Day 69 - A Bird's Eye View / New Website Goes Live!

By 1.30 this afternoon, after 6 hours of rowing and 4 squalls, I had
managed to almost complete a jagged circle and was nearly back where I'd
started. This was discouraging, to put it mildly, and seemed very unfair
as I'd been pointing my bow south the whole time. It was the winds and
currents that were responsible for the circularity of my course - and
just when I thought I'd got out of the swirling winds of the ITCZ.
Imagine how your hand moves if you are rubbing your stomach. The
orientation of your hand stays the same, even while it moves in a
circle. That is more or less what my boat had done – just a slightly
larger circle, although not much.

But I've realized something new within the last few days – that I
sometimes lose my sense of perspective. It's a drawback to having a GPS
that will give me my location to within a matter of feet, and will draw
my course with unforgiving accuracy on the screen if I zoom in close
enough. When I'm struggling to make progress, the temptation is to zoom
in close to try and make the progress look greater. But the close zoom
also cruelly shows up every last wiggle, waggle, zig and zag in my
course.

It occurs to me that this is a metaphor for one of my failings on dry
land – although I'm better than I used to be. I have to guard against a
natural tendency to focus on the details rather than the big picture, to
lose sight of what I have achieved while looking at what still needs to
be done.

So in both situations – at sea and on dry land – I have to remind myself
to adjust the zoom, step back, and get things in perspective. I don't
want to see the low-flying booby's eye view of my course – better to go
for the high-flying frigate bird's view.

[photo: No photo today – while my blog is being transferred to the new
platform (see below) we are a no-photo blog, but hopefully fully
pictorial service will be resumed shortly….]

P.S. After looping the loop this morning, conditions became much more
conducive to progress, improving throughout the afternoon and evening. I
enjoyed a glorious sunset while taking time away from the oars to munch
on a rawfood pumpkin seed cookie and savor every last moment of both
cookie and spectacular sky.

Other Stuff:

Great news, Rozlings! After a couple of weeks of ongoing issues caused
by the new version of Internet Explorer, TeamRoz decided to bite the
bullet and fully redesign my website. Superhero Evan and the genius team
at Archinoetics have been working furiously around the clock the past
week to transfer all the content over. They were able to send me a
low-resolution screen grab over my bog-slow Iridium data link, so I've
had a glimpse of the new look – and I'm really delighted with it. Much
more like my original concept for the site, and I think you'll find it
much more intuitive and user-friendly.

One major change that you'll need to know about is that my redesigned
website now hosts all my blogs and comments. So although you can still
read them in Blogger, if you want to comment, you'll need to come to
rozsavage.com. The idea is that we want to make my website your one-stop
shop for all things Roz, rather than splitting the traffic between the
main site and Blogger.

I think you'll agree that the new site is much cleaner, sharper and
easier to use! The team will continue to make little adjustments in the
weeks ahead to bring more robust features and new ways to interact with
the Rozling community, so stay tuned! If you have any
suggestions or comments, or need to point out any glitches, please do
send them our way at info@rozsavage.com or by commenting on this blog.
Enjoy!

Thank you to the amazingly creative Rozettes who have been sending in
poems for the $10k award. I am impressed and touched by your endeavors –
and I definitely don't envy Nicole the near-impossible task of picking
just one for our application!

Thanks also to Anna Farmery for the blog mention at The Engaging Brand.
She also links to the two-part interview we recorded last year – one of
the most enjoyable podcasts I've ever done. Hope to see you, Anna, when
I'm back in Blighty for good natter and a glass of something
celebratory!

I haven't had the comments through by email today, so apologies for not
being able to make my comments on your comments. Mum usually sends them
to me, but she has been busy moving house today, so I think we can
forgive her in the circumstances!

Weather report:

Position at 23.50 HST: 03 34.329N, 175 30.778W
Wind: Variable this morning, 20 knots E this afternoon and evening
Seas: 4-7 ft E
Weather: squalls on and off all morning, cloudy with some sun this
afternoon, a couple more squalls this evening.

Weather forecast, courtesy of weatherguy.com:

Feedblitz blog email reported your position as: 03 36N 175 08W as of
29Jul 2200HST (6hrs ago). Eastward motion is the preferred direction
while in the equatorial counter current.

As of Thursday morning 30 July 2009. According to measured data, there
is ESE-SE winds 7-17kts in your area with moderate to light rainshowers.
South of the equator, more of the same. Uncertainty remains, as
previously discussed. Forecast is for wind direction to shift more
ENEerly 5-15kts today then, SE 5-15kts on 01 Aug becoming light and
variable and possibly SW 5-15kts.

According to satellite imagery, there is light to moderate convection
with heavy rainshowers and squalls overhead and south to the equator.

Sky conditions: Mostly cloudy. Scattered heavy rainshowers, squalls,
and possible thunderstorms.

Forecast (low confidence due to extreme variability in equatorial
regions and naturally occurring small scale fluctuations in
direction/speed in the Doldrums)
Date/Time HST Wind kts Seas (ft) est
30/0600-01/0000 E-ENE 5-15 2-5
01/0000-02/0000 ENE-SE 5-15 4-6
02/0000-02/1200 Variable direction 1-5
0-10kts
02/1200-03/1200 SW 5-15 2-5

Next Update: Monday, 03 August