08 Jun 2008, The Brocade
Happy World Oceans Day!
As well as my row being a project of the US-based nonprofit Blue Frontier Campaign, I am also a Blue Ambassador for the UK-based charity The BLUE Project - so all in all I am about as blue as blue can be. ("I was walking in Memphis..". Oh, no, sorry - different kind of blues.)
The BLUE Project was set up by renowned sailor Conrad Humphreys, and its key message is "Be Blue, Be Cool" - in other words, it's COOL to care about the environment, and COOL people take action to make a difference to the world's climate and oceans.
To mark World Oceans Day today, the BLUE Project is asking you to make a BLUE Pledge, a bit like Margo's pledge that I wrote about a couple of days ago. Make a simple promise online to change just one thing that will make a difference for the better. See their website for more details.
I've been trying to think what I can do. I already do these things:
- Use a re-useable grocery bag. Tip: I find it hard to remember to take my re-useable bags with me, so I always carry a Chico bag in my handbag. It scrunches up super-small into its own carry-pocket, so I always have it handy for those impromptu purchases. We'll also be having some VERY nice re-useable grocery bags for sale via this website within the next couple of months - and they are made from recycled plastic, and can themselves be recycled when they get too old and tatty - so they're really super-green! Or blue. Keep an eye open for them here. - Carry a re-usable drinks mug, so I don't have to use a disposable cup when I give in to the urge for a caffe latte - Recycle any domestic plastic waste - Choose products with less packaging when there is a choice - Use a Brita water filter jug to refill my Nalgene water bottles so I don't need to buy bottled water
So, given that I'm already living a true BLUE lifestyle, and I'm rather limited how much bluer I can be in my present circumstances, I've decided as my pledge that I'm going to create an online petition to encourage others to do the same - ideally through lobbying the legislature at some level to create incentives to be blue.
I've already enlisted the help of David Helvarg from the Blue Frontier Campaign, and hopefully we'll have something drafted by the end of this month. I'll be putting the petition on gopetition.com, with links from this site and also from my Facebook page.
In the meantime, you can buy a copy of David Helvarg's book, 50 Ways To Save The Ocean, which will give you lots of ideas of what you can do to help.
When our petition goes live, I hope you'll sign it, and get all your friends to sign it too. I'll make sure we launch it with a splash (so to speak) so you will definitely be aware it's happening.
If we pull together, we can make a world of difference!
[photo: The BLUE Project slogan on my boat: Be Blue, Be Cool. Photo taken about a week ago, when conditions were a lot calmer than they are today]
Other stuff:
Five days since I was able to row. Probably another four before I can row again. Ho hum. My dear old Dad (God rest his soul) used to say that only boring people get bored. But there again, he never spent over a week confined to a cabin just six foot by three foot by three. Options for entertainment are limited. Unfortunately the deck is just too dangerous and unpleasant a place to be, so I while away the time in my little rabbit hutch, looking out the hatch at the waves, and looking forward to more favourable conditions.
After several days of being swept southeast, I am now managing to make some progress west. This is good news.
My watermaker refused to work today. This is NOT good news.
You win some, you lose some..
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07 Jun 2008, The Brocade
Every day I fill out a quick questionnaire to record my psychological state, and email it to my mother for her to pass on to Dr Neil Weston at the University of Portsmouth. He has been studying various adventurers spending significant amounts of time alone at sea, to evaluate how the solitude affects them and the survival strategies that they develop to cope with it, and is now doing a case study about me.
There is a special question at the end of my questionnaire, that I specifically requested should be put there. "On a scale of 1 to 10, how accepting are you of the conditions?"
I wanted this there to remind me that things will not always be as I want them to be, but in most cases (and certainly where weather is concerned) there is no point expending valuable mental and emotional energy in wishing that things were other than as they are. I learned this on the Atlantic by doing it the wrong way - I got myself into a fine old state of indignation and frustration by constantly thinking that things OUGHT to be different. "This isn't what I expected!"
