No, not my expedition, thank heavens. I see Ben Saunders has decided to postpone his expedition to the South Pole.
Tim Harincar, my webmaster at WebExpeditions told me after I'd completed the Atlantic row that around 50% of the expeditions he covers end in failure.
This means I have been lucky so far. I managed to get to the start line of the Atlantic, on time (if way over budget), and even more miraculously I also managed to get to the finish line.
I'm still looking good for the Pacific. Given that I already have the boat, sponsorship for the oars, and still 9 months to get ready, I can't foresee any reasons why it shouldn't come about. Let's hope my luck holds and that it wasn't purely beginner's luck on the Atlantic.
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Adrian Flanagan set out in October last year to sail around the world via the polar regions. I set out in November to row across the Atlantic. I was out there for 103 days which felt like a REALLY long time. Adrian has had to temporarily abandon his mission due to Russian red tape, but even so, he has been out there, mostly alone, nearly 3 times as long as I was at sea.
His story is too long to tell here - look at his website for the full tale.
Adrian helped me out with my weather when my original weatherman let me down. When Adrian was pre-occupied with rounding the Cape, he handed over to Ricardo Diniz, his weatherman from Portugal. I hadn't spoken to either of them since I was in mid-Atlantic. Today I saw them both in Chearsley with Adrian's ex-wife Louise and their sons to celebrate his birthday.
[photo: L to R: Ricardo, Benjamin, Adrian and Louise]
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As I embark on writing the book of my Atlantic adventure, a few sobering thoughts from the great and good of literature:
The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid and stable business.
(John Steinbeck)
It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.
(Robert Benchley)
Critics are to authors what dogs are to lamp-posts.
(Jeffrey Robinson)
And that is my cop-out of a blog for today. I am saving myself for the book. (Or to tell the truth, after a few weeks of haring around giving my energy to people and places, I have suddenly slumped today into a jelly-like blob and can barely string together a... one of those long wordy thingummies....)
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Further to the Full Plate Problem, I am going through a painful period of re-prioritisation at the moment.
My priorities are organising the Pacific row, writing the Atlantic book, and producing the Atlantic documentary. But where does this leave launching the speaking career and dog-mushing in Minnesota? Alas, it looks as if they are going to fall off the edge of the plate.
I am gradually learning the art of delegation. There is a 'Team Roz' coming together - a loose group of people on both sides of the Atlantic who generously give of their time and energy to help me out. This backup team will be invaluable in the future. But at the moment I'm on a steep learning curve in the art of man management, which is nearly as time-consuming as the old days when I was a one-woman-and-her-mum kind of organisation.
I WAS going to finish with this thought: 'Ideally I need to figure out how to:
a) clone myself, or
b) be in more than one place at one time, or
c) give up sleeping altogether.'
But then I found this quote from Andrew Carnegie:
'No person will make a great business who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit.'
But on the other hand:
'You have to do many things yourself. Things that you cannot delegate.'
(Nadine Gramling)
If only I could delegate sleep...
[Photo: 4 x Roz - nightmare!]
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