Rowing 3,000 Miles Across the Atlantic Ocean

This is my story of rowing across the Atlantic Ocean, a 3,000 mile journey from La Gomera in the Canary Islands to Antigua in the Caribbean. I did it in 2018 in a team of four women, Ros, Kirstie, Kate and myself, taking part in the Tulaska Whiskey Atlantic Challenge 2018 along with 27 other boats. Before doing this challenge I had done several other endurance events like adventure races, a marathon across the Great Wall of China and I rowed around Great Britain but nothing would prepare me for this. And there are some parts of this video where I don't have my own video footage so I've used some from some other teams and I hope it still relays my experience. I'd wanted to do this challenge for several years so when I was invited onto an awesome team I jumped at the chance. We spent months preparing, training and fundraising for the challenge. Physical training consisted of many hours on the rowing machine. Some Sundays we'd each row four hours which was pretty miserable but if we couldn't do that then how would we row across the Atlantic Ocean? The boat, kit and race entry totaled to around £120,000 which we raised through corporate and public sponsorship. Then on the 12th of December 2018 we were pushed off land in our tiny boat and we wouldn't see land or any other humans for six weeks or more. How on earth would we cope? I did wonder that myself as we set off. Still day one but it's our first sunrise. Pretty special. The team and I had entered the event to be competitive. We wanted to win the female category and we were up against three other female teams. We rowed in two hour shifts, two hours on and two hours off all throughout the day and all throughout the night. This is a common shift pattern in ocean rowing because in two hours you can put good power through the oars then have enough time to get a decent rest in between, well kind of. During our off shift we'd get about one hour and 20 minutes sleep at a time. The other time was taking care of ourselves with food, water and self-care and then the boat with navigation, weather checks, repairs and things like that. There was always jobs to do on the boat. Coming at you from a very, very rocky, dark, hot and damp cabin. In the last 24 hours I've got less than four hours sleep. I don't know how it happened but there was quite a lot of jobs to do on the boat. Now I've got just 15 minutes before my next two hour rowing session. The boats were eight and a half metres long by one and a half metres wide and made of carbon fibre. At each end of the boat is a cabin which is where we rest. The bow cabin, the one at the front, is a bit bigger and it doesn't have anything in it apart from a bed. The stern cabin, the one at the back, was smaller with our legs going underneath the rowing deck and this was where all the electrical and navigation equipment was and this is where I slept. It was really cool being up there with all the tech but it would often play up and wake us up when we were sleeping which wasn't nice. It's unbearably hot in this cabin but we have to have the cabin door shut so everything doesn't get wet because when things are wet in here it's just miserable. For food we get dehydrated ration packs. They look like this. There's things like chicken tikka, hot pot, penne pasta. Just add water, leave it to hydrate for a few minutes and then eat it. We also had snacks to supplement our meals. Bags of nuts, dried fruit and dark chocolate and then there was the protein cookies and peanut butter. Don't even get me started on how good those were. We had almost 1 million calories on board for the whole team which was all stored under the deck in the bottom of the boat. We each burned and ate around 4 000 calories a day. That may sound like a dream but it was actually quite hard to eat that much especially when sitting and rowing for all that time. I've just got in from an absolute killer day. The sun has been so hot and all of us have been so lethargic and I just laid in bed eating chocolate. It was just amazing. Now I've got an hour and a half set on my timer. I'm gonna get some sleep then I'm gonna wake up and then I'm gonna go rowing again. Water came from the sea which was sucked in through a machine called a water maker or a desalination system. The salt was filtered out giving fresh drinking water. With all that food and water going in our bodies you're probably thinking what about the toilet LT? Well our toilet was a bucket. A big blue bucket. The phrase is bucket and chuck it. I've got some really funny stories about that but I don't think I'm going to share them with you in here. Our shower was a bucket. Our washing machine was a bucket. Although we rarely did laundry why bother doing laundry when hundreds of miles from land? I just had my first proper wash in 30 days and it feels amazing. It consisted of half a litre of water and a bar of soap and before that I've just kind of washed, wiped myself with a flannel which ultimately just spread the sun cream around and spread the grime around my body and believe it or not I've actually got a little bit of a tan. It was hidden under 30 layers of sun cream. This may all sound awful to you but it wasn't as bad as it sounds. When living in those conditions we just got on with it. Too wide with the cab. For electrical power we had two solar panels on the top of each cabin which charged batteries which then