Today the weather has once again been too rough, and the waves coming at me from the wrong direction, making it impossible to row. And it is likely to stay that way for at least the next five days. This is obviously far from ideal. If I was not being accepting of the conditions, I could be running around on this track in my mind:
- I came here to row, not sit around in the cabin - I'll be losing all my fitness - I am getting swept east, losing the valuable miles I'd made to the west - This is boring
But, given that I can't do anything about it, it's really best to accept it and try to make the best of a bad situation. So I'm reminding myself of these unexpected benefits:
- this is giving my (now very swollen) finger a chance to recover - and that strained pec muscle from last week - at least I'm making some headway south, which is useful - hmm, I'm providing a useful illustration of the track that a piece of garbage might take on its way to the North Pacific Garbage Patch... - wow, it's been years since I had this much time to lie around and just think.
So that's how I am, and that's how the weather is, and that's just how life has got to be for the next few days. Ho hum.
Other stuff:
The watermaker continues on its slow path to recovery. I ran it again today, and it seemed to be doing ok. I shall persevere with the WD40/Bag Balm therapy and hope that the patient continues to improve.
I did venture out on deck to cook myself a hot dinner. But in the 20 minutes it took me to get out the Seacook stove and heat the water and boil-in-the-bag meal and then put the stove away again, I got 5 complete drenchings as huge waves swept across the deck. It is now 4 hours later and I am still trying to get my feet properly warmed through. They still have that damp, chilly feeling. So it is debatable that the warming effects of the hot food were more than cancelled out by the cold soakings. I may have to rethink my strategy.
I recorded another podcast with Leo Laporte this morning. If you haven't done so already, do check them out. You can find them under the "Media" option in the menu bar above - but hopefully soon they will have their own feature box on the right of this Blog page. You can also listen to them live at twit.tv, or on iTunes. Sorry to be a bit vague on details, but I don't have internet access from here - only email.
You may have noticed that there is sometimes a long interval (up to 16 hours in some cases) between updates to my position. Please do not be alarmed. This does not necessarily mean anything drastic has happened. In these rough conditions, with the boat tipping around in all directions, the Marinetrack unit is not always able to locate the satellites overhead for long enough to transmit its hourly position report. This can result in a number of updates being missed. Marinetrack have been very good at monitoring this situation - they email me if they are getting concerned so I can check the power supply to the tracking unit.
So no need to worry - just be patient. It's not like I'm moving so fast that you might miss something!
[photo: pic from my cabin: the control panel of instruments, including chartplotter (not currently working), VHF radio, Sea-Me radar enhancer, stereo and switch panel]
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07 Jun 2008, The Brocade
Last year my friend Margo Pellegrino paddled an outrigger canoe from Miami to Maine to raise awareness of marine conservation issues. Along her route she made many friends, and enlisted many people to the cause. She decided she wanted to take some action to show solidarity with my efforts, and sent me this email:
Hey Roz-
I figure that while you're out to sea leading a minimalist life, I will do my best to live as minimally as possible...
1)I will not even entertain the thought of buying anything in a plastic bottle--be it water, juice or soda. I will be conscious of reusing, reducing, and recycling
2) when running my daily route, I'll wear a Madgringo Hawaiian shirt (sharing in the "aloha" spirit here) and pick up trash. I'll also wear this when I'm out on my long weekend paddles, when I'm practicing with the team, and when I'm racing.
3) I will collect non-recyclable plastic bottle caps--all varieties, and hopefully can encourage others to do the same (our local cub scouts are doing this....
4) when doing presentations, I will mention you and your trip--and if I'm not wearing a Surfrider T-shirt, I'll be wearing one of my Madgringo shirts!
I mention Margo's initiative in the hope that other people might also want to take some kind of pledge for action along these lines, at least for the duration of my voyage - and hopefully beyond!
Do write in and let me know what you decide to do, and I will pass on the best ideas via my blog.
