I watched a couple of good films on the leg into Sydney, Eran Riklis' 'The Lemon Tree' and a tragic and shocking National Geographic documentary entitled, 'Solo: Lost at Sea'. Solo tells the story of a young and experienced Australian adventurer, Anthony McAuley, who attempted to be the first person to traverse the seas between Hobart of New Zealand's South Island single-handed in a kayak. That's 1600 kms in seas known as 'the Roaring Forties'! He made two attempts, and eventually travelled for 30 days in early 2007, went through a 2 day gale force 10 storm and survived, capsized several times and survived and, when he was within 80 kms of South Island, something bad happened and he drowned. OK, you have to be quite a special person to make a trip like that, and many would say the word 'mad' is a good adjective. The film's drama comes especially from the footage recovered from memory cards in his upturned kayak after the accident, short passages where he's just facing the lens and explaining his own feelings, fears, challenges and motivations. But the film left the feeling that, really, people shouldn't try to do things like that when the chances of failure are, by all experts' opinion, almost certain.
So...I'm flying over the Tasman Sea and the skies are amazing. I might have some really nice images, well, as good as you can get with the iPhone's camera. I'm just looking out at all that and thinking of McAuley in his little kayak. Mad.
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