along naked. I can be fairly sure that I won’t get caught unawares – which would be most embarrassing.

Occasionally I am aware that my solitude could have its downsides. To be dramatic, I could topple overboard, fall on the boat and hurt myself, or be attacked by some monster from the deep. On a more mundane level, I don’t have anybody to discuss decisions with, or to rub sun cream on my back, or prepare a meal while I carry on rowing.

Or, as today, I would love to have someone to tell me joke and enliven an otherwise very monotonous day.

It has been a beautiful day, in a relentless, hot, sunny, equatorial kind of a way. But I have found myself scanning the water and the horizon to find just anything to relieve the monotony. A ship, a bird, a creature – even a piece of litter. Anything, something. But there has been nothing.

Just me and my audiobooks.

A couple of good ones today. “Birds of a Feather”, by Jacqueline Winspear, which I think was recommended by Joan in Atlanta (sorry – wish I’d kept a record of who recommended what). A good juicy murder mystery set in 1930, which had me getting nostalgic for an age I never knew, when groceries came in greaseproof paper and brown paper bags, and packed lunches came in whicker baskets, and the remedy for all ills was a nice cup of tea. (Cue tea cravings).

Then Alan Alda’s “Things I Overheard While Talking To Myself”, in which the actor shares his 70 years of accumulated wisdom – which is considerable. I chose this book earlier this year after having a dream about Alan Alda. Not quite sure what he was doing in my dreams, but there he was. Then when I was speaking in Seattle for National Geographic there was a rumour backstage that he was in the audience. But if he was he didn’t make himself known. But I hope that one day I meet him. He seems like a wise, funny, self-deprecating guy who just wants to leave the world a better place. I think I’d like him.

Other Stuff:

I continue to meander my way along the line of latitude at 1 degree North. I’m a bit bored of it now, to be honest. I’ve been here, more or less, for about 3 days, heading west but not managing to make any south, despite constantly rowing with my bows pointed S or even SSE. Unfortunately the forecast is for winds out of the south, so the situation is unlikely to improve in the near future. Sigh.

Remember you can bet on my date and time of arrival in our contest. See button in top right of my website. At this stage, your guess is as good as mine. Possibly better.

I’ve been diligently wearing my new sunhat – see photo – given to me by Liz Fischer. It may not be the hippest piece of headgear, but after getting quite bad sunburn on the sides of my face after wearing baseball caps last year, I’m grateful for the sun protection. And, as I say, there’s nobody out here to see me.

Interesting to hear about the ash cloud in northern Europe that has halted most flights. Although I’m sorry for everybody’s inconvenience, wouldn’t it be nice if some people found they don’t need to fly as much as they thought they needed to? Would save a lot of fossil fuel.

By the way, I’d just like to point out that I’m not actually lonely – just very alone. But it made a good title for the blog.

I am starting to settle in. The first couple of days were a bit trying. I was feeling queasy, which never helps a rower feel on top of her game. And I suppose I was also going through that “what the heck am I doing here?” stage of any big adventure.

On the Atlantic that stage lasted for about 103 days, but on each subsequent voyage it has taken me less time to resign myself to my fate and get on with it. I don’t know if I will ever find it easy to be out here, but it does at least get marginally less difficult.

I have also been getting to grips with some recent innovations on board Brocade. Here’s what’s different from last time:

1. New satphone – the Iridium 9555, with intellidock. I have yet to make friends with my new phone. Or maybe it is the fault of the intellidock, now known on board as the Dim Smelly Dock. The phone seems to turn itself on when I want it off, and turn itself off when I want it on. Today it stopped working altogether. So I took out my trusty old satphone and swapped the SIM card over to it. Whereupon the new phone evidently decided it needed to pull its socks up if it wasn’t to be relegated to a distant locker, and started itself up again, protesting that it didn’t have a SIM card. So I put the SIM card back in, and it has been on best behaviour ever since. Who said that technology was rational?

2. Electric fan in cabin (and spare). Absolutely brilliant. Runs off 12V, keeps the air moving. Superb. Not sure yet how long I can run it at night without running ship’s batteries into the ground.

