The Team

Natalia – The journey of life…

Life is all about choice and having the courage to believe in yourself and follow your passions. At least that’s what I think.

I have never wanted normal, easy, and ordinary – My life has been a series of amazing experiences that have shaped me and inspired me. I believe in living, feeling and breathing all my moments and although ultimately I have no idea what this game of life is all about and where my next, let alone final destination will be, I’m going to make sure that I enjoy every step of the journey.

I am fascinated by people, how we respond to our world, the physical and emotional limits we can push ourselves to and most importantly the strength of the human spirit.

We have only one opportunity in this crazy world, so why not live an extraordinary life; learning from each other and giving love and compassion back in return.

Not dwelling on the past, not worrying about the future, but being fully present in the moment whenever possible.

I believe that the universe presents events in perfect order and that everything happens for a reason (or that every experience is a learning opportunity and there is always a positive to be taken from a situation). This way of thinking has allowed me to feel comfortable with a free-spirited lifestyle in over 50 countries, immersing myself in different cultures and continuously challenging myself by being outside my comfort zone and entering the unknown.

I have been fortunate enough to have lived all over the world. From walking the Camino de Santiago (800 km walk across Northern Spain), leading adventure tours in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America to operational management, teaching, coordinating volunteer projects, monitoring plastic pollution in the Pacific and eco-lodge management in East Africa. In all of my eras, through the people that cross my path, there is always an underlying awe that I feel: people fighting to overcome their personal hardship on a daily basis.

This wonderful will of spirit, this triumph over adversity, particularly prevalent in the destinations that I have explored deeply, never ceases to amaze me.

It is possibly because I’m open to any opportunity that is thrown my way, and interested in unique experiences, that I have been led to this monumental expedition. Although it is like nothing else I have ever done or will most probably ever do again, the Row is certainly another incredible journey or era.

If the opportunity had presented itself at any other point in my life up until now, I almost certainly would not have been interested but some inexplicable desire draws me to it now.
They say timing is everything.

I have always had a love of water. I am a Pisces, an enthusiastic swimmer, find the sight and sound of the ocean deeply meditative and get a great sense of calm and peace when I am near or around water. It’s where I feel at home. I am intrigued how the Row will challenge me and excited to explore the depth and breadth of my own spirit and mind. I want to use the insight gained from the planning, execution and lessons learnt during this experience to inspire and motivate others after it.

This prevailing essence of human spirit is the same whether it’s a woman fighting with breast cancer, an injured servicewoman battling to find a way back into society, a woman struggling in a male dominated business world, communities in the developing world dealing with daily existence or any human stressed by their own personal demons.
We all have our own Pacific Ocean to cross in whatever form that comes.
My hope is for everyone to learn from and allow the magic of the varying journeys and lessons of life that they encounter to make a profound and positive impact on them and most importantly – to believe in the strength of human spirit that connects us all.

We all have the power to write our own story…so let’s make it an amazing one! x

Last Thursday we headed off for our first 48 hour stint aboard Doris. The original plan had been to row out across the channel but the weather was against us and with 50mph winds predicted we took the advice of Tony who will be our land support when we are out on the Pacific, and changed the plan to stay in more sheltered waters. Although we will deal with tougher conditions out in the Pacific we wouldn’t be able to get far enough away from the coast to be safe out there this week.

We were up early and headed down to Falmouth Haven to pack up Doris with our supplies for the two days. After a final interview with BBC Spotlight we rowed away from the marina with the legendary Guy in a RIB acting as our support boat. We had decided to head out to Pendennis Point to get a taste of some rough water and it was my first experience of rowing Doris in some proper waves. It was great fun battling the elements although very tough to keep her facing into the waves. It was slightly less fun once we swapped over on the oars and Izzy and I ended up in the cabin experiencing some seasickness symptoms. Stay posted for the BBC footage of us out on the water. After a few hours we headed back to the shelter of Falmouth and bid goodbye to Guy ready to spend the following 42 hours bouncing up and down (and up and down) the River Fal. We now know every twist, turn, mudbank and boat on that stretch of water!

Laura and Nat happy on the oars

We rowed 2 hours on, 2 hours off for the full 48 hours meaning that each of us was on the oars for 24 hours, never getting more than about an hour’s sleep at a time. However, we all seemed to manage it pretty well and in the most part it was really enjoyable. A noticeable exception to this was the 3.30am to 5.30am shift which was definitely the toughest. Especially on the first night where Izzy and I ended up battling against the tide for 2 hours, managing to move nowhere and sitting next to a green buoy for the entire shift. Being the intelligent individuals that we are we decided to keep ourselves awake by playing ‘I spy’. In the dark. Whilst not moving!

