During last week’s phone call he very excitedly told us about two of his most recent reads. He’s awarded “Greatest Book Ever” to Small Is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher and “Most Favourite Book” to Henry David Thoreau’s Walden or Life in the Woods.

SWS readers can hear a conversation from earlier this week with Tom Robinson, live from the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Day 49: Ecuadorian tuna fishing ship sighted. They lowered speedboat, two men approached, ‘no English‘, pirates? Silence. They smiled, phew. I rubbed my belly. They nodded. Bully beef? Onions? Rice? I wish. Potato chips, Powerade and cigarettes instead!

It is an old, coral-encrusted question, puzzled over for the last three centuries, and usually posed in three parts. Where did Polynesians come from, when did they get there, and how?

“All is well on the mighty Pacific. My first few weeks were cold and wet and rough. I’m now into my fourth week and conditions are calm and peaceful.”

Lewis was born in England, of a Welsh-Irish family, and brought up in New Zealand and Rarotonga, where his unconventional father sent him to the Polynesian school - for ever after he was really a Polynesian under the skin. He always called himself a New Zealander.

Sure, the videos still have a slightly annoying millennial sensibility, but by combining some authentic James Wharram footage she makes me think that she would have fitted in well aboard TANGAROA in 1955.

“I don’t think I will ever forget the hours at the helm, three on -six off. All woollen clothes soaking wet under oilskins and seaboots; safety belt hooked into the eye of the cockpit; and end of the main sheet around the waist, made up on one of the jib cleats It was bitterly cold but I didn’t feel it.”

MAIWAR is fully loaded with enough food and water, spares and supplies to last me the five months. Her diminutive size means that for the first few weeks I’ll be sharing my bunk with my onboard pantry, I’ll by eating my way into more comfortable accomodation.

At no point up until now has it seemed unusual to send a rowing boat half way around the world to an unfamiliar, developing country, only to row it back home. But now I understand; it puts a smile on my face.

“My goal is, first and foremost, to become the youngest person to row across the Pacific Ocean.”

Lone sailor Bernard Gilboy’s small boat voyage, in 1882, was perhaps the most daring undertaking on the world’s biggest ocean. Yet, when departing San Francisco, the Customs Certificate read, “starts on a voyage of pleasure for Australia.”