3. Electric kettle (and spare). Had its maiden outing yesterday with my miso soup. Takes 20 minutes to reach a boil, but hey, I’m not going anywhere. Had used propane canisters with a gimballed stove previously. Nice to be fossil fuel free, as the electric kettle is powered by solar panels via the ship’s batteries. Works just great, although won’t be much use if I catch a fish.

4. Back Country Cuisine meals from New Zealand. Hadn’t tried these before, but today’s fish pie (hopefully sustainable) with cheesy topping (definitely sustainable) was excellent. After 2 days of queasiness and lack of appetite, it was encouraging to feel a glimmer of hunger this afternoon, so I decided to go for it. Am now looking forward to trying out the other meals. Huge thanks to ocean rower Rob Hamill for sponsoring the meals, and to Kara and Brent for the discount.

5. Bracket by rowing position for GPS. I have found the perfect place to mount the GPS/chartplotter, but haven’t ventured to bring it out on deck yet. It would be great to see the miles and degrees tick away, but I will be most in need of the electronic charts once I get amongst the islands (whichever islands I end up amongst) so I am keeping the GPS safe inside the cabin until then. It’s supposed to be waterproof, but I have become deeply sceptical about that word when applied to electronics on a rowboat.

Apart from that, it’s the tried and tested old favourites.

Grooh, maybe not completely over seasickness yet, so will wrap up quickly.

Other Stuff:

Encouraged to make some progress south today. Am now below 1 degree N for the first time this trip. Yippee!

Weather continues hot and sticky. Heat rash starting to develop. Sigh.

Now over to YOU! We’re running a sweepstake on when I’m going to make landfall. Given that I don’t even know yet WHERE I am going to make landfall, this really is wide open! To enter our competition, click on the button in the top right of my website, Go Roz Go Contest. And all should become clear.

Are you an Eco Hero yet? If not, why not?! Please sign up immediately! The world needs all the Eco Heroes it can get. Go to http://ecoheroes.me to join, or to start logging your Green Deeds. If you’re already green, it will give you the chance to share your green goodness with other aspiring Eco Heroes. Or if you need some green guidance, check out what other Eco Heroes are up to and join their ranks. Every green deed counts! I would personally take it as a huge favour if you would join up and start saving the world – one green deed at a time.

And finally, huge thanks for all the good luck and bon voyage wishes. Sorry I can’t reply to them all individually. As I find my sea legs I will try to respond to at least some of your messages. For now, please make allowances for my sea green state.

I am very excited that I have just managed to post my first blog. Sorry it didn’t come through last night. I was having some technical difficulties with the new equipment. That will teach me to set out without having fully tested it all first!

Anyhow, that is one problem now solved. But blogs may still be somewhat intermittent – the satellite connections here at the Equator seem to be very flakey. So please don’t be concerned if my communications are a little erratic. I will do my best, but there’s not much I can do to control the orbit of the satellites.

And at the moment there doesn’t seem to be enough I can do to control the course of my boat, either. I want to go south, but the currents and winds seem to have other ideas. I’m heading west, and a tiny bit north. Not so good. But I’m sure I’ll end up somewhere.

To be honest, I have probably not been contributing as much as I should to the boat’s direction today. I have been feeling very under the weather. It is most unlike me to be off my food, but today I’ve managed one snack bar, a tin of sardines, and a cup of miso soup. And even those have been an effort, due to the heat of the day and the queasiness of my stomach. But I have to keep my energy up. From past experience, I know that it takes me a couple of days to get used to the movement of the boat, so I expect that tomorrow will be better.

No wildlife sightings as yet, apart from a couple of distant birds. Not sure what they were but they definitely weren’t boobies. Phew.

So in the absence of any real news from the Brocade, I’m going to make a book recommendation. My first audiobook was “Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merrywell” by Pat Murphy. Excellent. Page-turner of a story – kind of murder mystery, sci-fi and love story, with a liberal sprinkling of quantum mechanics and mind-bending considerations of parallel universes and infinite possibilities. What more could I ask for from a book?!

I wonder if I can manage to conjure up a parallel reality in which the Equator is a heck of a lot cooler? If only…

From there it seemed a natural progression to Alice in Wonderland – which followed on nicely, both logically and alphabetically!