During the 48 hours we experienced, rain, wind, sunshine, lightning and fog, all of which we dealt with in good spirits, staying dry and warm in our Crewsaver outerwear. We also experienced the challenges of changing in and out of many layers of clothes in a very small cabin, cooking in the footwell, sleep deprivation and use of the bucket! Insight was gained into how careful we are going to have to be when trying to fit all of our kit onto our small boat and how important it is for everything to have a place. However the most important thing that we learnt was how well we have bonded as a team. We looked after each other, entertained each other, sang to each other and laughed a lot. So excited for our next adventure!

Huge thanks need to go to Shaun Pascoe, Falmouth Haven, Guy and all of the other supporters who joined us in Falmouth or came over to say hello on the water. The Cornish welcome was a huge morale booster and I’m sure we’ll be back!

Some well earned pasties from Laura’s Aunt Marie to celebrate a successful 48hrs training

Rowing the solent, photo shoots, The Bornmourth Air Show, and the team reunites. We’ve just had a wonderfully productive weekend down in Christchurch.

After our night on Doris (slept like a baby) and expedition food breakfast, Saturday saw Laura, Izzy and I rowing in the most challenging conditions so far. During the 6 hours we were out, we got our first real feeling for how the boat handles, dealing with seasickness, blisters and using the bucket!

On Sunday morning, Emma returned from her expedition trip in Brazil and it was very exciting to have the team together. We took the opportunity to take some group shots and then had a team debrief and outlined further training weekends and plan of action for the next month.

Keep following…

This weekend saw us road tripping down to Christchurch to spend a little time on Doris. After a quick stopover in Bath to meet up with Keith (our sports psychologist), we went through some results from a recent psychometric test and grabbed dinner at a great local pub.

A fundamental part of the row is obviously the mental preparation that the team will have to undergo. A portion of this will involve an in-depth analysis of personality traits and how each individual’s character and behavioural patterns will affect not only their reactions to certain situations, but also team dynamics. This is going to be a fascinating process that will affect the row itself as well as getting the boat to the start line. We will cover this in more depth in a later post.

We arrived into Christchurch late and decided to head straight to bed in preparation for the day of rowing ahead. Izzy and Natalia slept head to toe in close quarters in Doris’ aft cabin, and Laura in the fore-cabin.

In the Aft cabin

To simulate a night on the ocean in a storm scenario (minus the movement), we decided to keep all hatches closed and see how much condensation build up there was and humidity and temperature increase.

We were up bright and early, eating our expedition food (freeze dried) and preparing for our row around Christchurch Bay. It was great to get out for a few hours in the windy conditions with the tail end of hurricane Bertha about to blow through, and giving us the chance to work on some of our boat manoeuvres.

Izzy and Natalia on the oars

We would have loved to have gotten further out to sea and played around more in rougher conditions but to do that safely on our next outing, we require a support boat to get us well away from the shoreline.

Even though we were back in port earlier than expected, we made use of the remaining time productively by familiarising ourselves more with Doris, sharpening our rope skills and sampling more expedition food. We’re beginning to rate the meals so we can decide which we want to take with us!

We spent another night all cosy inside Doris while the wind howled and rain lashed the outside. Sunday morning saw another sampling of expedition food breakfast before we said farewell to Doris and headed back to London.
A great weekend had by all!

A blustery morning on Doris

As an Expedition Leader in Schools projects, I am lucky enough to work with some pretty great groups of teenagers. Once they sign up with us, it is my job to guide them through the process of fundraising, planning their trip and helping them to develop as a team. The idea is that once they are out on expedition they lead and manage their team, look out for each other and work together to make a successful trip. Many of the skills they develop is exactly what we replicate as a team in the Coxless Crew.

First there is the getting to know each other stage. Often the students in my teams are in different year groups and friendship groups and have never spoken before. Similarly our Coxless Crew formed from girls who had never met previously but who all share the passion for our charities and a determination to row the Pacific Ocean. With the schools we run team building sessions, regular team meetings and take them on a UK training weekend. For the Coxless Crew we too have weekly meetings, sea survival, medical and electrical courses to name a few, but our team building is based on weekends of army based training in the Brecons with Fieri (http://fieri.biz/) & bonding with our boat as well as the team, with 24/48/72 + constant hours of rowing in the sea. In both cases though the teams have to help each other through the experience and to successfully complete the challenges thrown at them.

Fundraising! This is the biggest challenge facing us in the Coxless Crew with a massive budget required for our expedition. A lot of the students manage to fundraise for their entire trip, however there’s certainly a difference between raising £2,000 to £200,000! When dealing with a larger budget, for the Coxless Crew, our sponsors are a huge part of the expedition. They are what make the expedition happen, they help us to fund that the best of the best people and equipment is in place, to ensure we are as best prepared as possible. By activating this expedition, our sponsors are the people that will enable over £250,000 to be raised for our charities. But with £100,000 still to raise to get us to the startline, we’re still on the look out for more sponsors to come on board, so please contact us if you’re interested!

