An adventurer living alone on the barren islet of Rockall, 230 miles (370km) west of the Outer Hebrides, is halfway to completing a record-breaking stay, while enduring “atrocious” Atlantic weather.
Chris “Cam” Cameron, a teacher and former soldier, is often soaked and bitterly cold. He landed on Rockall more than three weeks ago with two companions to raise £50,000 for military charities and beat the 45-day occupation record, set nearly 10 years ago.
“My dad was a sea captain who used to go to sea for 12 months at a time,” said Cameron. “I want to highlight being away from family in difficult situations and doing it out of duty. That’s why I want to raise this money.
“And for the veterans who put themselves at risk all their days and are too proud to ask for help when they most need it. We owe them that. It’s not about the record at all.”
After broadcasting to more than 7,000 radio hams for several days to raise money, his companions left him alone in a survival pod on a narrow guano-encrusted area of the rock known as Hall’s Ledge on 2 June.
Rockall’s sheer-sided peak is 17 metres above sea level and entirely exposed to the Atlantic’s often fierce weather – waves are known to swamp the rock.
After three days of heavy winds and waves, Cameron is bracing himself for a force 8 gale forecast this weekend, which is expected to directly strike Hall’s Ledge. He is reconfiguring his survival pod and fixing a new safety line to tie himself to a bolt fixed into the granite.
“That way, if everything does get hit by a massive wave and washed away, I will be independently attached,” he said on WhatsApp. “That’s my job for today while there is a rest in the weather. I pray that the storm either dies out or moves north. But today is a calm day – the first in three days.”
Cameron, who is compiling a journal, writing poetry and taking daily meteorological readings, has been sent poems about Rockall written by Anne Osbourn, a professor of biology and plant scientist at the John Innes Centre in Norwich.
Osbourn said she had become intrigued by Rockall during the Covid-19 lockdowns and had corresponded with Nick Hancock, a chartered surveyor from West Lothian who set the current occupation record of 45 days in 2014.
Cameron, a Royal Navy reservist for 30 years who now lectures to military personnel, said on Wednesday he expected to leave Rockall on about 20 July, when a calm weather window was forecast.
That is also when the chartered yacht he used to sail there, the Taeping, is available to rescue him, short of the 60-day occupation target he had set.
“The 50-day mark is when there is a break in the weather according to our stats and an available window in the vessel’s itinerary,” he said. “£50k for 50 days also sounds better.
Nicola, Cameron’s wife and a primary school teacher, said she and their two teenage children spoke to him twice a day but that the family tended not to dwell on where Cameron was or the risks he was facing. The narrow ledge he occupies is frequently very slippery, with a sheer drop to the sea.
Cameron’s colleagues have given him a football with a handprint painted on to take to Rockall: a facetious reference to the basketball adopted by Tom Hanks in the film Cast Away and nicknamed Wilson.
“I think he has this need to prove himself,” Nicola said. “But I wish he had just bought a sports car instead.”