This will need to be a quick blog. There is a short chop to the ocean tonight, and I haven’t quite got my sea legs yet – or, to be more accurate, my sea stomach. The worst place is inside the cabin, and the worst thing to be doing is typing on a laptop, so I’ll keep it short.

Apart from a bit of queasiness, so far so good.

A lovely send-off this morning from the Marine Training Centre in Tarawa. President Anote Tong came down at 6.45 to see me off – the early hour was due to Parliament being in session at the moment. Speeches were made, ceremonial headdress placed on head, and the fine young men of the MTC sang a song of farewell.

The president asked me how I felt at this stage, setting out on a new adventure. I replied, truthfully, that I try not to think about it too much until I’m past the point of no return. Or I might think better of it.

But now I’m out here, it’s not too bad. Weather has been everything – hard rain, grey skies, but also blue skies and brilliant sunshine. I was diligent with my sun lotion but still have a bit of a burn. And blisters. And an aching back. And a sore bum. But I was expecting all of those. Part of the job description.

Have made some good progress, although a bit too much west and not enough south for my liking, despite pointing my boat south-south-east most of the day. That’s life. That’s currents.

Okay, will sign off for now, as I still have to figure out how to use EpicTracker and my new satphone to send a blog and I don’t want to push my luck queasy-wise. Didn’t have time for blogging dress rehearsal before leaving land. But hey, if I waited until I was 100% ready I’d never have got going at all.

Over and out.

Normally a bit of water wouldn’t bother me. After all, I’m about to row across a couple of thousand miles of the stuff. But today there is a lot of water and it’s falling from the sky in torrents and it’s very inconvenient.

Until yesterday my boat was under a shelter at the Marine Training Centre here in Tarawa, but as today is Saturday and we needed plentiful manpower to move the boat out, we had to move Brocade yesterday before the marine cadets went home for the weekend. So now she is out in the open.

If the weather was dry, this would be perfect. Most of the things that remain to be done required the boat to be out from under the shelter. For example, I can’t set up the bimini until the short antenna masts are up, and I couldn’t put them up under the limited headroom of the roof. But I’d rather work in the dry than in a monsoon. And other things, like applying sponsor stickers, can’t be done in the wet – nor can they be done once the boat is in the water, which is scheduled to happen this afternoon.

So far, though, Liz and I have had plenty to keep us busy indoors – sorting and packing, testing technology, doing a few final emails and interviews. But if this weather continues for the rest of today and into tomorrow, we’re going to be up against it to be ready in time to leave on Monday morning (bearing in mind that we are already into Saturday local time). This rain started at 5am this morning, and 7 hours later shows no signs of relenting.

Unfortunately this deluge is set to continue. I believe it is a side effect of El Nino. I had considerable experience of wet weather rowing on the Atlantic, and I don’t like it. Wet skin chafes more. It’s impossible to keep the cabin dry when I’m going in and out soaking wet. Electronics fog up and fail. It’s generally more challenging.

But what’s to be done? Am trying to be philosophical about it, but El Nino looks set to be El PITA.

Other Stuff:

I would like to extend an enormous thank you to the Marine Training Centre for taking such good care of Brocade over the last 7 months. It was a huge relief to find the boat and equipment in such good shape. The MTC is an oasis of good order in the bustle of Tarawa, and the cadets could not have been more helpful. My eternal gratitude to the Captain Superintendent, Boro Lucic, and his staff and students.

Thanks also to John and Linda Anderson of Kiribati Video for making arrangements for Monday morning. They will be filming my departure from Emile’s boat – the same boat that came out to greet me in last year. AP London have already asked for the footage, so hopefully it will go online fairly soon after the event – internet connections permitting.

Last night Liz and I had dinner with Tessie Lambourne, Secretary for Foreign Affairs, who I had last seen in Copenhagen. We compared notes on developments since Copenhagen, and hopes for Mexico. Time is running out for Kiribati if predictions of sea level rise are correct. Here it is not a “one-day-maybe” issue. It is here and now. I hope you will join our Eco Heroes campaign at http://ecoheroes.me and do your bit to help.

I am posting this using the latest version of EpicTracker. Normally it will have GPS coordinate attached, but at the moment the GPS cables are at the MTC and I am at Betio Apartments. Full functionality will start as soon as I get all my technology in one place!

