The Final Stretch

Its taken a wee bit longer to get onto the computer to write this up but I’m now finally getting round to it. Hopefully this will be a bit of a rolling start for the others.

Our speeds towards the end of the 4th week had begun to slow, partly due to the conditions but I think also due to the fact that the aim of being sub 30 or even 32 days for the world record had well and truly slipped away. Mentally it was a turning point we had to pull together or face the consequences and end up taking a lot longer than planned, this would also involve rationing our food as well as our water. This was not a pleasant thought for any of us. As a crew we certainly rallied and pulled together constantly monitoring our speed, course and checking on one another.

I think that despite all the challenges we had faced this last push was potentially the toughest mentally of all of the trip. We knew what speed we needed more than ever and so when we weren’t hitting this you could see our finishing time slipping all the more than when we had time to play with and thinking that we could claw it back with a better session. To help this I tried envisaging the route I drive from London to Scotland. Despite doing this a number of times I didn’t get very far as I never really took in landmarks every hour or so effectively our daily mileage on the boat 80 – 100 miles. Was worth a try…

It was also the time that the lack of a daggerboard began to have its effect on our bodies, or at least that is what I believe to be part of the reason. My bottom was not in a happy place, it dreamed of a bean bags and huge soft fluffy cushions instead it got a well used rowing seat. Despite them being fantastic for the main portion of the journey they had now lost any padding they once had. One very tired and frustrating session I turned to Jan and pointed out the fact that it was a big design fault to have bolts in the cushion of the seat. Livar told a story of a girl going to the doctors and asking why when she poked anywhere on here body it hurt, the doctor looked at her and pointed out that her finger was broken. The moral of the story being that my bum was just very delicate, there were no bolts in the seat but in the middle of the night it kind of made sense.

We made good progress still being affected by eddies and currents a lot more than we had ever imagined however each day seemed to have a good 12 hours in them. It was almost teasing us as to how good it could be when weather, currents, boat and crew fell into place. It was never quite enough to break the glorious 100 mile barrier. Peter had put a great quote up on the wall of the boat before leaving which I will finish with.

“The purpose of a man’s life is to live not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them I shall use my time.”