Breathing Deep, and Keeping the Faith

Image by rozsavage via Flickr

It is now less than 4 days before I launch, and it's all happening. There is still so much to do, and I know it WILL all happen - just not quite sure HOW. But if I've learned anything through the last few years, it's that if you keep the faith, and work your butt off, you can make almost anything happen.

Oh, and it also helps to have a band of angels, aka extremely good friends. We've made some amazing friends here in Hawaii - and tomorrow Team California arrives. Six or seven friends are arriving from the mainland to help with final preparations and to see me off on Sunday. They will all be put to work (I hope they know this!) to run around for final provisions, fix up the boat, and help get me packed. The team includes Nicole's granny and brother, my friends Aenor and Melinda (veterans of the post-airlift salvage mission of 2007), Nancy our hostess in Sausalito, and Ellen of Google fame.

I truly could not do what I do (or at least, not with any shred of sanity) without the assistance and support of these incredibly dedicated friends. And I don't know if I'll ever be able (being British and all) to let them know just how much I appreciate them.

So while I'm in this rather emotional, un-British kind of mood, I'd just like to say how amazing it has been to work with Nicole over the last 3 months. Working alone was.... well, I managed. But working with Nicole has been so much more effective, and so much fun. There have been some amazing comedy moments that I wish I could share with you, but unfortunately we didn't know they were about to happen so we didn't have the cameras rolling. But there has been a lot of hilarity, interspersed with serious, profound, how-are-we-going-to-save-the-world kind of moments that will stay in my (very unreliable) memory forever.

When I get to meet incredible people like this, who are prepared to give so much in return for so little, it makes me feel that I must be doing something right - or at least doing the right things for the right reasons.

And on that note I will hand over to our latest RozCast - recorded by Nicole and me in Waikiki last night at sunset.

RozCast Video from Lake Havasu, Arizona

For a change of pace, today's blog is a vlog - a video recorded yesterday here in Arizona. This is approximately the format I hope to use for weekly RozCasts while I am out on the ocean on Stage 2 of my trans-Pacific row, so this is a bit of a pilot episode. I'd really welcome some feedback so please feel free to add comments to this blog to let me know what you think.



You might notice that I have also geotagged the video. We are investigating ways to geotag all my online updates - blogs, podcasts, Tweets and videos - so that you (and my Mum!) can keep track of me.

Speaking of Mum, please join me in wishing her all the very best for her hip replacement operation this weekend. Good luck, Mum, and I'm wishing you the speediest of all speedy recoveries!