summary so far
Panatlantic
Tue 8 Jan 2008 14:43
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Good afternoon! hows work today??
Niall and I both feel a lot more positive today,
the waether is ok, not great but we are making fair headway to Antigua. I think
you can expect to have a few bad days if you spend 50 odd days at sea on a tiny
rowing boat. Imagine spending 24 hours a day in your car for weeks on end, some
days you are driving through the countryside enjoying the wonderful scenery,
other days you are stuck on the M1 in gridlock traffic, in the heat of summer
and the windows are permanently shut with no air conditionoing. That might give
you some idea of what its like for us out here.
well i thought id summarise the journey for me so
far, following on from Niall's brutally hobest blog yesterday. Unfortuantely he
only had 24 hours worth of medication so god knows what his next blog will
contain! Niall has received his most positive response from yesterdays entry,
before that it seemed there was a mental age barrier. below it you may have
found mine entertaining, above it and you might have
understood Niall's!
well i'll start with our preparations briefly, they
began in june 2006 and really kicked on around christmas that year. we began to
gain sponsorship from various companies, in the form of money and equiipment. we
received personal donations and people fund raised on our behalf. in the end we
covered a large amiunt of costs with a loan which we hope to repay on the sale
of the boat. Our physical preparations also began in december 2006, from then we
trained up to 9 times weekly, from february we spent nearly every weekend on the
boat. by the time the race came around we were fitter, stronger than ever
before, niall seemed to love the fact that he finally had shoulders and biceps,
his t-shirts went from medium to small and he began to change for the gym in the
office where everyone could see him. in august 07 niall and i even broke a world
record for rowing one million metres on indoor rowing machines. this gave a good
insight to the shift pattern and diet we would have on board.
so onto la gomera where we met all of the other
crews for the first time, niall and i were confident that we were fitter and
stronger than most, if not all, and by the sounds of things we had spent more
time than most on the boat. niall's elbow flaring up threw us a bit, he spent a
few days in hospital attempting to speak italian even though they speak spanish,
and i was left to prepare the boat. suprisingly all went ok and i didnt break
anything. shortly after nialls release from the 'special hospital' we were put
onto water and pretty much ready to go.
we made the concious decision to delay our start by
2 days giving niall the nbest chance possible for his elbow to heal, come start
day we rowed out with the rest of the boats only to let them dissapera over the
horizon as we rowed back into the harbour. the next 2 days we were both very
distant even though i had family around, my emotions were very up and down as i
tried to prepare myself for up to 8 weeks at sea.
we finally started on the 4th december at 12pm and
rowed off without looking back, within hours i had my first bout of sea
sickness, followed by another and another. i couldnt keep anything down, even fluid and yet tried to row on. niall rowed
for the first few hours with me joining in when i could and then at 7pm we
started our 2 hour night shifts. for me that was by far the lowest point so far,
i was already tired, dehydrated and felt weak from lack of fuel. was it going to
be like this the whole way across, surely not. i spoke to my girlfriend jess on
my mobile which still had a signal and she was amazingly supportive and
encouraging. we continued to text each other until my signal finally died.
the first 4 days for me were the hardest, i still
couldnt keep food down and yet was determined not to miss a shift. i became very
homesick and very emotional but battled on. then on day 5 i awokle and my
sickness had gone, i felt much better and looked forward to my first shift of
the day, unfortunately during the changeover i lost my balance and fell
overboard! quickly i was up and at the oars again.
my mood got better and better over the next few
days, i was finally enjoying myself especially when we were joined by various
forms of wildlife. soon enough we began to settle into our routine and enjoy
rowing the atlantic.
since that point we have had many highs and lows, i
wont go into too much detail otherwise this blog will last forever!
highs:
wildlife
surfing waves at over 13 knots
the skies at night
the sense if acheivement and fulfilment
lows:
losing an oar
rowing into a headwind and getting nowhere
a bad days ration pack
of course there are more, for example not sleeping
well can completely change your mood. overall though we feel good, physically we
are suffering slightly as youd expect, nialls suffering with his elbow and me
with my forearm, yet we both keep going and deal with the discomfort knowing it
wont last forever. mentally i struggle far more than niall seems to, if he is
suffering he tends to just stay quiet with a blank _expression_ on his face and
gets on with it, if im suffering its much more obvious that im feeling
down.
yet these are the things we could not truely
prepare for and have hit us the hardest. we are now 5 weeks in and thoroughly
looking forward to the finish. it will amazing to look back on this experience
and im sure the hard times will eventually fade into the distance leaving a
truely amazing adventure.
im truely glad that i decided to take on this
challenge, it has been harder than i ever imagined it would, yet on the whole a
wonderful thing to do that very few will experience.
our moods seem to be getting better and better now,
im sure they will continue that way as we get closer to the finish. we both know
that we will never experience anything like this again.
well i hope that gives you a little insight into
some of the hardships i havee experienced, my next blog will be the opposite and
will be about the high points of the journey so far.
bye for now
james
oh quickly, unfortuntely before now we have not
been receiving emails from those of you who may have sent them through our
website. the problem has now been rectified and we endeavour to reply to every
message that we receive.
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