Thursday's Quote: Roz Savage

Jessie is the intern for the Blue Frontier Campaign, and has been helping out with all kinds of things, including organising the launch event on July 10, and shopping for things I needed for the boat (grease pencil, toothpaste, sunshades, 12 lb of jerky, and various other random items). But possibly her greatest contribution arrived by email today - a sea shanty:

Landed person: How long have you been in the wilderness? (at sea?)

Crew: All me bloomin' life, mam!
Me mother's a mermaid
Me father's king neptune
I was born on the crest of a wave
And rocked in the cradle deep!

Seaweed and barnacles are me clothes
Every tooth in me head is a marlin spike
Every hair on me head is hemp.
Every bone in me body's a spar.

And when I spits, I spits tar.
I's hard I is I ar.
Arrrgh.

Very Pirates of the Caribbean. I especially like the penultimate line - "I's hard I is I ar". On the Atlantic I found little mantras and affirmations very useful in keeping me going at the oars, and I think this will be an excellent new one.

Speaking of sea shanties, shortly I will be publishing my favourite playlists to iTunes, so you will be able to imagine yourself there in the boat with me, listening along to what I'm listening to. All you'll have to do is throw buckets of saltwater over yourself at regular intervals, and you'll have yourself a pretty authentic ocean-rowing experience...

This blog wishes Roz fair weather and calm seas!

Tuesday's Word: desalination

Desalination refers to any of several processes that remove excess salt and other minerals from water in order to obtain fresh water suitable for animal consumption or irrigation, and if almost all of the salt is removed, for human consumption. Sometimes the process produces table salt as a by-product. Desalination of ocean water is common in the Middle East (because of water scarcity) and the Caribbean, and is growing fast in the USA, North Africa, Singapore, Spain, Australia and China.[citation needed] It is used also on ships, submarines and islands. Desalination typically requires large amounts of energy as well as specialized, expensive infrastructure, making it very costly compared to the use of fresh water from rivers or wells (bores).
Desalination of brackish water is done in the United States in order to meet treaty obligations for river water entering Mexico. Several Middle Eastern countries have energy reserves so great that they use desalinated water for agriculture. Saudi Arabia's desalination plants account for about 24% of total world capacity. The world's largest desalination plant is the Jebel Ali Desalination Plant (Phase 2) in the United Arab Emirates. It uses multi-stage flash distillation, dual-purpose and it is capable of producing 300 million cubic meters of water per year.
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