circumnavigation

My Strange Story – a Recap of the Introduction

Introduction / By / / Leave a Comment

Hello friends,

Many of you have seen the notifications of my eight previous articles that I recently posted to my new blog site.  If you have not been following from the beginning, you are probably mystified by what you have seen thus far.  Therefore, I thought it would be good to give you a recap, so that the purpose is made clear, without any additional reading of my previous posts.  Obviously, I cannot condense all 30 minutes of reading material into this little post.  Therefore, you would like to understand more, please follow the embedded links to the other articles.

The summary of it all is this: God has blessed me with an errand to do.  He wants me to travel around the world preaching the Word of God … literally!  Not like Paul the apostle or any other great preacher of the past.  No, God is sending me on a conquest to circumnavigate the Earth via the South and the North Poles using nothing but my own human power.  Wherever I go, I am to proclaim the Word of God on this blog and by any other means of communication that will accomplish the task.

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My Strange Story – a Recap of the IntroductionRead More »

My Strange Story – a Recap of the Introduction Read More »

Why Singapore?

Circumnavigation, Circumnavii, Route Plan & Selection / By / / Leave a Comment
The Merlion statue and the Marina Bay Sands Singapore

My dear friend,

    You may be wondering why I chose to start the quest in Singapore.  It’s a good question, and, truthfully, I am not exactly sure why I did.  It was the first city that came to my mind, but I honestly did not think that it would be the ultimate selection for the start and end point.  It really was the providence of God.  I have a good friend of mine who is a commercial airline pilot, who flies to Singapore on a regular basis, and he has shared many stories, pictures, and text messages from and about Singapore.  Additionally, when I went to the RSA conference last year, I spent quite a while at the Singapore booth, learning about the city/nation.  As time has passed, the advantages and benefits of starting in Singapore continue to multiply.

    For some reason, it reminds me a bit of the way that my wife and I came to a decision to marry.  When I first met her, she made it abundantly clear to me that she was not interested in getting married to anyone, at any point in her life.  At the time, I was not especially concerned about that statement.  She seemed to be genuinely interested in me, and it was no more than a couple of months later before we had established a solid monogamous relationship.  Then my father passed; I was working 65+ hours/week non-stop, after which I started up my own business.  Before I really knew what happened, we had been together for about three years, and I started thinking to myself, “I really do want to get married someday!”  With that self-realization, I had to seriously consider why I was still dating her.  I thought to myself, “If she never wants to get married to anyone, perhaps, I should end our relationship, so that I can begin looking for a woman who does want to get married and raise up a family?”

    However, I was too busy with life, and our relationship felt far too comfortable.  Therefore, we continued on like that for another year or more.

    Then one day, out of the blue! … she asked me when we were going to get married! … as if we had already made the decision to do so!

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Why Singapore?Read More »

Why Singapore? Read More »

I Believe!

Challenges, Challenges, Health / By / / Leave a Comment
Jonah and the Whale, Pieter Lastman 1621

My dear friend,

Perhaps you are thinking to yourself that I do not cherish and love my wife, and I suspect that there are many others that are thinking the same thing.  When I published my post, “A Riddle?,” I figured that it would cause a bit of a stir, and it appears that it did.  What was I supposed to do, pull a Jonah and disobey God by running off to Tarshish?  You have heard the story before, no?

“1Now the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, 2Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me. 3But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. 4But the LORD sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken. …”

“15So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea: and the sea ceased from her raging. 16Then the men feared the LORD exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice unto the LORD, and made vows. 17Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.”

Jonah 1:1-4 & 1:15-17 KJV

    I would rather not attempt my circumnavigation in the belly of a fish, thank you very much!

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I Believe!Read More »

I Believe! Read More »

What is Solo Human-Powered Polar Circumnavigation?

Circumnavigation / By / / Leave a Comment
Colin Angus rowing across the Atlantic Ocean 2014
Roz Savage ocean rowing in Hawaii 2008

My dear friend,

    Perhaps when I use the term “Solo human powered polar circumnavigation” you are not so sure what I mean by the use of those terms.  I am confident that pretty much everyone is a bit foggy of what that means.  In actuality, there is not complete agreement among the experts of what any of these terms mean.  There is not even a consensus of what constitutes a true circumnavigation of the Earth.

    Therefore, with this post we will take a brief look at a few circumnavigations in the annals of history to get a little better idea of what the terms mean in application.  In subsequent posts, I will expand on these topics as they come into view.  The whole business is surprisingly complicated.  It is not something that we want to fully analyze in a single blog post.  If you look at the Wikipedia page on the topic, you will see what I mean.  It is a fairly lengthy article, and it does hardly more that scratch the surface of the subject.

