Day 90
It’s a nice round date – 90 days on my journey. For 90 days, my home has been a rowboat 9-metres long along the waterline. The bow compartment is 3 metres, while the cockpit is 2 metres long. The aft section, with the navigational compartment on one side and kitchen on the other, and a resting area in the aft is 4 metres. I keep my equipment and food supplies in the bow, and all I do in the cockpit is row. My main living areas are the navigational compartment and rest area.
When it was lowered into the water, the boat seemed big at first. But when I went out into the Southern Ocean, I immediately understood that it is like a grain of sand out here. Everything is relative. Our planet seems so large, but in the scope of the Universe, we are dust.
I have passed a significant psychological milestone – it is fewer than 2,000 miles to Cape Horn. 1,970, to be exact. I have crossed 120 degrees West longitude. It took me 22 days to travel 10 degrees East.
Today I received a message from schoolchildren from the township of Beregovoy, in the Zeisk District of the Amur Oblast. They write that they have been following my voyage on a map and have been examining the changes in weather conditions. I am glad that my voyage is inspiring children to learn about weather conditions in the Southern Ocean.
This year, God willing, I am planning to complete another flight into the stratosphere on the hot air balloon “Rossiya”. We are investigating several regions for the starting point: Yakutia, the Amur Oblast, and others. If I end up in the Amur Oblast, I will definitely visit the school and give a geography lesson. For now, I have some homework for the students: “Learn about the Circumpolar Current or the Current of the Western Winds”; “What makes the Drake Strait special?”; and “when did the Southern Ocean officially become considered the fifth ocean on our planet?”
The weather is stormy, the wind is over 30 knots, but I am glad that it is North-Westerly. The boat is on course.
Regards to all,
Fedor Konyukhov