Check out the first video of Roz arriving in Tarawa!

Today I've been listening to the audiobook of The Time Traveller's Wife,
which has got me thinking about the whole notion of seeing my life as a
whole, birth to death, rather than being so bound up in the present
moment. It's quite a useful perspective – the retrospective perspective.

Makes it a lot easier to handle a bit of discomfort when I imagine it
from the point of view of my future. This rowing is one of those things
that it will be great to HAVE done. The only problem is that in order to
have DONE it, at some stage I have to actually DO it, and right now I'm
going through that inconvenient but necessary "doing" bit – but in fact,
it's not too bad.

Progress today was slow, with the wind coming out of the southeast(where
ARE those trade winds?! See forecast below – no sign that they're going
to show up any time soon, alas) but I've managed to slog a few more miles
closer to the equator. And the onboard cuisine is going down well, so life
is good.

Other Stuff:

A week into my voyage, and I'm settling into my routine. The main
difference between this crossing (so far) and my previous two crossings
has been the temperature. Hard to believe that there were some nights
after I left San Francisco this time last year when I had to finish
rowing earlier than I wanted because my feet were too cold and I feared
long-term damage to my extremities.

Now I've got the opposite problem – heat. I've become quite addicted to
my regular cooling plunges into the ocean – 4 today. I just hang out by
the boat, enjoying the refreshing coolness of the water. I've noticed
some little black fish also hanging out in the shade of my boat – I'll
try and get a picture of them tomorrow.

The Ricoh camera has resisted all attempts at resuscitation so I've
retrieved my trusty old Pentax Optio WP, veteran of the Atlantic crossing,
from my case of backup gadgets in the fore cabin.

Thanks, Ian T, for confirming that the Ricoh IS meant to be waterproof to
1 metre. I didn't even immerse it – it just got splashed and then handled
with wet hands. So it's a bummer that it's decided to give up the ghost,
because it wasn't cheap. I just really hope it's not a case of it having
to be returned within a short period of time after the damage occurs, or I
might be out of luck!

Some people have been asking why I don't row at night and sleep in the
day. It's a great idea in theory, but in practice the cabin is
positively sauna-like during the day, and any attempts at sleep result
in a sweaty, sticky, severely discombobulated rower feeling even less
rested than I did before. Remind me to get air conditioning installed
before the next stage…

One final thing – if you get my blogs by email via Feedblitz, you might
not be aware that I'm posting weekly video updates as well. If you
missed last week's video, it's now available on YouTube. Easiest way to
find it would be to go to rozsavage.com and go to the RozTracker. Where
you see the little YouTube icon on the map, click there and it will take
you to the video. Cheers!

Weather:
Wind: 5-10kts, E-SE
Sea: swell around 3-4ft

Forecast courtesy of weatherguy.com:

The trade winds are being stubborn, but have picked up slightly.
However, there is too much east or south in the wind direction to offer
much help in rowing south. This should be the case for the next several
days.

Forecast below is for a SSWerly course at 30nm/day. A Serly route (180
deg T) is preferred.

Date/Time HST Wind kts Seas (ft)
31/1800-31/2100 E-ENE 7-12 3-4
31/2100-01/0600 E-ESE 5-10 3-4
01/0600-01/2100 ESE-SE 7-12 3-4
01/2100-02/1800 SE-ENE 5-10 3-4
02/1800-03/1200 E 10-15 4-5
03/1200-04/0000 E-ENE 15-22 4-6
04/0000-05/0000 ENE-ESE 15-20 4-6

Clear and sunny to partly cloudy with little chance of rainshowers. Sky
conditions are mostly dry.

Image by rozsavage via Flickr

It is now less than 4 days before I launch, and it’s all happening. There is still so much to do, and I know it WILL all happen – just not quite sure HOW. But if I’ve learned anything through the last few years, it’s that if you keep the faith, and work your butt off, you can make almost anything happen.

Oh, and it also helps to have a band of angels, aka extremely good friends. We’ve made some amazing friends here in Hawaii – and tomorrow Team California arrives. Six or seven friends are arriving from the mainland to help with final preparations and to see me off on Sunday. They will all be put to work (I hope they know this!) to run around for final provisions, fix up the boat, and help get me packed. The team includes Nicole’s granny and brother, my friends Aenor and Melinda (veterans of the post-airlift salvage mission of 2007), Nancy our hostess in Sausalito, and Ellen of Google fame.

I truly could not do what I do (or at least, not with any shred of sanity) without the assistance and support of these incredibly dedicated friends. And I don’t know if I’ll ever be able (being British and all) to let them know just how much I appreciate them.

So while I’m in this rather emotional, un-British kind of mood, I’d just like to say how amazing it has been to work with Nicole over the last 3 months. Working alone was…. well, I managed. But working with Nicole has been so much more effective, and so much fun. There have been some amazing comedy moments that I wish I could share with you, but unfortunately we didn’t know they were about to happen so we didn’t have the cameras rolling. But there has been a lot of hilarity, interspersed with serious, profound, how-are-we-going-to-save-the-world kind of moments that will stay in my (very unreliable) memory forever.

When I get to meet incredible people like this, who are prepared to give so much in return for so little, it makes me feel that I must be doing something right – or at least doing the right things for the right reasons.

And on that note I will hand over to our latest RozCast – recorded by Nicole and me in Waikiki last night at sunset.

For a change of pace, today’s blog is a vlog – a video recorded yesterday here in Arizona. This is approximately the format I hope to use for weekly RozCasts while I am out on the ocean on Stage 2 of my trans-Pacific row, so this is a bit of a pilot episode. I’d really welcome some feedback so please feel free to add comments to this blog to let me know what you think.

You might notice that I have also geotagged the video. We are investigating ways to geotag all my online updates – blogs, podcasts, Tweets and videos – so that you (and my Mum!) can keep track of me.

Speaking of Mum, please join me in wishing her all the very best for her hip replacement operation this weekend. Good luck, Mum, and I’m wishing you the speediest of all speedy recoveries!

You might be interested to see this short video that was created for my presentation to the Brocade worldwide sales team (all 900 of them) a couple of weeks ago. It opens with a scene of me looking very weatherbeaten but very happy out on the Atlantic, and goes on to give an overview of what I’ve done, and why, and what my plans are for the future.

Click here to view the video.

Thanks for all the suggestions arriving in response to my appeal for information from teachers and students about environmental education. Keep them coming!