With the swim being so foreign in a foreign country, there are loads of logistics to arrange.
Camilla from Plastic Oceans Chile has been a tremendous asset co-ordinating permits from the municipality, navy and mayor. Organising kayaks, a boat, acccomodation, CPR hire and food as well as the hospital.
Since our arrival, we (my team) have had to meet the navy, the hospital director and kayak and boat captian to ensure everyone is on the same page.
Camilla has been translator on top of all this, so thankfully the swim didnt happen today, which allowed all these meetings to happen and give me and my team time to get all our supplies, get into some routine and just rest before the action starts.
Once all the meetings were done, we got to swim again with Tao and Kanva for a 3 km downwind. It was so different experiencing the blueness. We went from seeing the bottom of the ocean to a sudden intense blue which is hard to describe. It was like being suspended in space surrounded by an insane blue that went on forever. It was absolutely surreal.
It feels like we have been here for a week already with all the meetings and island time seems to slow everything down.
It only gets light at 8am here, and dark by 9pm. After a solid sleep we woke at 5:30am, made some tea and Johan came to show me and coach the charts.
Wednesday was looking like a possible window which meant a lot of hustling needed to happen today!
John, Rentia and Wofty went for a run while coach and i did some pilates in the little matted studio at the hotels. We met the rest of the Plastic Oceans team for breakfast at 8:30 (they arrived last night).
After breakfast we walked to town to meet the boat captian (Moito). The captain of out yacht called Narahi, the kayakers from kayak rapa nui, Tao, Kanva and Karina.
We had a good discussion looking at various scenarios and going through safety protocol and chain of commands. Is was so great to see the locals and gain valuable local knowledge we left agreeing we were all on the same page and that tomorrow has a possible window.
John and Sarah spent the rest of the day on the yacht doing a reccie if the island to get a better idea of the difficult and challenging spots. They named them ‘the good’, ‘the bad’ and ‘the ugly’. The plan is to start at the bad first and then get the ugly over before nightfall.