Event date, update and winner of competition!

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What a beautiful week. It was so good to see the sun shining and as much as we thought we would never want to see the sun again after our relentless exposure on the boat…it was actually great to feel the heat again and to see everyone’s moods lifted. It’s amazing what a blue sky does to people.

SAVE THIS DATE!

Sunday June 26th is the day that we have set for our friends, family and followers event.

This will be an informal celebratory daytime get together that will give us all the opportunity to show photos, answer questions and meet as many people as possible that followed us and showed us so much support during the journey.
Lizanne is coming over from South Africa and we will be together as a team for the first time! It’s going to be a real highlight of the year for all of us.

There will be more information to follow, but for now…please save the date.

It’s been all go for the team.

Izzy and Laura had a good catch up with Sarah Moshman to discuss the production of the documentary and obviously we are all very excited to see how our story of the journey will be told. We’re hoping for a release date of beginning of 2017.

Skype with Sarah

Natalia was asked to partake in a video Blab (live web-cast) with Best Year Yet to talk about how the program helped us as a team create a successful framework with a clear focus and to set goals and prepare for getting to the start line of the row as well as the actual expedition. It was great to hear other stories about how Best Year Yet has been used with younger ages and basketball where the program is being set up to help teams achieve sports goals while also maintaining balance with their personal values and the other roles they play in their lives.

Best Year Yet Blab

Meg headed off to do a schools talk in Broadstairs. The school has done a huge amount of fundraising for us and it’s also where Meg’s aunty Linda and Elaina work for Dolphin swim school – who swam the length of the Pacific in lengths for us back in September 2015.

Meg School

Ems did a talk at Godolphin and Laytmer School and presented medals to their J16 fours crew who won at the national schools head race. They’ve also fundraised for us two years in a row in their ‘challenge your limits’ week.

A hearty thank you to everyone at the schools for their invaluable support, hard work and dedication.

LP headed to Crewsaver as they have been reviewing our lifejackets. Using them during our 9-month odyssey was the perfect test of their endurance. They worked wonderfully for us, being small, comfortable and extremely effective.

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We are happy to announce the winner of our Crewsaver life jacket competition.

CONGRATULATIONS to Josh Ohill.

If you can email us your contact details (info@coxlesscrew.com) , then we can get the life jacket sent out to you.

In other news…Doris has been cleaned in preparation for her big trip to Buckingham Palace next week – which is very exciting. So we’ll update you on that next time!

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Update on the week and COMPETITION information!

The Team By

Time continues to fly by, and I can’t believe it’s May already! I went back and read the blog post that was posted exactly a year ago. I’ve copied the link below:

https://coxlesscrew.com/day-15-back-in-sight-of-shore/

 

I cannot believe that was A YEAR AGO! Awaiting my turn on the boat and following the girls progress with hawk eyes the nerves had started to set in! Reading about the food even made me miss it! Might have to order a cheeky packet of Beef and Potato hotpot… dehydrated style!

 

Anyway… here’s what we have all been up to over the last week…

Laura did a talk at a prize giving event at Redruth Schools, Megs and Ems did a school talk in Folkestone last week to four different year groups and Meg has been attending the amazing Fierce Grace yoga sessions. This has been such an incredible tool for getting our bodies back in shape after spending months at sea. For more info you can visit www.fiercegrace.com

Ems went down to see Doris last week to do a bit of cleaning. Can only imagine being back on Doris what memories and emotions came flooding back! She also did another great school talk at Howell’s School in Llandaff sports awards.

 

For myself (Lizanne), Nat and Izzy work got the better of us this week, so we stuck to email admin instead.

 

Now for the most exciting news… We have been running a competition this week, and you have until TOMORROW (6th May 2016) 12PM UK time / 1PM SA time to enter! Simply head over to our Instagram page and repost this picture below and tag @coxless_crew to stand a chance to win this brilliant Crewsaver Life Jacket.

It is exactly like the ones that kept us safe on the Pacific.

