Row, Row, Row Your Boat
Thursday, January 28th, 2016January 28, 2016
Six British women have given new meaning to the nursery rhyme “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” They took 257 days to become the first women’s team—and the first crew rowing four at a time—to complete a journey across the Pacific Ocean. The voyage began in April 2015 in San Francisco, California, and ended 9,600 miles (15,500 kilometers) later in Cairns, Australia, on January 25, 2016.
The crew, whose ages range from 25 to 40, consisted of team leader Laura Penhaul, and team members Natalia Cohen, Emma Mitchell, Isabel Burnham, Lizanne van Vuuren, and Meg Dyos. They rowed 24 hours straight in 2-hour shifts, sleeping 90 minutes at a time.
The boat, named Doris, contained a cabin the size of a two-person tent in which the women ate, washed, and slept. Mitchell commented, “It’s very hot and very sweaty [in the cabin], especially in big waves where we have to keep the hatches closed. It’s kind of like being in a two-man-tent-sized sauna.”
Penhaul, Cohen, and Mitchell each rowed the entire trip, divided into three legs—San Francisco to Hawaii, Hawaii to Samoa, and Samoa to Cairns. Burnham, van Vuuren, and Dyos rowed a leg each, with Dyos completing the foursome on the final leg.
The women had no support crew. They stopped for about one week each in Hawaii and Samoa for supplies and repairs. Otherwise, they were on their own at sea. Each woman consumed about 5,000 calories a day, eating freeze-dried meals with side dishes of protein bars, chocolate, and fruit or nuts, all washed down with desalinated water.
The trip actually took three months longer than expected because of delays during the second leg. The voyage did not lack for discomfort and danger. Drenched by rain and seawater, the women endured painful sores and temperatures so hot they cooked a pancake on the deck using only the heat from the sun’s rays. They also had to survive a tropical storm, waves the height of a house, circling sharks, and a visiting humpbacked whale that surfaced just yards away from their boat. The main concerns included the possibility of overshooting Samoa and running out of food.
The women undertook the expedition to raise money for two British charities—Breast Cancer Care and Walking With the Wounded, which helps retrain wounded veterans returning to civilian life. The rowers videotaped their journey, which will be adapted into a documentary movie called Losing Sight of Shore by filmmaker Sarah Moshman.
The crew summarized their experience, writing the day before their landing in Australia. “It’s fair to say that with physical exhaustion, sleep deprivation, and a lack of savoury food, we are being tested to our limits. However, this is where we draw on our SPIRIT, row hard, row strong, row together.”