“I’M NOTAN EXTRAORDINARY PERSON. IMIGHTDO EXTRAORDINARY THINGSWITH APURPOSE.”

– Braam Malherbe

southeaster pumping behind us.”

What they plan to do for the first week is remain relatively close to shore, where there is current and wind. “Then we get off the continental shelf into warmer water and curve down south of St Helena. We head north of Rio, into the mid-atlantic high-pressure cell, still South Atlantic, then go down towards Rio.

On-board equipment is comprehensive, with a full suite of electronics and communications – solar-powered, naturally. There are solar panels fore and aft to recharge batteries and equipment such as the desalinator and radio. They’ll be taking two-litre bottles of water, just in case, as ballast.

Emergency equipment includes a liferaft stowed amidships. They know their emergency beacon works because it went off accidentally soon after the boat arrived, leading to frantic calls from the sea rescue service. “And oars can break, so we take three sets with us.” The oars, like the boat, are carbon fibre.

They considered modifying the handpull steering mechanism to foot-steer because you would have to let go of the oars to steer. However, they decided against modifying because most of their steering would be pre-set using their instruments. Besides the rudder for steering, there’s a daggerboard that gets put into position when there’s wind coming from the side, to keep the boat stable.

Food will come in the form of dehydrated freeze-dried food packs, very similar to what the two used in Antarctica. “Those are meals in themselves, but they don’t taste that great, so you take a lot of little presents. Little bottles of Tabasco, sweet basil pesto, just to give some flavour. And you want light weight of course. And we are sponsored by a fantastic group of guys called Lean 95, who have a range of full meal replacements in sachets. All the kilocalories you need, but pretty much vegan.”

Physical preparation for Malherbe has started with rowing. Lots of rowing. Mentally, he believes his prior experience has prepared him well. “The longest event I’ve done to date was the Great Wall, 4 200 kilometres. David Grier and I did that at the pace of a marathon a day for 98 days, in the most gruelling terrain.

This thing is, the sea is its own mistress. Even in the Gobi Desert, you could go and find a village somewhere, relatively close to the wall that you could see from high up. Out at sea, it’s not the same. In fact,

Antarctica was harder: extreme cold and sensory deprivation. On the high plateau of Antarctica, there’s nothing, not even bacteria. We’d each be pulling for 12 hours a day, four hours at a time, and you don’t see anything but white ahead, white above and white below. I couldn’t drive a car for a month when I came home.”

A focus of their expedition is the Dot app, which is being developed free to download. “The app is like Facebook for the planet. If you look at Facebook, what gets people going? Reward and recognition, like birthday wishes. The app is based on the premise on recognising you for doing good.” There are four elements to the app. l Waste. l Energy. l Conservation. l Water. “Why Dots? Our planet’s a dot in the universe. We are just dots on the planet. So if we do just one small thing, it will make a collective difference. And it’s not just about how many dots the individual can accomplish. It’s how people respond to it – like it. Individuals, celebs and organisations will challenge each other.”

The two have worked out that it will take approximately 2,3 million pulls to get across the Atlantic. “So we’d like to get at least a million on the app before we start. When we are rowing, we’d like to say we are all pulling together towards a sustainable future – we don’t reach Rio on our own.

“We believe the world is ready for change and the next five to ten years will be a turning point towards a sustainable future because we realise the dangers of greed and consumption.”

He points out to sea from where we are sitting at his home near the summit of Cape Town’s Lion’s Head. “You look at this pretty ocean in front of you today. You might see a whale – there was a humpback out there yesterday – but you don’t see what’s underneath.

“I’ve studied climate change for 17 years, so I’m well versed in it. It’s singularly the biggest challenge to humankind’s survival. In 2048, you are looking at the end of fishing as we know it. We’re talking about ocean acidification, which is destroying gigatons of phytoplankton.”

And it’s not just the ocean. “What are we doing about the rhinos? What about the wild dogs, pangolins, the vultures?”

