Rotem Ron was the first presenter here at the symposium. The audience of course was enthralled with the story of her solo circumnavigation of Iceland last year. A good number of whom had doubted she would have completed it. I mean, remember at the time a few well known paddlers were planning an attempt. Rotem on the other hand was not well known outside of her home in Israel and had not done a large expedition before. And that is what is really fantastic about her story. The part she didn’t include in her presentation, how amazing she really is. Sure Iceland was beautiful. Sure there was wildlife. But the star of this expedition was this soft-spoken woman with amazing will. One who did not seek “a name”. In the end she carried herself well throughout her presentation even though she needed to grasp at each word of English to tell us her story. I could not help but think how wonderful it would have been if we could have understood her in her native language. In English you could only catch hints of the expressiveness she seemed to have within her. And yet, she walked through her story without notes and bringing the audience to riotous laughter on more than one occasion! Well, done Rotem.

For my part it’s been nice to get to meet her in person. People often have different opinions about the “Stars” of sea kayaking. Often quite justified. In meeting Rotem however, you soon learn that this woman deserves every bit of the attention she gets. And probably much more.