Happy Earth Day to you! And Happy Earth Day to the Earth – 4.7 billion years young today, or 6,000 years for the creationists. Either way, pretty darned old. Earth Day was created by Gaylord Nelson in 1970, and was designed to inspire appreciation and awareness of our planet. I’ve been thinking about the Planet Earth a lot today, on many different levels.

First, the technological level. Several developments on this front today.

This morning I was emailing with the Googlers about how we’re going to include Stage 2 of my Pacific row in the Exploration layer of Google Earth. My postings from the ocean – blogs, photos, videos, and maybe even Tweets – will be geotagged so they are associated with the particular location where I sent them, as I wend my winding way across the Pacific.

Later today, Jim, my director of technology, emailed me to suggest adding a map to my website, using GeoVisitors, that will show the location of my website visitors. This sounds really cool. A Google Map would show a little marker for each visitor. I love this kind of technology – such as Twittervision, which shows who is doing what, and where – a fascinating insight into human activity around the world. Watching it makes me feel incredibly connected to this amazing, incredible species called humanity.

Which brings me to the emotional level. Filming Ian and Joel earlier this week as they worked on my boat’s electrics, it struck me as interesting that when we install certain kinds of electrical devices they have to be “earthed” – connected to an object that connects to the ground, so that excess energy is safely discharged. I wonder if human beings are the same – that we also have to be “earthed” in order to function properly without blowing up. We feel at our best when we are connected to Mother Nature and “grounded”.

And then there’s the macro level. Seeing all these images of the planet makes me feel a strong sense of its fragility. It looks so small – just one tiny globe spinning through a vast expanse of darkness.

So I’m going to mark this Earth Day by renewing my pledge to do all I can to reduce my own personal impact on the earth, and by writing this blog – today and every day as I cross the ocean this summer – to try to inspire others to do the same. It would be nice if we remember to cherish and respect the earth every day of the year. Our planet is our life support capsule, and the only one we’ve got. So let’s treat it with the love and respect that it deserves. Our lives depend on it.

And on a lighter note…

T-shirt seen today in Waikiki: “Keep the planet clean. It’s not Uranus.” ☺

Other stuff:

Today our plans to move the boat to a building on Ala Moana Blvd fell through. Just not enough time to complete the paperwork and insurance arrangements. I would have been willing, but it takes two to tango.

So I am temporarily out of options. I really need a large, covered space, where I can lay out all my provisions and equipment, get it all organized, and then pack it on board. I have tried every avenue I can think of, so far without success. The team is on the case, but if anybody knows of such a space, please contact me via this website or on Facebook. Specific suggestions only, please!

Last night Ian, director of boatworks, reached the end of his stint in Hawaii and left to go back to the mainland. Thanks, Ian, for all your good work. We miss you already!

Huge thanks to Steve at International Paints, Bobby at Pacific Shipyards – and most of all @sistaliz for finding some blue antifoul paint for my bottom!

Roz Recommends: on Earth Day it seems appropriate to recommend one of my very favourite iPhone applications – Moonphase by Romanduck.com – “apps for the easily bemused”. It shows sunrise and sunset, moonrise and moonset, moonphases, plus all kinds of cool celestial information. Favourite features: choice of full moon names including Native American, Colonial, English, Celtic or Wiccan – and “Werewolf Warning”!

[photo: "Earthrise" by William Anders, taken during the Apollo 8 mission in 1968.]

It has been a busy 24 hours here in Hawaii – mostly boat-oriented, with internet sessions topping and tailing the day. I was up at 5am editing my latest podcast of Roz Rows The Pacific, featuring an interview with Lynne Cox, extreme swimmer and author of Swimming To Antarctica. Watch out for the podcast going live within the next week – I email it over to Leo Laporte and he and his trusty staff at TWiT.tv upload it to iTunes.

Then I swooped via a quick internet session at the Coffee Gallery in Haleiwa (and a much needed mug of java) to the Brocade’s current location on the North Shore. For today was the day that all hands were on deck and work started in earnest to get the Brocade ready for Stage 2 of my Pacific row, due to launch on May 15.

I had already tentatively decided on a new strategy of KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). For past stages of the row I had the boat wired for GPS, sound and video – only for most of the equipment to fall victim to saltwater corrosion. Rolling the boat 3 times in 2007 and once in 2008 hadn’t helped. Water had got into all kinds of places it had no right to be. And every time I opened up the back of the control panel it made me want to have a nervous breakdown – it was such a nest of (electric) vipers that maintenance at sea would have been very challenging, to say the least.

So I had decided that it would be more sensible, less stressful and less wasteful to use more standalone items, which would be not attached to the boat but rechargeable via the onboard batteries. Only the bare minimum would be left as permanent installations.

But it still took a considerable amount of courage to rip out a large proportion of the existing electrics. Even things that hadn’t worked in years caused pangs of nostalgia. But once I got into the swing of it, I became quite ruthless. If in doubt, chuck it out! A lot less junk to lug across the ocean. All discarded items will be offered to others via Craigslist or boat jumbles, so they won’t go to waste, so it made me feel less guilty to remember that one man’s junk is another man’s treasure.

By the end of the day, the chaos of wires behind the control panel was reduced to manageable and less panic-inducing proportions. Brocade was looking stripped down and back to basics. Now we have a clean slate to bring in the new kit, partly donated by sponsors and partly funded by your recent very generous donations – thank you!

So in one sense there were 5 of us working on the boat today – Ian from San Francisco, Scott (pictured) and Morgan from Hawaii, while Morgan’s girlfriend Ali recorded our labours for posterity, and me of course – and in another sense you were all there too. I knew you’d be interested to hear how we are getting on, which is why I am sitting here in the internet cafe, posting this blog, even though I am zonked and looking forward to an urgent appointment with my pillow before we start work again tomorrow. But I wanted you to know that we are going great guns here, and hope to have the Brocade looking much more shipshape by the end of this week.

More photos coming soon, but sleepy now after a very constructive (or constructively destructive…) day.

Other stuff:

Ocean in Google Earth launched today. I was invited to the launch event in San Francisco, and would have loved to go – Al Gore was there! But I was here in Hawaii with important work to do, and just couldn’t justify the extra airmiles or cost of being there. But I am in ongoing talks with Google and hope to contribute some content to an expeditions part of the new Ocean functionality.

Check out these sources (and thanks to Ellen and Leye for these) – it all looks very cool!

YouTube video of What’s New In Google Earth 5.0

The Official Google Blog

Article in The Guardian

I’ll be watching with interest to see what new content goes on in Ocean – in the hope that Google will be contributing to the growing awareness that it is COOL TO BE BLUE!