Completing a human-powered circumnavigation

On Saturday, July 21 Erden Eruc will bicycle into Bodega Bay up to a slip at Spud Point Marina between 4 and 5 p.m. His arrival will mark the end of an epic five-year journey.

It will enter him once again into the Guinness Book of World Records.

In July of 2007 Eruc set off from that slip at Spud Point in a rowboat to circumnavigate the globe on human power.

With his boat, his bicycle and his feet he has done just that. Along the way on his long odyssey he has dodged Somali pirates on the Indian Ocean, paddled through crocodile-infested waters off Australia, hiked Papua New Guinea and spent 809 days alone on his boat at sea.

He has a passion for education and has raised money for schools in Africa, Nepal, and his native Turkey, where he is a hero. Nancy Board, his wife and the vice president of his nonprofit Around-N-Over, has suffered his long absences and sometimes met him when he has finally come ashore.

Eruc’s friends who have followed his exploits for seven years are putting together a welcoming committee for him on the docks and invite all Sonoma County residents  to join the party.

Here are some of the records Eruc has set on the journey: Set a new Guinness World Record for a solo ocean rower for longest time at sea: 312 days;  the London-based Ocean Rowing Society declared Erden Eruç the “first person to have rowed three oceans, completed the first ever mainland to mainland crossing of the Indian Ocean, first ever transoceanic crossing by human power from the southern hemisphere to the northern, the longest distance by human power on the Atlantic Ocean, the first solo human powered global circumnavigation. His exploits make him the most experienced ocean rower in the world.”