    In the 1500’s there were a number of adventures that made attempts at circumnavigating the Earth in wooden sailing vessels, including Ferdinand Magellan and Sir Francis Drake.  There is no lack of debate about who completed what journey, what ship they were on, and if it constituted a single voyage or not.  Ever since then, men have debated about every circumnavigation that has ever been attempted.  Is it a circumnavigation in the truest sense of the word?  Was it completed in a single set of consecutive uninterrupted voyages?  Was it completed in the same vessel?  Were the crew members all the same? On and on are these types of questions are bantered about.  They are all good questions; however, there seems to be a great deal of splitting hairs among the experts and the onlookers and very little regard for the actual accomplishments.

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What is Solo Human-Powered Polar Circumnavigation?Read More »

What is Solo Human-Powered Polar Circumnavigation? Read More »

I am not Worthy

Challenges, Challenges, Health / By / / Leave a Comment

My dear friend,

    You (and many others that are reading this post) understand how that I am afflicted with a debilitating gastrointestinal disorder.  There have been a few times over the course of this last year where I was completely convinced that I was only days away from a full deliverance from my affliction.  Alas, in each case, I was not able to get past the threshold.  Therefore, even as I write this, I am still suffering from my disorder.  Perhaps you assumed that I must have found a cure to my problem, since I am now publicly telling world that God has called me out to circumnavigate the Earth.  Yet, this is not so.  God truly has called me out to do the impossible.

    When I first accepted Jesus as my savior, I was still young and full of spit.  Moreover, I did not know much about the Word of God.  I certainly did not understand what it was to live by the law of faith.  To the casual observer, I was every bit as heathen as any other twenty-year-old living a life of sin, apart from God.  I have always been a hard worker, but apart from that, the only other thing I knew, in life, was how to party … and party I did!  Therefore, in my folly God blessed me with this gastrointestinal disorder.  I say that with all reverence; because, it was a genuine blessing.  Had it not been for my affliction, I would have continued partying my life away into oblivion.

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I am not WorthyRead More »

I am not Worthy Read More »

The Difficulty of my Errand

Challenges, Challenges, Nautical / By / / Leave a Comment

My dear friend,

    You may have noticed that I added a second position to my LinkedIn profile today.  If you click on the company logo and read through the LinkedIn Company Profile for UNIT Materials and Science, I believe that the company summary will seem a bit familiar to you.

“We develop ultra-lightweight materials engineered to provide exceptional structural strength and remarkable thermal insulation characteristics in concurrence. We provide solutions for applications where any combination of two or more of these significant attributes of high-tech engineering are a design factor: High strength, Ultra-lightweight, Minimal material profile, and Extremely low thermal energy transfer.”

    You may recall when I told you about this invention that I was working on.  It was a revelation that God gave to me about three years ago.  At the time, I did not understand the full significance of the revelation.  I simply thought that it was a great way to make a living and to branch out on my own.  Little did I know that God had given me the idea for this very purpose.

    What purpose is that? … for the purpose of my quest.  Aside from God himself, these materials are the foundation for making a global circumnavigation a reality.  Without these materials the quest truly would be impossible.  With these materials, the quest becomes technically plausible.

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The Difficulty of my ErrandRead More »

The Difficulty of my Errand Read More »

Polar Circumnavigation Logo

What’s the Point?

Introduction / By / / Leave a Comment

My dear friend,

I am sure that you are wondering what this is all about.  In one sense it is all very simple.  It is all about you.  However, that does not fully answer the question, “What’s the point?”  The complete answer is not quite so simple.  It is not something that can be explained in few words, not even in a single blog post.  Nonetheless, I will, in this post, do my best to give you a reasonable overview of the purpose behind it all.

    What is it that I mean when I say, “Raising the awareness and understanding of the Word of God using the Earth itself as a pulpit?”

As it states on my LinkedIn Company Profile:

“There is a threefold purpose:
• To test (prove) the love of God;
• To make known the Word of God; and
• To serve as a vehicle for His love and His Word.”

    God through His infinite mercy uses the weak and the foolish to confound the strong and the wise (as Paul the Apostle writes in First Corinthians 1:27).  If it were possible that a man could complete a solo human powered polar circumnavigation of the Earth, only by God’s mercy and grace could it be done.  Only by God’s mercy and grace would one even dare to attempt it.  It is by the infinite love of God that Jesus gave His life to make the impossible possible.  Likewise, it is simply by His love that one would risk his own life to make known the love and the Word of God.

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What’s the Point?Read More »

What’s the Point? Read More »

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