Roz Savage, a British ocean rower, is attempting to become the first woman to row solo across the Pacific. In 2008 she completed Stage 1, becoming the first woman ever to row solo from California to Hawaii. Yesterday Roz set off from Hawaii on Stage 2 of her journey.
You can follow Roz's incredible journey live on a Google Map which is tracking her progress. The map shows her current position with a cartoon style map marker of Roz. When clicked an information window opens displaying the current voyage statistics.
Roz's journey so far is shown with a polyline. The polyline contains map markers with links to her blog, her latest Tweets and photographs of the journey that have been posted to Twitter.
Pull Together
Soren Johannessen of Microformats.dk has pointed me towards the Pull Together website. Pull Together is another initiative of Roz Savage. The campaign is an attempt to get eveyone to undertake a little more exercise.
Roz will make an average of 10,000 oarstrokes each day over the roughly 100 days it will take her to complete Stage 2. The idea is that you can match Roz one step for one stroke, each day. Ten thousand steps is about 6 miles or 2 hours of walking.
The site features a Google Map of people who have signed up to take part in the challenge and also points users to the GMaps Pedometer, where you can record and track the distance you walk or run each day.
Virgin Global Row
Incredibly Roz Savage is not the only person currently attempting to row the world's oceans. Oliver (Olly) Hicks is attempting to become the first person to row solo around the world.
Oliver is taking along a water-resistant laptop which means the world can follow his progress via Google Maps and Google Earth. The Google Map of Oliver's journey is on the landing page of the Virgin Global Row website and the map contains links to Oliver's blog posts on his journey.
Update: It seems Olly has actually suspended his attempt, having reached New Zealand.
Google Maps Kayaking Directions
The less adventurous of us prefer to do our rowing virtually on Google Maps. Every now and again Google Maps driving directions throws a curve-ball into a suggested route. One example is that when you ask for driving directions from Australia to the USA Google Maps often advises you to 'kayak across the Pacific Ocean'.
The current world record for virtual kayaking on Google Maps is held by 'lefty7448' who found this 29,589 km journey, which at stage 84 advises you to 'kayak across the Pacific'. Unless you know better ...
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