You can also text DORIS to 70300 to donate 3 pounds to our charities.

 

Lizanne x

 

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A week in the life……

The Team By

Today’s blog is a (slightly late) round up of what the team got up to last week. As ever, it was a busy week all round (except for me – I was on holiday!) and this is just a small taster of what we were up to…..

Megs gave a school talk as well as an after dinner talk at the Mayor of Broadstairs’ Spring Ball where the after dinner auction raised a whopping £1000+ for our charities, Breast Cancer Care and Walking With The Wounded.

Broadstairs

Natalia headed to Character World to speak to the staff about strength and diversity within a team and positive mindset. She said it was great to be presenting in their showroom and with some employees sitting on single beds – they got a very real sense of the size of our cabin space on Doris!

Character World

Ems went to the Dame Kelly Homes Trust team days (see her blog on this) and spoke at St Pirans School about the row and our values of SPIRIT. She was also liaising with the team behind the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme, who have kindly invited us to Buckingham Palace on 16 May to present Gold Duke of Edinburgh Awards. We’re really honoured to be asked and can’t wait to attend what will be a great event.

Over in South Africa, Lizanne spoke to the team at Tatis. She enjoyed sharing stories of our journey with a group of people who were such great supporters and followers of our row while we were on the water.

This weekend a highlight for Laura was working hard supporting her athletes and friends at the London marathon.

For me, it was less work / Coxless Crew and more skiing, as I headed to the mountains of the Lyngen Alps in North Norway for a week of ski touring. Lyngen is incredibly beautiful, and climbing up from the sea to summits and then skiing back down to the beach for a swim in the Fjords is an experience I will definitely never forget.

Lyngen

 

 

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Nat returns to London town!

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So today saw the return of Nats to the big smoke!
First stop was a talk to the wonderful New Level Results team http://www.newlevelresults.co.uk/ where Laura and Nats talked to the coaches about the row. They highlighted how the Best Year Yet programme was the ‘glue’ that helped keep the structure and focus both on land and on the boat, inline with our psychology work.

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Tomorrow will be a day for the team to be with coach Andrew from New Level Results, to take the team into stage 3 – post row plans. Look out for Ems blog tomorrow to hear more about it.

Following Nats birthday last Thursday, 5 out of the 6 (Lizanne was sorely missed!), met this evening for some birthday celebrations. This involved building our own burgers and drinking some champagne in celebration!
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Going home for a while…

The Team By

We had lots of fun on The Saturday Show this morning with Matt Barbet and Gaby Roslin before we all went our separate ways. The plan is for us to head home for a week to our respective families and give ourselves some time to reflect on the journey we have just completed.

This will be the first time we have been apart for the last 9 months!

The Saturday Show

UPDATE:

**Daily blogs to begin again on Monday**

All 6 of us will be writing over the next few weeks to keep you updated with our reflections, insights, comings and goings, ideas, events and readjustments to being back on land.

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Moving into the post-row world

The Team By

We have always said that this project was in 3 stages: (1) getting to the start line (2) crossing the Pacific (3) completing our fundraising and sharing our journey. This week, we have been starting stage (3) in ernest. This morning we had a break from the media whirlwind in the morning and, after a crew meeting over a coffee, we headed to the offices of Breast Cancer Care to catch up with the team there that have been such a great support to us. It was lovely to see Sarah, Alice, Claire and Steve and also to meet the wider team at BCC and to share some of our stories with them. We still have a huge amount of fundraising to do for Breast Cancer Care and Walking With The Wounded if we are to meet our £250,000 target, so we look forward to working with both charities over the coming months as the ‘post-row’ stage of our project continues.

