You never forget your first day at sea in an ocean rowing boat
Row Across The Pond
Richard Hoyland and Steve Coe
Sat 28 Nov 2009 22:48
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We went out to sea today to try out the boat off
the coast of La Gomera, which gave us a chance to try out the watermaker and the
steering system which is new to the boat. The boat ran as sweet as a nut and
it's given us great confidence that we have thought through all the
modifications we have made to No Fear. Our rudder is driven by footplates which
pivot at the heal...image a rowing machine where the footstraps could move like
windscreen wipers and that's the principle. This should save our old knees from
any damage on the journey ;-)
It gave a small taster of the things to come and if
you had your back to shore you can imagine the view we will be having in a weeks
time...water water everywhere. It gave a great opportunity to go for a swim off
the side of the boat, a strange feeling at first but in weather like this it's
almost a necessity. We're bumping into other teams out there as they try out
their boats and we chat to them on the VHF radio. Given the operating range of
VHF, this contact will be short lived after we set out so we'd better enjoy it
while we can.
The rowing is so slow, almost walking pace...so
image walking 3,000 miles dragging a tonne behind you and that's the kind of
challenge ahead.
Tomorrow we're going to pratice more with the
safety equipment on the boat..you can never practice enough when it comes to
drilling para-anchor deployment. There's chance for a little downtime as
well...as it's fancy dress night on the beach for the rowers Paella and Tapas
party...we've earned a break from the stress of preparation :-)
We've added some pictures from the water onto the
bog, but I imaging that after a while you will be sick of picture after picture
of water ;-) We really hope to see whales, dolphins, sharks....so we'll keep the
camera at the ready.
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