Partnership with Ocean Recovery Alliance
Day: 27, Odometer: 947M
Distance from start: 821M
Position: N28d44’ W129d31’
Nearest land: Pt Conception, 575M due 051T
Waikiki Yacht Club: 1602M due 260T
Solo career total: 871 days
Overall career total: 955 days
40M days are now becoming routine. At this pace without a hurricane to derail my approach, I should reach Waikiki in another 40 days. That’s the first week in September if not earlier, unless a hurricane interferes.
Just over a year ago I received an email from Gursel Sen, representing the Turkish Rowing Federation in the Turkish National Olympic Committee. He knew of my environmental concerns as an outdoor athlete. They have an annual swimming race across the Bosphorus Strait in Istanbul; as the event organizers, they had engaged the Ocean Recovery Alliance (ORA).to reduce the event’s plastic footprint. Would I want an introduction?
That is how Doug Woodring, the founder and president of ORA and I began our dialogue. Doug is based in Hong Kong. ORA operates out of Hong Kong and is also registered in the state of California. I have since become an ambassador for ORA with the mission to raise awareness about plastic pollution in The Ocean.
Doug and his team are closely following my crossing and hoping to welcome me to Hong Kong in 2022. They set up an educational stream of content about my crossing which I have permission to duplicate on this website. They are calling it “Westbound Wednesdays.” Below are the links that I have so far. They have the content trilingual in English, Chinese and Spanish. They will keep adding material every week.
If you visit our donate page, you will see there a link to our GoFundMe campaign. Initially intended to meet expedition expenses, that campaign will share all funds which exceed its stated fundraising goal equally between ORA and Around-n-Over . So please pass on the word…
My friend Matt Croft who built our website, will now take on the task of keeping in sync the educational pages on both sides. We will probably add a menu item on this website next to ABOUT, called EDUCATION then under that, offer drop down options to ENGLISH, CHINESE and SPANISH. Matt will come up with the best solution, no doubt.
I am grateful for the help from both ORA and Matt.
Please stay tuned.
Erden.
BTW — Plastic Disclosure Project is a service that ORA offers to organizations, companies, stadiums, institutions, events…
1- Have ORA visit to determine your plastic footprint today
2- Implement policies to reduce that footprint
3- Repeat after a mutually agreed time period to document the reduction
4- Iterate 1-3 as necessary
5- Celebrate and advertise your reductions
—-oOo—-
ORA page dedicated to this crossing
Release schedule (note trilingual page buttons)