At 13:15 on 17th January, the Royal Navy team of HMS Oardacious crossed the finish line of ‘The Worlds Toughest Row’ across the Atlantic in first place, more than 100 miles ahead of their nearest competitor. They also broke the Military team rowing record for the event by over 12 hours.
I had been involved with the team over the summer, working with them to hone their boat polars which enable me to give them more accurate weather routing. In fact by taking a more extreme route right from the start, which had them in almost last place after the first day, they stuck with my routing plan and trusted in what I was telling them. Two days later they were leading the fleet and extending that lead with every sched that came in.
This year the weather was very unusual, as I had discovered a few weeks ago when I sailed across onboard the 80′ Sailing Yacht ‘Alithia’. The strong trade winds simply were not there and at the western end of the track, usually an area of strong wind, there was in face a large wind hole which needed very careful planning to get through successfully.
In the end though, the team of sun mariners managed to sustain a lead of over 100 miles to the end. Very proud of them, they did exactly as I asked them to do.
A huge achievement by all the teams rowing across, but it was nice to work with another successfull team in this daunting challenge.
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