8-14 Aug

People who have already made the crossing have told me that this will be the hardest thing I ever do, but also the most rewarding. For some time I assumed they meant the crossing itself, but more and more I’m thinking they’re actually referring to the whole experience - the preparation, the friendships, the race and the after-effects. What is certainly true is that I’m being exposed to new aspects of life, almost on a daily basis, and learning skills I sometimes never knew existed.

For example, I’m learning how the world of PR works. I had no idea what a press release looked like, who you sent it to, and how you tried to get people to actually read it. I’m certainly still no master at any of that, but I do now feel like I could hold my own if I had to. Yet at the same time, I’ve learned about different types of glue - Cascamite is a super strong wood glue that is good for a marine environment, whereas Sikaflex is a rubbery flexible glue that will remain strong even when the materials it is holding are bent out of shape. I’ve no idea whether I’ll need to know that in the future, but you never know, it might be good for pub quizzes! And these are just two of the hundreds of things that have seeped into my consciousness over the last few months.

One thing I’ll certainly need, at least over the next few months, is my new knowledge of the sea. Admittedly this is deeply theoretical at the moment, but I feel a little more prepared having passed my Royal Yachting Association Oceanmaster certificate than I otherwise would. Learning about weather patterns, collision avoidance techniques, how to survive in an emergency situation, how to apply emergency first aid, what conditions cause hurricanes - all of these things mean I’m less likely to be a liability to myself and others while I’m out there.

Obviously nothing can make the race truly risk-free, and it would be less of an experience if it was. People have died trying to row oceans, but thankfully this has never yet happened in a race situation. The closest anybody has come recently were the Pink Lady four, who tried to cross the north Atlantic west-east about a year or so ago. Their boat actually broke up in very heavy seas, and they were exceedingly lucky that a Danish ship was nearby to pick them up, otherwise they would have been in very deep trouble. It was a bit unfortunate that I managed to choose the day of their rescue to announce to my poor mum that I was doing the race, as although it was unreported in Australia (where I was at the time), it had been splashed all over the news in the UK. Needless to say she wasn’t entirely impressed, and I think she took some getting over it - although she’s been fantastically supportive since.

The end of this week saw us attempt our first 24 hour row. We decided that rowing up and down the 2k stretch of docks for a whole day would be a bit much, so ventured out onto the Thames for the first time. This was a good experience, forcing us to be more aware of our surroundings than we had been before, and we enjoyed the change of scenery. We decided to row together for safety for the time we were out on the Thames - an extra pair of eyes, and a bit more power to get out of any sticky situations.

Thankfully we didn’t have any, and the row down to Gravesend and back went really well. We returned back onto the docks overnight, and went back to our 2 hours on, 2 hours off rotation, finding that we were pretty damn tired by the end of the night. But we covered about 75 miles that day, giving us a real boost that we were going at about the right speed to be competitive in the race. Now all we have to do is repeat it x40…