powered the water maker and navigation equipment. This is Liberty. We are a small ocean rowing vessel. What kind of vessel are you over? We are a 54 metre motor yacht and we have you on yellow brick. You are row for the ocean, is that correct? This is so exciting. You're the first vessel that we've been able to speak to. We are row for the ocean. That is correct for women rowing across the Atlantic, over. He sounds handsome. We had two satellite phones on board for communication with the race safety team our land support and for emergencies. We also had a fancy bit of kit which allowed us to send and receive emails. Dad it's me. It's absolutely scorching today but we've got big waves and we just got news that we're ahead of Astro. Yeah we've been trying to catch them for bloody ages and then we finally made it. As a result of rowing for 12 hours a day and being in that damp environment our bodies deteriorated quickly. Our hands become swollen and sore from gripping the oars and the salt water. Our bums weren't in a great way either. All that sitting caused pressure sores between our bum cheeks. I haven't got a video for that which I guess you'll be pretty pleased about. One day we counted the amount of steps we took and it was just 25 in a day. There wasn't really an opportunity to stand up on the boat. It was either too rocky, we were rowing or we were laying in our cabin. We just stumbled between our rowing seat and our cabin. This is our Christmas rosin instead of Angus. We rowed through Christmas day and we rowed through New Year's day and Kate brought her fancy dress banana suit and a recorder as a surprise for us. Happy 2019! It's bizarre because the idea of rowing for 12 hours a day sounds absolutely dreadful now. I'm not sure how we did it but we did. I get asked if I got bored being in the same place doing the same thing every day but I didn't. One day we got news from our land support that we were going to experience a headwind. That's a wind flowing in the opposite direction which would have pushed us back. So we decided to try and fight it by having three people rowing. That's using all of the rowing seats and have one person hand steering to gain more power. The wind was meant to last for four hours which we knew we could do but after five hours it was clear that the wind wasn't going to die down. We ended up rowing for nine hours non-stop and six hours of that was with our left oar only. That was a brutal day. I wish I had footage of that day but we just wanted to get through it and keep the boat moving forward. During that time we travelled at just 0.5 miles an hour. To put that into perspective with three people's effort that was just twice around a running track in an hour. When the wind finally stopped after nine hours we had travelled just four miles and we were exhausted. We also felt demotivated. All that effort and such a small distance covered. But then later on we found out that other teams had given into the wind, stopped rowing and drifted back 10 miles. So in fact we'd made up 14 miles and that was a massive lesson for me in that sometimes it doesn't matter how slow we go as long as we're going forward and making progress. It's a lesson I now use in my everyday life all the time. Many days can feel like that half a mile an hour day. I did it once and I can do it again. We've just got news that we're gaining on a team and if we put in a big shift tonight then we're going to catch them up. We've put all the systems into place and we are absolutely going for it. We're all shattered. No matter how hard the challenge was I always felt grateful for being on that boat. I put myself there and wished to do it for two and a half years and I was sat on a £70,000 ocean rowing boat with three incredible people surrounded by all of the food and equipment we needed to be safe. And through the toughest times Mother Nature always rewarded us for our efforts. Visits from dolphins and whales. We saw breathtaking sunrises, double rainbows, shooting stars that burned so bright they looked like fireworks. The Milky Way was so clear and so bright the stars merged together into a solid band of light. And who even knew that a moonbow existed? A rainbow in the night, sparkling various shades of grey, glistening under the light of a full moon. This morning is a very special morning because over here we have a moon set and over here we have a sunrise. One of the biggest challenges of doing this was the intense heat as we rowed closer to the equator. One minute it was blazing hot then suddenly the weather would change and pour with rain. Being in that environment was volatile. One minute things were great and the next the weather would turn or something would break and send us spinning in circles. Our energy levels and our moods change frequently but we had a saying to keep us strong and that was it will pass. Just like the wind that day we always knew bad situations would pass. 39 days into the challenge my body and mind had had enough. The challenge had finally got the better of me and I was done. I didn't want to do it anymore but I had no choice. I had to go rowing. It finally broke me and I just couldn't bear it anymore. I just didn't want to row. I didn't think that I could get in this kind of mentality of just not wanting to do it. We're less than 300 miles away from the finish and I should be able to push. I'm so so tired. I'm so tired I feel drunk. It