Erden Eruç

Erden Eruç (born 14 July 1961) is a Turkish-American adventurer who became the first person in history to complete an entirely solo and entirely human-powered circumnavigation of the Earth on 21 July 2012 in Bodega Bay, California, United States.

Eruç was born in Nicosia, Cyprus on 14 July 1961 and raised in Turkey.

He has been an avid outdoorsman from an early age.

When he was 11, his father took him for a climbing trip to Mount Erciyes, an extinct stratovolcano in south central Turkey and the highest mountain in central Anatolia with a summit at 3916 m. In 1977, Eruç was a student in Brussels, Belgium.

Eruç studied mechanical engineering at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul where he earned both a Bachelor of Science degree and a Master of Science degree.

In 1986, he moved to the United States where he continued his studies in engineering and business administration, earning a second Master of Science degree in Engineering Mechanics at Ohio State University and an MBA degree at George Mason University.

Eruç worked in various technical consulting projects in the U.S. for nine years, advancing into project management.

He left the corporate office world at age 41, allowing him all the time he needed to pursue outdoor adventures, with the intent of inspiring others, especially children, through the pursuit of human-powered travels.

Eruç's human-powered circumnavigation plan was expanded to include summitting the tallest mountains on six continents as a tribute to his friend and fellow adventurer Göran Kropp who died in 2002 while climbing with Eruç in Vantage, Washington.

Eruç named his expedition the Six Summits Project.

In December 2002, Eruç established a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization called Around-n-Over based in Seattle which received IRS approval as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit entity in 2003.

The Around-n-Over organization's mission is to accomplish human-powered expeditions that inspire and teach, so that others may achieve success in their own endeavors.

The organization was also formed to honor fellow adventurers who had lost their lives, especially Göran Kropp who fell and died while climbing with Eruç in September 2002.

Additionally, Around-n-Over provides the necessary structure for handling funds for expedition expenses and charitable donations to other organizations.

The Turkish İLKYAR Foundation is one such charity, which provides assistance to Turkish elementary and middle school children in rural parts of the country, while the Mateves Secondary School near Mount Kilimanjaro is also being assisted by funds donated to Around-n-Over.

The organization's name is based on Eruç's plan of circumnavigating (going around an approximate great circle of) the Earth using only his own power and (-n-) also summitting (going over) the highest peaks on each of the continents, excepting only Antarctica.

So far he has summitted three of the peaks including Denali (also known as Mount McKinley) in North America on 29 May 2003 more than four years before he began his solo circumnavigation, then Mount Kosciuszko in Australia on 10 April 2010, and Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa on 14 June 2011 during the circumnavigation.

By the end of his circumnavigation, Eruç had set several ocean rowing world records including the first person to row three oceans, the first rower to cross the Indian Ocean from Australia to mainland Africa (in two segments), the longest distance rowed across the Indian Ocean, and the longest distance rowed across the Atlantic Ocean.

During a bicycle trip to Alaska to climb Mount McKinley in June 2003, Eruç married Nancy Board in a native Alaskan Haida-Tsimshian ceremony on a beach near Homer, Alaska.

This initial plan still began with his roundtrip bicycle ride from Seattle to Mount McKinley in Alaska from 1 February to 24 August 2003 with the summit being reached on 29 May.

Eruç had planned to row south from Seattle to South America to continue the project with a climb of Aconcagua.

In September 2004, Eruç committed to purchasing a used and proven 7.1 m by 1.9 m oceangoing plywood rowboat, the same vessel which he would eventually row across three oceans to reach two more summits in his Six Summits Project.

The rowboat was christened Kaos by its first owners and was later renamed Calderdale – the Yorkshire Challenger, or simply the Calderdale, by its second owners.

Before Eruç acquired it, the Calderdale had already successfully crossed the Atlantic Ocean twice with two-person teams aboard.

The boat is listed as the Around-n-Over on the website of Guinness World Records.

Eruç has not officially renamed the boat and still refers to it as the Calderdale.

He has stated that the naming rights to the rowboat are available to a willing sponsor.

The 250 kg bare and 750 kg loaded rowboat was equipped with many advanced navigational, safety and communications systems, powered by a pair of 12 volt gel batteries and a solar panel.

The loaded rowboat contained an Argos tracking beacon, an EPIRB distress beacon, satellite phone, GPS navigator, radar transponder, radar reflector, VHF radio, palm-size computer, one manually operated and two powered desalination units, a medical kit, a watertight cabin and a life raft with an emergency bag of supplies.

When not in active use, the rowboat has been housed at the Foss Waterway Seaport's Working Waterfront Maritime Museum in Tacoma, Washington.

On 3 October 2004, however, Eruç once again left Seattle riding his fully loaded bicycle and arrived in Miami on 25 December.

He had selected Miami as a new and potentially better starting point for a circumnavigation attempt combined with the summits project.

The plan at that time was to row from Miami through the Caribbean Sea and then the Panama Canal to the Pacific, row down the west coast of South America, bike to and climb Aconcagua, row to New Guinea, bike to and climb Carstensz Pyramid (an alternate to Kosciuszko for the highest peak in Oceania), row to the Asian mainland, bike to and climb Everest, row to Africa, bike to and climb Kilimanjaro, row to the Middle East, bike to and climb Elbrus, and finally row the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean back to Miami.

A change in plans occurred when Eruç learned about Tim Harvey, a fellow human-powered adventurer, and Harvey's desire for a way home to Vancouver, Canada from Europe.

Eruç contacted Harvey and had the Calderdale shipped to Portugal.

The journey had started from Bodega Bay a little more than five years earlier on 10 July 2007.

The modes of transport included a rowboat to cross the oceans, a sea kayak for shorelines, a bicycle on the roads and hiking on trails, along with canoes for a few river crossings.

The route he followed was 66299 km long, crossed the equator twice and all lines of longitude, and passed over twelve pairs of antipodal points, meeting all the requirements for a true circumnavigation of the globe.

Guinness World Records has officially recognized Eruç for the "First solo circumnavigation of the globe using human power" on a journey that lasted 5 years 11 days 12 hours and 22 minutes.

Prior to his successful circumnavigation of 2007 to 2012, Eruç had developed a substantially different route plan.