Page 186 - Mind, Body and Spirit No. 105 2021/22

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www.raptcassociation.org.uk
For two years our lives were taken over by planning, training and the preparation required to row across an ocean. Was it worth it? 100%.
As I’m sat here writing this, we’re nearing the end of our campaign, and what an incredible two years it has been. This time last year courses needed to be completed, we didn’t have a boat and we had no idea how to row across an ocean but what we did have was a solid plan and an incredible team.
Rewind back to Feb 21 and our first task towards getting out onto the ocean was to complete the required mandatory courses dictated by Atlantic Campaigns (the event organisers). We planned to complete the courses (all accredited to The Royal Yachting Association) during an intensive weeklong course in Essex. After rearranging the course four times due to Covid restrictions, in May we finally got the tick in the box with a mixture of online and in-person training. Seamanship, Navigation, Radios, First Aid and Sea-survival complete, it was time to get out on the water!
“Crawl, walk, run” was the philosophy we chose as the simplest and safest way for us to go from complete novices to ocean rowers. Most teams head south for their on the water training, the weather is nice and the sea conditions calm making for “comfortable” training. With our “train hard, fight easy” mentality, we headed in the opposite direction and made the Isle of Skye our home for our first two training weeks.
Week one, crawl. A clockwise circumnavigation of the Isle of Skye over five days with 150 nautical miles covered. Our first time in an ocean rowing boat was a very steep learning curve, not only in how to row and use all the equipment onboard, but also how the tides, flows and weather work. As a team we rowed for 6-8 hours, anchored up, talked about what we had done, what was next, got back on the blades and went again. We had a plan and it worked; our second week was not as straightforward.
Week two, walk. Two months later we returned to the Isle of Skye with a plan to row across to the small island of St Kilda. We knew this would be no easy task and a lot of our trip would be dependent on the weather and unfortunately the weather wasn’t on our side. After rowing into headwind for two days, the wind got stronger overnight and we found ourselves rowing on the spot for hours with no sight of a break in the weather system. We always knew we needed to be adaptable and after a quick team talk it was time to change our plan and keep the boat moving. We did not make it to St Kilda but we did spend five days in testing conditions covering 300nm. A very cold, wet, and windy week but with all the objectives of the training week complete it was onto week three.
Capt (MAA) Scott Pollock, Sgt (SI) Laura Barrigan, SSgt (SSI) Phil Welch, WO1 (SMI) Victoria Blackburn RAPTC – the team finishing in Antigua
Week three, run. At this stage we had completed all our training hours, learnt how to practically use all our safety equipment and most importantly we were as confident as we could be that we would make it across the Atlantic Ocean. We spent a week in Thorney Island doing some rowing, completing our final checks and finally packing our boat ready for shipping.
Fast forward to December 21, final training, final kit inspection and a final confirmatory row complete, it was time to row across an ocean. Before we had time to even think it was 11:07 on 12 December 21 and all that stood between us and Antigua was 3000 miles of beautiful ocean, the hard work began.
Teams usually experience strong winds, big waves, shifts of two hours on, two hours off, and a helping hand from Mother Nature to get across the ocean. Not this year. Our weather router warned us that the weather would be different. He didn’t tell us that for the first 20 days the wind would be completely absent and the sea beautifully still with very little flow making for slow, hard rowing conditions. The plan of two hours on, two hours off went out of the window and instead we adapted to a routine of 90 minutes on, 30 off throughout the day, reverting to 2 hours on, 2 hours off through the night.
It was hot, we got burnt, we were surviving on 3-4 hours of sleep a night and our bodies were physically exhausted but being hundreds of miles from land there was only one option, to keep going. Eat, sleep, row, repeat became our way of life and some things were easier to adapt to than others. As the sleep deprivation set in the hallucinations began and our minds struggled to concentrate on
FORCE ATLANTIC 21
SSgt (SSI) L Barrigan RAPTC
Enjoying a stop on anchor while grabbing lunch
Experiencing completely different conditions around Skye this time