felt as though this feeling would never go. I'd row with my headphones in and not want to talk to anyone and each shift I kept saying to myself it will pass it will pass but it didn't. And then after three days the feeling finally disappeared and my earphones came out giving me faith in the phrase it will pass. I now use this saying in my everyday life knowing that bad situations will always pass. I was on the oars and we were surfing. We were surfing waves about 10 meters high in the pitch black. I don't know how we I just don't know how we did it. Our cabin was as small as an understairs cupboard and as hot as a car in the summer with all of the windows closed. It was a challenge to get any rest sometimes. Then in the night when the waves were big we'd be thrown around in there like we was in a washing machine and finally I'd get to sleep. Then the alarm goes off. In the middle of the night it's pitch black damp and cold outside my cozy sleeping bag. I've only had an hour and a half of sleep and now I've got to get up and go rowing and I really don't want to go but Ros is desperate for a rest and waiting for me to take over. And I remember I laid there and I said out loud just get on with it and with that I get up get dressed and go out on deck. I use this phrase all the time in my real life when I need to get something done I don't want to do. The 5am alarm each morning. Just get on with it. My morning run when it's raining outside. Just get on with it. How about that job that's been on the top of our list of things to do for days, weeks, months, even years. Just get on with it. Often it's just easier to do the thing rather than procrastinate beating ourselves up for not doing it. This is probably the biggest lesson I took from doing this challenge. Rowing across the Atlantic Ocean was really tough but there was something so incredibly special about being out there in nature not having many belongings and being in this survival mode. It was such a simple life. Some of the best bits were rowing at night, having drum and bass music blaring out of the speaker really loud and then there was the job of cleaning the bottom of the boat. Every few days we get into the ocean and we clean the bottom of the boat because it gets little barnacles on and it's one of my most favourite parts of this whole journey. As the boat moved through the sea, algae and crustaceans would grow on the underneath and this slowed the boat speed so every five to six days we would need to get in the ocean and clean them off. Even though we were attached to the boat looking down into the five kilometres of ocean below us it was a weird and exhilarating feeling. On today's boat cleaning session, I decided to get in with my exfoliating mitts and give myself a little wash. Some people tell me they couldn't do something like this but I'm convinced the majority could. For me this isn't any harder than other challenges that we go through in life such as heartbreak, financial stress, depression and anxiety. We just have to move through it and there was no point in me being on that boat and wishing for things to be different. You may be wondering what it was like living on a boat with three other people and not seeing anyone else for all that time. Well of course there were challenges but it's not that much different from real life I suppose. Different people, different characters, each wanting and needing different environments but we adapted. The thing that kept us all united was our desire to win the female race. Through everything we all had one goal and that was the glue that held it all together. We couldn't get frustrated with things. We realised that using time and energy on negative thoughts, feelings and actions was a waste of our precious resources and it wouldn't help us get to the finish line any faster. We just had to move forward through the challenges. And I've brought these lessons back into real life too. Many things don't go to plan but we can't wish to be in Antigua or our metaphorical Antigua any faster. It will take as long as it takes. We just need to keep rowing and moving forward. After 43 days, 2 hours and 20 minutes we crossed the finish line in Antigua. And the feeling was like nothing else I have ever experienced in my whole life. Super yachts were blowing their horns, family and crowds of people were shouting and waving from the shore. Every cell of our bodies was electrified. It was total relief and utter elation. And the other thing that was pretty cool, we were the winners of the female race. We had thought about it on each and every 2 hour rowing shift. All 260 of them. And we had finally done it. Words cannot express the feeling we had that day. I'd do it all again just for that. My challenges and adventures makes my body really tired. But being outside, living this simple primitive existence makes my brain feel so full and so healthy. And just recently I've realised that our life is like rowing an ocean. We have to show up on shift and keep our boat moving forward. Take one day at a time, one oar stroke at a time. Be grateful for where we are. And there will be good shifts and bad shifts. But the bad shifts will always pass. Thank you for listening to my story. As time passes it's easy for the adventure to fade into the past. So I appreciate having the opportunity to share it with you and remember the lessons. Thanks for watching and hopefully I'll see you soon.