“I normally have phone contact with the base camp twice a week to confer about all sorts of logistical matters affecting the expedition. The main focus of the discussion is generally the weather and the media. In crisis situations, however, it could be several times a day. I’m close to the archipelago at the moment, which is why it’s now very important for me to be well-informed about the weather. On the open ocean it’s not such a problem, but here there could be serious consequences if I don’t have the right information. I’m now in contact with them every evening to make sure the route I’m rowing between the 80 islands of Vanuatu is as safe as possible.

This daily contact will continue until I’m well past the islands, and we can be sure there’ll be another intense spate of phone calls as I approach the Great Barrier Reef – every diver’s dream and every ocean rower’s nightmare!”

“The same fierce wind from the past few days, force 5 on the Beaufort scale, was around again in the morning. The Zeeman Challenger had been pushed a bit to the north again the night before, so I had to row the boat more to the south, and it stayed on course beautifully! In the first few weeks after Fiji I was being thrown around in all directions except the one I wanted to go in, whereas I’ve been aiming for the northern end of the island of Maéwo for a week now and that’s exactly where I’ll be passing tomorrow, at a few miles’ distance.

In the afternoon, when the sun was a bit higher in the sky, the initial outlines of the islands came into sight. The first one I saw was Maéwo, the closest, which reaches to over 800 metres in height. The photo shows this long and narrow island, which measures 50 miles by 10 miles. The 1496-metre-high volcano of the island Aoba is visible behind this one, and Pentecost can be seen to the south of Maéwo. Pentecost is a well-known island, mainly because bungee jumping originated here, although the locals call it land-diving. A kind of stage is built from trees with various jumping platforms up to a height of 30 metres. Children jump from the lowest places and adults from the highest, with lianas strapped to their ankles. If the wind dies down a bit more I’ll make a detour to that island to take a leap myself. After all this rowing my painful hips and back deserve a little stretching.”

“A little to my north I can see an island that’s the smallest in the area, but also the most impressive-looking. Mere Lava is no more than two miles in diameter, but all that’s visible of it above water is the steep cone of a volcano towering up through the clouds to its tip about a thousand metres high. I hope I get to see all of it tomorrow morning.”