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On the 1st March 2017 I will finally, weather permitting, set off to row the Atlantic Ocean. Now I know what some of you will be thinking - ...

Wednesday 29 March 2017

Halfway Point and Technical Issues.

Today Wednesday 29th March at 9am local time the boys made it to halfway in their epic crossing, ... to you and me that means they have rowed over 3,000km (1.650 nautical miles) in the past 23 days. 2 hours on 2 hours off.... EAT, SLEEP, ROW, REPEAT!
The world record of 50 days remains in their sights but there is still an awfully long way to go.

They continue to make solid progress and morale is good but they have had some bad news and frustrations with some of their technical kit. The auto-helm that steers the boat has broken, but not for the first time. They took three with them and now 2 have failed and they are on to the last one... they have tried and better-tried to fix the first two contacting many seasoned ocean rowers (what an awesome community they are - thanks guys!) as well as the manufacturer themselves but to no avail.
(If anyone techie out there has a clue about Raymarine SPX5 auto helms please drop me a line!)

If this last one fails they will be down to manually steering the boat and whilst this won't endanger the crossing as a whole it will add significant time. So everyone start crossing your fingers.

Other than this 'issue' there hasn't been much news from the boat but we did receive a load of pictures from the past few days - so the rest of the blog is mostly visual!

Needs updating!


Cooking tea

On the oars... again

Another sunset

The cabin countdown


Close confines


Niall's pillow
Red Nose Day


Ralph and Niall chilling as Colin and Clement row

Autopilot problems! ETA: 46,5 days / still on schedule to smash the world record, but this thing has got to keep working!


For us back home we're getting there, we sit and wait, and cross our fingers, and pray, and wait some more and take every day as it comes and the other myriad cliches, but we are so proud of them all and can't wait to see them in a few weeks time! Keep trucking boys!

If anyone would like to send personal messages of support to Niall please feel free to send them to me via FB or email and I will be sure to send them on.
Be aware though he sent me this on the weekend   "Approaching half way but that just means we have to do all that again - depressing - so don't want to hear all the "over the hump" type comments next week!"


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