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Just a brief update…

For those of you who’ve been following our website since the “Newsletter” days, you may remember Erdun Eruc, who undertook a human-powered circumnavigation of the globe.  His journey began in July of 2007, and we first wrote about him in our August 2007 Newsletter.  He was equipped with one of our ocean rowing seats, and of course we enjoyed following his adventures.

Erdun completed his journey in July 2012, 5 years and 11 days after he departed Bodega Bay. He set a number of records (awaiting certification by Guinness):

– The first person in history to have completed a single human powered circumnavigation.
– The most experienced ocean rower alive with 876 career days spent on the world’s oceans.
– The longest distance rowed in an ocean rowing career, about 28,551 nautical miles.
– The first person to have rowed the three major oceans.
– The first person to have rowed across the Indian Ocean mainland to mainland, Australia to Africa.
– The first person to have rowed across an ocean from the southern hemisphere to the northern.
– Guinness World Record for the longest time spent at sea by a solo ocean rower by 312 days.
– The longest distance record on the Atlantic Ocean by rowing, about 5,465 nautical miles.
– The longest distance on the Caribbean Sea – about 1,709 nautical miles.

Though he set all these records and his journey not only circled the globe, one more arcane achievement is that he passed several “antipodal” points – points on the globe that are on exact opposite of each other.  Most people don’t even reach one antipodal pair of points in an entire lifetime, and Erdun logged TWELVE on this journey.

Erdun’s actual circumnavitation path is in black. The antipodal track (in red) shows the diametrically opposed points. Where they intersect is an “antipodal pair” of points where Erdun was exactly opposite a point he visited at another time in the journey. (Image credit to around-n-over.org)

And as if that’s not enough, while he was at it, he summited Mt. Kilimanjaro in pursuit of his “Six Summits” project!

Since his return he’s received several awards and had some good press, including this piece by Seattle-based TV program Evening Magazine. There also is a plan for a documentary, “Castaway with a Purpose,” which has a kickstarter campaign launching this month.

There is a lot of good reading on his Around N Over website, and also a nice “just the facts ma’am” summary of his journey (PDF file).