"How are you doing?" and you can say, "I'm fine." But now I'm on my own, I've got to make sure I'm doing OK

A Scottish teacher, Chris "Cam" Cameron, 53, has begun a solo attempt to beat the record for occupying Rockall in the north Atlantic.

Cameron hopes to live alone on the small rock for up to 60 days and at least surpass the record of 45 days set nearly a decade ago by Nick Hancock, a chartered surveyor from near Edinburgh.

Cameron is currently living on an area called Hall's Ledge, measuring roughly 1.5 x 4 metres (5ft x 13ft), just below the peak of the 17-metre-high granite outcrop, with only seabirds such as gannets and kittiwakes, and a couple of minke whales, for company.

Rockall sits 230 miles (370km) west of North Uist, the nearest permanently inhabited place.

On Saturday, a Scottish marine protection vessel, the Hirta, visited Cameron unexpectedly, with a comfort box of supplies.

Six crew members used their rigid inflatable boat to ferry the parcel up to the sheer-sided rock.

Cameron landed on Rockall on 30 May with Adrian "Nobby" Styles, a radio operator, and Emil Bergmann, a mountaineer and radio enthusiast, after a 420-mile voyage by yacht from Inverkip on the Firth of Clyde.

Styles and Bergmann left Rockall at about noon on Friday morning after finishing their stints operating radios there to support the military charities for which Cameron, a former soldier with the Gordon Highlanders, is hoping to raise £50,000.

Cameron's old friends from the University of Aberdeen, where he studied oceanography, had sent him messages to read each day at midday.

At dawn each day he will do his ablutions, take regular weather measurements, and after several hours waiting for Rockall's extremely slippery and guano-encrusted rocks to dry off, he will make sure the Landpod he lives in is secure.

The challenge of being on his own is that he has no one to gauge how he is.

So often someone will ask '