My Rowboat and A Super Typhoon in December!
Written on December 20th
Day: 73 — Position: N18 16.5’ W160 44.0’
Odometer since Waikiki: about 2,433M
Distance to Northern Marianas: 884M
Sea surface temperature: 81.9F - 27.7C
OCEAN ROWING RECORDS AS RUNNING TOTALS
Solo career total in days: 1,000 (New World Record)
Overall career total in days: 1,084 (New World Record)
Solo career total in miles by Waikiki: 22,173M now about 24,517M (New World Record)
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Overall career total in miles by Waikiki: 25,153M now about 27,497M
** Ralph Tuijn (NL) leads this with 35,635M
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After the longest night tonight, days will begin to get longer again. The sun will begin its annual northerly journey once more tomorrow.
Today I became the first person to reach the immense threshold of 1,000 total days in solo ocean rowing. All of these solo days on The Ocean were spent on my faithful yellow rowboat which has served me so well until now. She is a 2-person 7.1 meter marine plywood vessel built by two British men, Malcolm Atkinson and Ben Martell, in 2001 who named her KAOS. They then used KAOS in the Atlantic Rowing Race from the Canary Islands to Barbados. That was the first ocean crossing for this vessel.
The build entailed a standard boat kit delivered to the Atlantic Rowing Race participants who would then assemble their respective rowboats. Thus each team would race with an identical vessel, pitting team against team rather than various boat designs while at the same time ensuring a baseline of safety. This race standard hence became known as the “ARR-Class” of rowboats.
Sarah and Sally Kettle, a mother-daughter team, also British, next rowed her in the 2003-4 edition of the race under the name CALDERDALE. By the time that I received her in Seattle in late 2004, she already had two ocean crossings and over 200 days of ocean time. I did not officially rename her since, hoping for a potential Boat Sponsor to earn the naming rights. Officially she remains nameless though Ocean Rowing Society has used “Around-n-Over” inspired by our 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in Seattle — Reference: http://www.around-n-over.org
Including my 25 days of rowing with a partner from Lisbon to Las Palmas in late 2005, my yellow rowboat has accrued a total of about 1,250 days of illustrious history. This number is a record among ocean rowboats. I rowed her solo from Las Palmas to Guadeloupe in 2006 then across the three oceans between 2007-2012 during what was recognized as the first solo circumnavigation by human power. Having already enabled me to set 17 Guinness World Records, she is the first rowboat to have plied the waters of three major oceans. With six total ocean crossings, she has effectively become a museum piece with a worthy story to display.
For more on my rowboat, please see: http://www.around-n-over.org/boat.htm
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On a more cautionary note, on Thursday Dec 16, Super Typhoon Rai slammed into the Philippines wreaking havoc. The latest death toll from this typhoon is at least 208 according to this article: http://lite.cnn.com/en/article/h_572fdfeae7b037b817050ba546c39e5f
Rai is the 15th typhoon to hit the Philippines this year. It weakened slightly from a Category-5 to a Category-3 storm after making landfall Thursday on Siargao Island, then it moved west passing directly over Cebu, a city of nearly a million inhabitants. According to the article, the storm initially packed winds of up to 260 kilometers per hour (160 miles per hour) with gusts over 300 kilometers per hour (185 miles per hour). It then moved across the South China Sea toward Vietnam as a Category-2 storm now approaching Hainan Island of China.
Such a powerful storm so late in the season is worrisome. The only blessing may be that such cyclonic events serve to cool the waters over which they pass, which in theory would rob the following storm of the energy that it would need to become a typhoon. But it doesn’t take much for low pressure systems to become threatening given the small size of my rowboat. This is a good reason for why I have been pacing myself since my relaunch from Waikiki on Oct 7th. The hope is that February should be quieter on the Philippine Sea in terms of storm activity.
If the odds hold, either a storm won’t form in February once I venture west of the Marianas or if it does form over Micronesia, the nursery of tropical storms in the western Pacific, it will travel west over Palau toward the Philippines, following a typical early season track. Such a storm traveling west passing south of me, would veer the persistent NNE-NE seasonal winds in the Philippine Sea making them more easterly, which would actually help my crossing. A recurving storm track toward Taiwan which would terminate my crossing, is statistically more likely after April. We shall see, as I like to say — the ocean always has alternate plans which it does not reveal in advance.
Erden