Trying to Position My Rowboat

Day: 8 — Position: N11 54’ E138 45’

Odometer since Guam: about 361M

Distance to Balikpapan on Borneo: 1,627M

Sea surface temperature: 83.3F - 28.5C

OCEAN ROWING RECORDS AS RUNNING TOTALS

Solo career total in days: 1,061 (New World Record)

Overall career total in days: 1,145 (New World Record)

Solo career total in miles: about 25,849M (New World Record)

**Note: Circumference of the Earth along the equator is 21,600M long

———oOo———

This will be the last post for a few weeks in which I will disclose position and distance data. I have legitimate security concerns around Mindanao. I will not share my location in my blog posts or on my tracking page untilI am clear of risky waters. YBTracking map will soon require a password which we will share on a need to know basis. The wind chart by PredictWind will remain frozen. I will announce in my blog updates and on social media when ww remove the password protection and tracking will resume publicly.

Our shore team is in contact with Philippine Coast Guard in southern Mindanao. They should be monitoring my progress. I myself will apply VHF radio silence, AIS silent mode and no navigation light at night. I will transition to one hour sleep cycles monitoring the horizon for traffic, raising other vessels if necessary by VHF without identifying myself.

Otherwise my biggest challenge will be to position my rowboat to take advantage of the fickle and fast flowing currents around Palau then Mindanao. There is the real possibility that I may be carried east of Sulawesi island if I get this wrong. We have to judge drift versus progress just right and we have not rehearsed this approach before!

Watching this unfold will be nail biting, battling it under the equatorial sun and sometimes cross sea state, challenging.

Erden