Rowing 3,000 Miles Across the Atlantic Ocean

foreign this is my story of rowing across the Atlantic Ocean a 3 000 mile Journey from lagamera in the Canary Islands to Antigua in the Caribbean I did it in 2018 in a team of Four Women Roz Kirsty Kate and myself taking part in the telescope 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 rode 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 would 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 pounds 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 it is our first sunrise Tim 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 rode 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 having 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 my next two hour rowing session the boats were eight and a half meters long by one and a half meters wide and made of carbon fiber at each end of the boat is a cabin which is where we rest the Bell cabin the one at the front is a bit bigger and it doesn't have anything in it apart from a bed the stone 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 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 Penny 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 liter 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 I don't go too wide with the camera look at Kate behind me is completely naked foreign 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 meter of our road of the ocean is that correct this is so exciting you're the first vessel that we've been able to speak to we our road for the ocean that is correct for women wearing 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 oh Dad it's me it's an 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 him 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 shakes 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 we rode through Christmas Day and we rode through New Year's Day and Kate brought her fancy dress banana suit and a recorder is a surprise for us 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 their own 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 or 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 traveled 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 traveled 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 Mr 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 karaoke night here on the boat news we're gaining on a team 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 pound ocean rowing boat with three incredible people surrounded by all of the food and equipment we needed to be safe [Music] 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 look 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 Gray 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 rode 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 a 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 finally broke me and I just couldn't bear 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 where less than 300 miles away from the Finish and I should be able to push I'm so so tired I feel I feel wrong 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 on all the in 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 understeer's 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 one was in a washing machine 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 Rosie's 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 5 a.m 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 Bets were rowing at night having drama-based music blaring out of the speaker really loud and then there was the job of cleaning the bottom of the boat two 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 favorite 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 kilometers 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 realized 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 bought 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 Auntie get 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 cross the finish line in Antigua and the feeling was like nothing else I have ever experienced in my whole life super Yachts will blow in 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 two hour round 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 [Applause] [Music] 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 realized that our life is like wearing an ocean we have to show up on shift and keep our boat moving forward take one day at a time one or 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

Channel: Laura Try

Views: 5,798,598

Keywords: Rowing, Adventure, Challenge, Fitness

Id: 6SYHamnHqU8

Length: 20min 44sec (1244 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 05 2021