which is how I post my blog. So I'm reading my blog over the satphone
and I hope that Mum gets my message asking her to transcribe it for
me, and I gather that I am not the only member of Team Roz having
technical difficulties. I haven't heard from Nicole since she arrived
on Tarawa so they must be having problems there too.
I spoke to Evan today who is back at base on Hawaii and he says he has
just had the one email from her since she left, so they were having
some issues. So all in all it has been a challenging day for the
Rozters. Right this minute, though, email is far from the biggest of
my worries. My much greater concern is trying to hit Tarawa. Such a
tiny speck in such a huge ocean and my boat is so difficult to
maneuver with any precision so reaching Tarawa was always going to be
like trying to land a parachute on a penny from 40,000 feet, Oh and
given that I am not due to arrive there until September the 9th to
give my team time to assemble. It is like trying to land a parachute
on a penny at 3.23 and 35 seconds on a Wednesday.
If the weather was nice and calm as predicted with a gentle 8 knot
wind from the east, this might be looking quite do-able, but as I
speak at sunset on Wednesday – I'm on Tarawa time now - I am looking
out at some of the roughest conditions I've seen on this stage so far.
The wind is blowing at 20 plus knots and the seas are rough and steep.
So life is erm . . . interesting.
Hopefully soon these communications issues will be resolved and this
reminds me of Shackleton and his men when they had to split up the
team. Some of them had to set out across the Antarctic to try to raise
a rescue mission. The ones left behind had no idea whether the rest of
the party had succeeded or perished in the attempt.
Obviously in the early days of the 20th century they had no satellite
phones. So suddenly Nicole has been thrust back several decades into a
world without internet. Ironically, even though she is now just 150
miles away from me, closer than at any other point in the last three
months its never been more difficult for us to communicate with each
other.
I left a message with Evan that I will try to call Nicole at 10am
tomorrow so hopefully we can manage to make contact then. Meanwhile
there is this wind to worry about . . .
Signing off now, next blog from me in a couple of days. Hopefully
Nicole will manage to get on line to post her blog tomorrow. In the
Meanwhile, thank you Rozlings for your ongoing support, love and
encouragement, and its going to be an interesting final week, that's
for sure.
All the best for now. Roz.
