A Scottish teacher has begun a solo attempt to beat the record for occupying Rockall in the north Atlantic, after his two companions left him behind after finishing their parts in the expedition.
Chris “Cam” Cameron, 53, hopes to live alone on the small rock for up to 60 days and at least surpass the record of 45 days set nearly a decade ago by Nick Hancock, a chartered surveyor from near Edinburgh.
Cameron is living on an area called Hall’s Ledge, measuring roughly 1.5 x 4 metres (5ft x 13ft), just below the peak of the 17-metre-high granite outcrop, with only seabirds such as gannets and kittiwakes, and a couple of minke whales, for company.
Rockall sits 230 miles (370km) west of North Uist, the nearest permanently inhabited place.
On Saturday, a Scottish marine protection vessel, the Hirta, visited Cameron unexpectedly, with a comfort box of supplies. Six crew members used their rigid inflatable boat to ferry the parcel up to the sheer-sided rock.
Cameron landed on Rockall on 30 May with Adrian “Nobby” Styles, a radio operator, and Emil Bergmann, a mountaineer and radio enthusiast, after a 420-mile voyage by yacht from Inverkip on the Firth of Clyde.
Styles and Bergmann left Rockall at about noon on Friday morning after finishing their stints operating radios there to support the military charities for which Cameron, a former soldier with the Gordon Highlanders, is hoping to raise £50,000.
They had originally planned to stay with Cameron for up to a week but that was cut short because the team arrived two days later than planned, as the sea conditions around Rockall had forced them to delay their departure.
In a series of messages sent on Saturday to Harry Brayford, the expedition’s communications coordinator on the mainland, Cameron said he was settling into some routines to keep himself occupied and focused.
At dawn each day he will do his ablutions, take regular weather measurements and after several hours waiting for Rockall’s extremely slippery and guano-encrusted rocks to dry off, he will make sure the Landpod he lives in is secure.
Cameron’s old friends from the University of Aberdeen, where he studied oceanography, had sent him messages to read each day at midday.
“The challenge of being on my own is that I have no one to gauge how I am,” he told Brayford. “So often someone will ask ‘how are you today?’ It’s part of our human condition. That allows us and others to monitor our mental state.
“I have to ask myself that question each day. I miss my wife and children. They are everything to me and it’s my daughter’s birthday today. I know how my father felt as he was a master mariner.”
Speaking from the Taeping as it rounded the Mull of Kintyre heading towards Inverkip on Sunday morning, Styles said he and Bergmann had nearly 7,300 contacts with amateur radio enthusiasts from around the world during the 52 hours they were broadcasting.
Many are expected to buy QSL cards, a highly collectible form of postcard that confirms they had radio contact with Rockall, to raise funds.
The last radio transmissions from Rockall were sent by a Belgian team of enthusiasts in 2011. Rockall is regarded as the most-sought after broadcasting location in Europe since it is so rarely occupied, Styles said.
He said he was extremely pleased with the response. One veteran said he had been waiting 30 years to make contact with Rockall. “We could’ve sent far, far more than that, they just kept coming. We would never have satisfied the demand,” he said.