Other stuff:
I continue in my attempts to nurse the watermaker back to health. Today I checked that no more water was finding its way into the compartment, and ran the watermaker for about half an hour. Although still not sounding quite the same as normal, the tone of the feed pump is gradually getting closer to its usual hearty timbre.
So the equally unattractive options of abandoning my venture due to watermaker failure, or having to resort to drinking my own urine, recede. I have a dear friend, who prepared all my lovely dehydrated food snacks for my voyage, who swears by the medicinal value of drinking a glass of one's own urine each day. But I think I'd struggle. Maybe with some cranberry juice. Or something stronger. Vodka Pee-tini?
Although the waves are still too big and dangerous to row across, this afternoon I thought I would try to set up the sea anchor in such a way as to stem my eastwards drift. It turned out to be a lot more challenging than I thought. Long story short, after snapping one makeshift cleat, inflicting a painful injury on my right index finger, and getting seriously chilly feet, I decided it was time to return to my cabin to warm up and rethink my strategy.
Doing anything at all on deck continues to be challenging. Imagine living life on a mechanical bucking bronco in perpetual motion, while having bucketfuls of icy cold saltwater thrown over you at unexpected intervals, and you'll more or less get the picture...
(Photo of Margo, courtesy Margo Pellegrino)
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05 Jun 2008, The Brocade
Why do I do what I do? Why, having had a life of relative ease, comfort and affluence, have I now chosen to put grey hairs on the head of my poor long-suffering mother by rowing alone across oceans?
It's a good question, so I'll try to give a good answer.
By 2004 I had figured out that money wasn't everything, that maybe who I was mattered more than what I owned.
So I had already quit the office job and was looking around for something more fulfilling - and for me, "fulfilling" had to involve making a contribution to the greater good. I was doing a lot of reading about philosophy and religion, and was especially influenced by the prophecies of the Hopi tribe, which foretold dramatic consequences if ever humans lost touch with their spiritual life, and started to overexploit the resources of the planet rather than living in harmony with nature. This made intuitive sense to me, and I resolved to live my own life in a more spiritual, less environmentally damaging way.
When I started to live this way, it felt good. I thought maybe I should spread the word - not in a preachy way, but just by making my life an example, showing that there was a viable and enjoyable alternative to the materialistic kind of life that I had been living before.
I toyed with several ideas - setting up an organic coffee shop, riding a motorbike around the American Southwest to write a book about the native culture, converting a tugboat to a liveaboard home using only sustainable energies. But none had seemed quite right, or required more money than I had.
I hadn't been particularly looking for a big adventure - but when the idea of rowing across oceans came to me in a flash of inspiration one day, I just knew, with a scary certainty, that it was the Perfect Project.
Believe me, I tried to talk myself out of it. I thought it was too big, too ambitious, that people like me just didn't do things like that. But the idea refused to go away, until I really had no choice but to do it, or spend the rest of my life thinking "if only".
So here I am, aged 40, homeless and usually penniless, bobbing around in a tiny rowboat about to be hit by a Force 10 gale. Hmmm, interesting choice.
But I wouldn't have it any other way.
Other stuff:
This morning I recorded another podcast with renowned TV/radio journalist and podcaster Leo Laporte. Do check them out if you haven't already. I can't see my website from the ocean (I have email but no internet browsing) so I can't tell you exactly where to find the podcasts, but hopefully they are fairly evident.
Today I squirted the watermaker liberally with WD40, according to a suggestion from Spectra, the manufacturers. It ran OK for about half an hour and then stopped again. The pressure seemed rather low and the tone of the pump sounded rather feeble. It's still a major cause for concern, although now at least the Bag Balm seems to be stopping the compartment from flooding again.
The weather was quite pleasant for most of today - sunny, although the wind was still too strong to row against. But in the last couple of hours there has been a marked deterioration. The skies are now heavy and grey, and the waves are getting larger. Is this The Big One? I am bracing myself...
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