It’s not just the two of them, Malherbe is at pains to point out. “I’ve got a great rowing coach, Guy Biscoe, and Cathy Chambers has been my physio through several expeditions. We have been doing a lot of specific core workouts along with David Fabricius for biokinetics. And Jeffrey Rink, a psychologist.”

For those who see him as either crazy or attention-seeking, he says: “Having a purpose beyond ego is my answer. I will not do an adventure or expedition unless it’s making a beneficial contribution to the whole.

“I would say to an invidual, there is no such thing as a great adventurer. I am not a hugely well-built mega-athlete with a genetic heritage with an Olympian background. Nothing of the sort. It’s the purpose that drives me. My dream is to be the greatest asset I can be to the planet. It becomes a state of mind and if it becomes that for long enough it becomes a state of being.

“I’m not an extraordinary person. I might do extraordinary things with a purpose.” PM

➤ Most people know Nick Offerman from the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation (A), on which he played an anti-government, whiskyand-steak-adoring outdoorsman with a closet full of plaid who leads a small Indiana parks department. He won a Television Critics Association award for that one. Or maybe you watched him last year, when he donned an Amish-style beard and became Karl Weathers, the charmingly drunk and loquacious town attorney on FX’S Fargo (B). A few more places you might have seen him: • HBO’S Deadwood • 21 [and 22] Jump Street • Nick Offerman: American Ham (a Netflix comedy special) Ask This Old House (In May 2016 he appeared on the show to offer woodworking tips) Fine Woodstrip Canoe Building With Nick Offerman (a 2008 instructional DVD)

(C)

Nick Offerman learnt basic woodworking skills from his father, uncles and grandfathers. As a teenager in small-town Illinois he earned spending money by framing houses. At university, where he studied drama, he supported himself by working at the University of Illinois scenery shop. After school he moved to Chicago and opened his own woodshop, building sets and scenery for local theatres while pursuing acting gigs of his own. When his career took him to Los Angeles in the late 1990s, he supplemented his acting pay cheques with money he earned building decks and cabins. Then, in 2001, he opened Offerman Woodshop.

By that point, woodworking was more of a passion than a necessary income. Offerman’s acting career, which he refers to as his clowning career, flourished. Small roles in movies turned into small roles in movies and TV. And then he got the role that most of us know him by: Ron Swanson, the bighearted and tight-lipped anti-government outdoorsman who leads a small Indiana parks department on the sitcom Parks and Recreation.

After the shoot, the bird apparently satisfied and under control, Offerman came over to say hello. His manner is warm and gentlemanly. Hospitable. He has the confidence to execute a certain formality without embarrassment. We sat on the table saw, a Sawstop Professional Cabinet Saw. It took only the first five minutes of conversation to see that Offerman is someone you wouldn’t mind working alongside for eight hours a day. He’s not an actor in a woodshop. He’s a woodworker in a woodshop. And though he is primarily known for his comedy, in person he is a serious man who cares deeply about wood, craftsmanship and the kind of community that becomes possible among people dedicated to doing good work.

Offerman and his crew have become known for their tables topped by massive slabs that the shop mills from trees that have come down in storms or been removed from construction sites. This is wood that would otherwise be discarded, but Offerman prefers it to hardware-store lumber. For him, this method of sourcing is part of a larger philosophy that informs the work of the shop: salvaging something beautiful from society’s waste.

As the photo crew bustled about, packing up after a five-hour shoot, Nick and I moved to another part of the shop. This room was dominated by layout tables, workbenches and stacks of those massive slabs of beautiful wood, standing on edge. The high-pitched whine of a table saw filtered in from the adjoining room as the shop got back to work. (There’s nothing like the threat of sawdust to get photo equipment packed up quickly.)

Offerman began talking about making furniture. At one point, he mentioned something he calls “delicious living”, which seems to include the cultivation of certain pleasures – the kind that express a person’s taste for self-reliance – and a spirit of gratitude towards others. His voice is one of gravelly gravitas, occasionally punctuated by a deranged-sounding giggle. The giggle seems to erupt from a deep place, the commentary of an inner mini-me who is bemused by whatever the public face of Nick Offerman