Katie Spotz arriving in Guyana!

This is a photo of Katie Spotz taken Sunday morning -- from land! Thanks to all of the EarthView students and teachers who have been following her progress with us and learning about the importance of fresh water.

By the time most of you read this, she will have successfully completed her SOLO CROSSING of the Atlantic Ocean in support of clean water.

Katie Spotz nearing arrival

As of Saturday evening, Katie Spotz is very close to her goal of crossing the Atlantic in support of safe drinking water. Visit Row for Water to check her progress, read about all of her challenges and the water projects she is supporting -- and offer your own financial support if you can. She may be arriving as soon as Sunday, March 14!

A Vast Ocean, Avast!

On October 5, three boys, aged 14 and 15, set out to visit a girl they had just met at a rugby game. They were on the island of Atafu, the northernmost of three atolls in Tokelau. She had returned to her home on the southernmost island, 100 miles away. They set off in a 12-foot-boat (which could fit inside EarthView) with a few coconuts, and did not realize they were lost at sea until two weeks later. By then, a search team from New Zealand had tried -- and failed -- to find them.

A week after that, they caught a sea bird, which would be their only food source until being rescued on November 24, about 600 miles from home. They wHere taken to a hospital in Fiji, where they were found to be in remarkably good health.

They survived long after funerals had been held for them, and were at sea longer than has been documented for any other unsupported humans.

The unusual spatial pattern of the islands of the Pacific is one that many EarthView visitors find amazing. Fiji is close to the International Dateline, just off the top of EarthView's zipper. Hundreds of other islands are found throughout the Pacific -- far more than in the other oceans -- often tiny dots that are separated by huge distances, and arranged in interesting ways. Tokelau is a series of three rings, each a few miles across, with people able to inhabit only the outer edges of each. The rings are spaced evenly over 100 miles, but with a total land area of only 5 square miles! At 1,500 people, the population of the country is less than half the size of the student body at the public high school in Brockton, Massachusetts!

CIA map from thePerry-Castañeda Library Map Collection
at the University of Texas

The vast distances between small population centers leads to interesting results; when they were brought to Fiji, the boys were visited by relatives living there. This was not at all surprising, even though they were in a small place 600 miles from home! Today's news (which was available yesterday because of that dateline phenomenon) reported that the boys had returned home, meaning that they had flown to American Samoa, and would only have to wait two more weeks for a boat to carry them to Tokelau.

Learn more about the fascinating geography of this region from Maps of the South Pacific, a travel web site that provides an interactive map of the region as a whole and individual maps of each country. The site also explains the distinctions among Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia. (It does not cover Macronesia, which is nearly antipodean, in the North Atlantic.

Earlier this year, the EarthView team followed the progress of Katie Spotz, whose Row for Water project took her across the Atlantic Ocean. She was at sea for 70 days, in a well-stocked boat and plenty of communication equipment. From her voyage we learned some of the risks involved in small-craft travel on the high seas.

Both for Katie's planned voyage and for the boys' unplanned voyage, fresh water was, ironically, a key consideration. Katie had a water filtration kit. The boys used a tarp to gather rain and mist at night. In their case, this was starting to be inadequate and they had begun to drink seawater, a dehydrating practice that would likely have proven fatal had they been at sea a few more days.

See BBC video about the story.

Row for Water -- nearing the shore!

The EarthView Team has been following the progress of Katie Spotz as she rows across the Atlantic in an effort to raise money for fresh-water projects. The team has personally contributed enough to provide a lifetime of fresh, clean water for eight people. Katie's overall goal is to provide this for 2,000 people -- she needs $60,000, and is very close to that target. If she exceeds the goal before she lands (and she is currently off the coast of Guyana), an anonymous donor will contribute an extra $5,000.

Read our earlier EarthView post about Katie to learn more about her project, and what it has to do with geography! If you donate, please consider mentioning EarthView when you do.

Row for Water

Katie Spotz is a young Ohioan on a mission that complements one of the major lessons of EarthView. Here she is studying a map of the equatorial portion of the Atlantic as she prepares for a three-month journey rowing from Dakar, Senegal to Cayenne, French Guaina.

EarthView team member Professor James first learned of Katie's project from her interview on NPR's Talk of the Nation program, on which she discussed the importance of timing and location.  Even though her boat and electronic equipment are quite sophisticated, the most important aspect of the journey is that she will be rowing every bit of 2,500 miles. No matter how good the boat is, this feat requires not only extraordinary strength and endurance but also quite careful attention to GEOGRAPHY.

Her route will follow the southern edge of the North Equatorial Current, which itself is the southern portion of the North Atlantic gyre. By leaving Senegal in January, she minimizes the likelihood of major storms (though the boat can handle them) and maximizes the chances that currents will be pushing her in the right direction, toward Cayenne.

Her project is called Row for Water because Katie is traversing salt water as a fund-raiser for a campaign to provide fresh water to 1,000 of the 1,000,000,000 people in the world who do not have a safe and reliable supply. In EarthView, students learn why water can be scarce on a planet that is 70 percent covered by water.

Once Katie departs Dakar, her supporters will be able to track her progress across the Atlantic. Geography students can have classroom contests: How far will she go each day? What will be her fastest day? Her slowest? How close will she get to Cape Verde? When will she arrive in French Guiana? Where will she arrive? What maps can you consult to help you guess some of the answers? What other geographic questions can you think of?

Use the "comment" link below to share the adventure with other EarthView students!