It has been an interesting 24 hours mainly due to the weather.
As I mentioned yesterday we were experiencing some strong winds and big swell, almost immediately after I finished yesterdays update the decision was made to stop rowing as to continue would have been unnecessarily dangerous. The swell reached about 6m at times and with oars catching in the water and the boat beginning to surf there was real potential for somebody to damage a thumb or get an oar in the ribs.
So for the first time in over a week we got a break from the 2 on 2 off routine and I even managed to get about 3 hours sleep in one go! In poor conditions many of the smaller ocean rowing boats are forced to go to sea anchor and sit out the weather, we have a significant advantage in that we have automatic steering so once that is programmed we can allow the wind to blow us along, this means we can still make good ground even when not rowing, about 3.5 mph.
We finally got back to the oars at 1900 just as the sun had set and we were quickly back into routine, rowing through the night. I have now rowed over 100 hours and in excess of 120,000 strokes since the start of the trip, by the time we get to Barbados I should have done about 5 times that!!
Mike
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All at 5Ash Grove pray for you . All the best ,Mike
good job 🙂 you’ll have big muscles by the time u get home!!! Loving the updates keep the spirits up and know there are heaps of people back here cheering u on!
xxx jo
Kind of reminds me of the Episode of the Simpsons, where Homer finds out about the truckers having an Autodrive System in their trucks 🙂 Keep on trucking Mike 🙂
you’re a mad ba****d Mikey! You were telling me about this plan on marks stag, and i took it with a pinch of salt! Mark told me you’d definatly do it and fair play to ya. Personally I don’t like being more than 20 metres from the shore, but you’re obviously made of tougher stuff than that!
Best of luck on the rest of the trip. I’ll be keeping an eye on your progress.
I bet Barbados is sounding good about now…
Ollie
Hey Mike. Sounds like ye should let that wind do the rest from here on in 3.5MPH is fine.Take a break and let that auto do the business. Thomond park here we come.
Wow Mike, i would be very frightened in that sort of swell and for you to be able to sleep through it ludicrous!
I trust you have the Beach Boys powering out over the speakers on those occasions. Any good wild life spotting yet?