I wrote this blog on Monday on the plane on the way to Tarawa, but it has taken me a while to get online. Apologies for any consternation caused. Liz Fischer and I are about to head off to the Marine Training Centre to see how my boat has fared since I last saw her in September last year, and to start prepping her for my launch – pencilled in for Saturday if we’re ready in time. I will report back later.

Okay, now to my belated report on TED Mission Blue…. [Note: this blog was posted by email due to limited bandwidth in Kiribati, so the formatting may be unusual]

It is unlikely that any other TED speaker has ever had to pause to reach into their cleavage. Well, I guess I like to be different.

TED seems to have a detrimental effect on the nerves. Even seasoned speakers were admitting to a bad case of the butterflies. I am used to speaking without notes, but on this occasion I thought it would be a good idea to have a safety net in case I suddenly seized up onstage. So I wrote the briefest of prompts on a small sheet of paper from a hotel notepad. But where was I going to put it? There was no podium and I had no pockets (WHY are women’s clothes so useless?) so the only place I could think to put it was to tuck it inside my bra.

But I was sure I wouldn’t need it anyway. Like taking an umbrella usually guarantees that it won’t rain, having notes with me usually ensures that I won’t need them. However on this occasion….

I was getting towards the end of my talk. All going well, well within my allocated 18 minutes and still enough time to wrap it up. “My three main messages are…” I started in conclusion. My little mnemonic was that my 3 main points started with S, R and T.

“S is for stories – how the stories we tell ourselves affect our behaviour. For example I used to tell myself that I couldn’t have a big adventure because I was too small and too timid and too, well, female. Then my story changed. I didn’t get any taller or braver or sprout a beard; I just decided that I could. And our story that we need oil, and we need stuff, and the Earth is ours for the taking – that story can change too. It needs to change.”

R is for… eek, can’t remember. Never mind. Cut straight to T, and I’m sure it will come back to me.

“T for tiny actions, which add up into big differences. Each of my ocean crossings takes about a million oarstrokes. One oarstroke doesn’t get me very far, but you take a million tiny actions, and they make a big difference. We’ve had a few major disasters, like Chernobyl or Exxon Valdez, but mostly we’ve got ourselves into this predicament through billions of poor decisions made by 7 billion people around the world. If we start making better decisions, we can still turn the tide.”

R is for…. dammit. Still can’t remember. Only one thing for it.

“Excuse me a moment, I just need to take a quick look at my notes….” I quickly pulled the sheet of paper out of my left bra cup and refreshed my memory while the audience fell about laughing.

“Responsibility!” R is for Responsibility. Phew.

Ah well, at least they’ll remember my speech. Possibly not for the reasons I had intended.

In the immediate aftermath of my speech, I was a bit down on myself for how it had gone. After the triumph of National Geographic Live in Seattle, I felt my TED talk could have been better. But I may need to revise my self-critical evaluation. The response from members of the audience was very positive, and when I took my Galapagos book around for people to sign, the messages were warm and enthusiastic. The talk should be online within a month, possibly much sooner, so you can make up your own mind.

But to get away from me and down to the real point of the gathering, the TED Mission Blue conference, the first TED of its kind, was an amazing experience. The idea is that it is not just a one-off conference, but the start of an ongoing initiative to honour and implement Dr Sylvia Earle’s wish for the oceans:

“To ignite public support for a global network of marine protected areas, ‘hope spots large enough to save and restore the ocean, the blue heart of the planet.”

There was an impressive lineup of speakers, addressing all aspects of the crisis facing the oceans. The 110 people on board the National Geographic Endeavour also included an impressive lineup of guests, such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Edward Norton, Glenn Close, Chevy Chase, Darryl Hanna, Damien Rice and Jackson Browne.

I thought I already knew a lot about ocean issues, but to receive so much information in a concentrated span of time was an intense experience. For the first time I really grasped the extent, the seriousness, and the implications. Overfishing, by-catch, algal blooms, dead zones, shark-finning and plastic pollution have assaulted our oceans to the extent that in just the last 50 years we have changed entire ecosystems, and the oceans are in danger of total collapse. Covering 70% of the planet, the consequences for land and air as well as sea will be catastrophic. There is still time, but not much.