Next stop was a meeting with Catherine Spencer of Inspiring Women and event manager Laura, who are presenting and organising our gala charity fundraising event. We had a great brainstorm over a cup of tea and made some good plans. We are so excited about our event, which we hope will be a high profile, glamorous celebration of our own Pacific crossing, adventure, sport and our wonderful charities. We want to raise as much money as possible for Breast Cancer Care and Walking With The Wounded, so if you are reading this and think that you’d like to buy a ticket or a table, or sponsor or contribute to our event in ANY way at all, we’d LOVE to hear from you. Please email info@coxlesscrew.com or catherine@inspiringwomen.co.uk.
Finally, Meg dashed off to appear on BBC Radio Kent and BBC South East. She has a sore throat (that’s what being in the real world around other people will do for you!), but was a champion and did a fab job with a very husky voice.
Meg Radio Kent
This evening we are all in separate places: catching up with family, friends, preparing to get to a hen do, sorting things out in the office! We need to get an early night to continue catching up on all our sleep – tomorrow morning will be another early start as we’re on the Saturday Show on Channel 5.
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Media frenzy!

The Team By

It’s been an amazing couple of days. We arrived at Heathrow on Tuesday evening to a reception of family and friends and it has been a media whirlwind ever since.

Arrival home

Yesterday started with Natalia visiting Radio 4 to speak on the Today Show and then we all headed to GSK Human Performance Lab for re-testing. We have been working with GSK HPL since the preparation stages of the row and we last saw them just before we departed for San Francisco in April when they did body composition, bone density and physiology testing on the team. Yesterday, we had the same tests performed and were able to see the changes to our bodies after 9 months at sea.

GSK

After GSK, we hot footed it over to the BBC and returned as guests on The One Show. It was great to see Alex and Matt again and to be back in the studio as The One Show have followed our journey from the start. We also go to meet Jack Black! As a huge surprise, The One Show had made contact with Guinness World Records and announced to us live on air that our new World Records have been officially verified. The Coxless Crew are the first female and the first 4s boat to have crossed the Pacific Ocean!

The One Show

For a little bit of R&R we went out for dinner after the show with Keith Goddard, our sports psychologist (of Zeus Performance Psychology), and Ella, our social media queen. It was great to catch up with them at Byrons over burgers, but we’re going to have to stop eating like this soon, now that we’re no longer rowing 12 hours a day!

We kicked off this morning with a trip to ITV to appear on the Lorraine show. It was wonderful meeting Lorraine and the crew, who were so welcoming. While we at ITV, we were lucky enough to meet Ben Shephard and Susanna Reid. Laura met Ben about 4 years ago at the start of the project, so it was great to catch up with him now that we’ve achieved what we set out to. We also bumped into the lovely Marina Fogle, who had a giggle with us about the Fogle/Cracknell blog that Laura wrote during leg 3, and Greg James, who is about to do 5 back-to-back triathlons for Sport Relief, so it was a busy morning!

LorraineBen and Susanna

After some media calls and a team meeting, kindly hosted at Izzy’s offices at Powell Gilbert LLP, we headed to London Live to appear on lunchtime news. It was then straight on to the offices of the Times. Keep an eye out in Monday’s edition of the Times 2 to see what we got up to while we were there!

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Last day in Australia

The Team By

It’s our last day in Australia! Most of our unbelievably supportive parents have left, and it’s been amazing having a lovely day to ourselves. We have been catching up on sleep and swimming in the pool before we head back to England tomorrow.

This evening we will be heading down to Salt House where we came into last Monday to have a cocktail on Meg’s Aunty Linda who gave us some money to celebrate. We can’t believe that we have only been here for 6 days! So much has happened, but we’re still not entirely sure whether our feet have fully touched the ground.

A huge thank you to Queens Court and all of their staff, Shanna, Trish, Donna and Tracy for all of their amazing hospitality towards us.

See you all in England!

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Homecoming

The Team By

We’ve had a few wonderful days in Australia with our families and friends and the wonderful local people that have made us feel so welcome.

We will soon be returning to the UK and several people have been asking when exactly we’ll get in, in case they’re free to meet us. Our scheduled arrival is at Heathrow, Terminal 4 on Tuesday 2nd February at 5:40 pm. Our flight number is EYO17.

Longer blog about our time in Cairns tomorrow!

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