December 31 — The boat is delayed, but there is still lots of work to do. Erinn, our photographer, has arrived, as has Chris, our film guru and videographer. This brings our party to six, and makes our beach house feel like family.
To do’s … Organizing our boat schedule, visiting local schools, planning our documentary, ensuring that we are well educated in our scientific instrumentation, managing our sponsors and supporters to ensure we thank everybody properly.
Outside of this, we have had some nice team meals – baguettes & eggs every morning, pasta most nights, and fish on the beach for lunch. We are sharing the responsibilities and, thankfully, everyone knows how to cook. The vegetables are fresh, cheap and abundant, which makes the meals even more enjoyable.
The island we are staying at is called N’Gor, and is an old fishing village. It is very small, a bit run down, but certainly beautiful. Our crew loves to jog around the island, swim around the island, or do general calisthenics at the house. I enjoy lifting and throwing rocks on the beach. Markus, Pat and Jordan have really taken to surfing. I have yet to try the sport.
The final pieces of my time have been spent chatting with Becca and Jefferson, strumming my mandolin and reading a novel by Wade Davis – Into the Silence. He wrote a thoroughly researched novel delving into the failed attempts to summit Mt. Everest in the 1920’s. He believes the men on expedition were able to push themselves to almost certain death, because they had all lived through World War I. They had seen much death, often gruesome and violent. The passing of life held less fear, apprehension and nervous mystery, allowing these adventurers to push hard into the silence.
Their time was much different than ours, though. Although our row to Miami has threats and challenges, our adventure has a much lower threshold of risk. I say this as if only for the reasons that our society has charted ocean, we can see the ocean and our location within its water with satellites, we can predict weather with more accuracy, and others before us have rowed similar ocean routes.
I do feel a certain bond with Wade Davis’ novel, and have been drawing a lot of commiseration and similarities. I see myself and my teammates in many of the characters within the novel. If anything, this adventure will give me a deeper appreciation for the genre of the adventure novel.
Until next time.