So these are my resolutions coming away from TED Mission Blue:

Reduce even further my use of plastic. Recycling isn’t good enough, and comes with its own environmental issues. We need to stop it at source.
Eat less protein, and/or get more of it from organic vegetable sources.
Never eat farmed salmon again. It takes many pounds of wild fish to produce one pound of farmed salmon. It is not an efficient use of our limited resources.
Become more informed about what seafood is sustainable and avoid all else. Especially bluefin tuna.
Do what I can to help create marine protected areas across the Pacific Ocean.
If we all pull together, we can make a world of difference.

Other Stuff:

Most magical TED memory: on the last night I was there (I had to leave early to go rowing) there was a waterborne concert by Damien Rice. A flotilla of Zodiac inflatables moored up around a floating pontoon, and Damien played his guitar and sang a few songs while the audience sipped champagne. The camera lights were blinding him, so they were turned off while he sang an encore, The Blower’s Daughter, my favourite of his songs, in the darkness. A very special memory to take across the ocean with me.

I am writing this on the plane en route to Tarawa. 5 huge bags of expedition food and boat equipment are in the hold. Assuming everything gets through customs in Fiji, I’ll be taking a flight in a few hours to Tarawa and my boat, where Liz Fischer and I will get to work packing the boat. If all goes well, I plan to leave next weekend.

I had a couple of final engagements in Santa Monica this weekend – speaking at the Luncheon Society on Saturday lunchtime, and a bon voyage party on Saturday night organized by Anna Cummins and Marcus Eriksen of the 5 Gyres Project. Huge thanks to the Luncheoners for your support and enthusiasm, and to Maryann and Paul Cummins for your wonderful hospitality and kindness. And the yummy choc chip and cherry cookies!

Roz Savage is an accomplished international speaker who has presented for TED, National Geographic, and the Royal Geographical Society. She has inspired and entertained audiences as diverse as rowing clubs, adventurers’ clubs, alumni dinners, charity lunches and open-ticket events. Her amazing story, supported by jaw-dropping video footage and told with honesty, humour and humility, wins rave reviews from audiences. Bookings can be made through her Program Director, Nicole Bilodeau.

Click below to view videos of Roz in action onstage:

Roz Savage Showreel – US version

Roz Savage Showreel – UK version

The book about her Atlantic crossing, Rowing the Atlantic – Lessons Learned on the Open Ocean, published by Simon & Schuster, is available now on Amazon.com. Book signings are an optional addition to your event.

Every presentation is tailored to the specific needs of the audience, but falls broadly into one of the following categories:

- motivation/inspiration

- adventure

- social media and technology

- environment – specifically sustainability and plastic pollution.

Testimonials

In my last blog I announced that we are launching a new eco initiative, called Eco Heroes. It is a cross between a game, a social media site, and a save-the-world environmental challenge. If you look at my homepage, you’ll see that I now have an extremely attractive Eco Heroes widget settling in nicely over on the right hand side.

I would be incredibly grateful if you could support us by passing the news along. Like all social media applications, Eco Heroes relies on having as many people as possible signed up from the get-go. We already have over 1,200 signups, purely from my announcement at the presentations for National Geographic last week. So we’re off to a good start, but the more the merrier. So please help us spread the word!

There are lots of ways to let your friends and/or  your online community know about Eco Heroes – through a blog, a Tweet, or by adding the Eco Heroes widget to your website. There is also a video that introduces our modest little plan to save the world.

Links:

Website: http://ecoheroes.me

Twitter: http://twitter.com/eco_heroes

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CY4zS8cc0Lg

The site is now open for pre-registration, and users will be notified by email when we go fully live around the time I launch the third and final stage of my solo Pacific row, from Kiribati to Australia, around April 17.

Users can also sign up by SMS. This has worked really well for us when giving presentations. All they have to do is to text “Person Name [email protected]” to phone number (360) 262-6062.

Word-of-mouth recommendations are the lifeblood of initiatives like ours. Tweet, blog, email, call, Facebook, write a letter to the editor, post a message on your company’s intranet, stick a poster by the water fountain – even good old-fashioned TALK about Eco Heroes, and help save the world!

(And if you’ve got any great ideas for other ways to get the news out, and if there is anything I can do to help, please let me know by posting a comment on this blog.)