Planning is up next and for our school expedition teams this involves choosing the areas they want to visit, the types of project work they want to complete and the activities they want to do. Again team work comes into play as they make sure that everyone’s opinions are heard and that they create an itinerary that works to fit everything in. For our Pacific row the planning is on a whole other level that I had never imagined! There is a seemingly endless numbers of things that have to be organised, co-ordinated and planned each week, let alone the logistics of boat, team, food and equipment shipping, across three different continents.

Finally the actual expedition. The difference between the students we send away and the ones who come back is huge. They come back with new friends for life, a new confidence and independence and more often than not plans for their next adventure! I can’t wait for us as a team, to be out on the ocean in our beautiful boat Doris. We will be well prepared for the journey both in terms of physical training, training in the boat and psychologically trained, thanks to our awesome support team but I have no doubt that the experiences that we will share out in the ocean with only each other to rely on, will cement our teamwork and our friendships to a level that nobody else will ever be able to understand! And who knows what plans for the next adventure we might come back with…

Through my work as a Physio, there are characteristics that I see in a select few that show the true meaning of mental resilience; the depth, determination and belief in their goal which seems to be drawn on when being faced with adversity. What continues to amaze me, is the fight that people have to overcome it.

Over the next few months, I plan to share with you the stories that are particularly close to me and those people that have truly made an impact on who I am today.

PATRICIA, RASHID & YASIN:

I met Rashid a few years ago when I worked in a private sports clinic & his bubbly, positive nature and love of sports and his family, meant that outside of the therapy room we had become friends. He had just got married and him his wife, Patricia, were expecting their first child. Thinking back to how they were then, I wish I could turn back the clock for them.

After spending a recent evening with Rashid and his son Yasin, it was the first time where he shared with me photos of his wedding day to Patricia, photos of the birth of their son Yasin and the most poignant of all, a video taken with Patricia just 2 days before she died. The overwhelming emotion that I felt isn’t even a scratch on what Rashid is going through and it highlighted to me that their story is one to be shared. This is one of the most heart wrenching stories that I’ve ever experienced and it’s the fact that it’s reality, it’s not a film or a fictional story, but this is a close friend of mines’ real life story.

2 years ago, nearly to the day, Rashid and Patricia couldn’t have been happier, they had reached where most of us dream of, to find true love in a sole mate, in someone that gets you, in someone that you realise you want to spend the rest of your life with. It was 2012 and they had just got married which was a beautiful family affair and was everything they had wished for. On the return from their honeymoon, they found out the exciting news that they were pregnant, and for them if ever ‘perfect’ existed, then now was the time.

However for Trish and Rashid, pure happiness was short lived. Just 3 months later, Patricia got the devastating news that she had an aggressive form of breast cancer and in order to treat it, she would need radical surgery along with chemotherapy and radiotherapy which wouldn’t be suitable for their unborn child. They had a tough decision to make, to save Patricia’s life or their unborn baby. A decision that you can never wish on anyone. However they were given a reprieve of a ‘2 week’ window which became to be quite pertinent in a number of situations, but those 2 weeks meant that their little baby boy Yasin could be delivered by C-section at 28 weeks old, weighing in at a weighty 2 pounds!

The delivery was the Friday and the following Monday Patricia commenced the arduous journey of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Their days/ weeks/months blurred into one, with Rashids’ days spent morning and night in the ITU with Yasin, then by his wife’s bedside, whilst still being dedicated to stay focussed as a school teacher at work in the day. Whilst he was doing that, Patricia who had just had a C-section, was going through all the chemotherapy and radiotherapy, followed by radical chest surgery. Yet Trish would take herself into ITU, to spend the day with Yasin, wanting to feed/ wash/ change him, regardless of how weak she may have felt.

However this was the pinnacle reflection point that Rashid kept highlighting to me, both himself, the family and even Patricia herself were amazed at where she got her strength from. Patricia would openly say that she was a ‘girly girl’, loved her heels, her hair being immaculate and presenting herself & would previously have complained about any ache or pain or a small scratch on her knee. But yet during this, something just switched on, everyone around her saw this inner strength that just ignited, to the point where she’d even turned to Rashid to say ‘this isn’t me, I don’t know where this is coming from….’. When faced with the adversity of loosing the love of her life, the newborn gorgeous baby boy that she’d just carried, natural instinct and inner strength told her to fight. The astounding thing with Tricia, is that she did it all with a smile on her face & humour throughout, refusing to ever complain.

I have only ever loved watching films that have a happy ending, where regardless of what adversity people have faced you wish only the best to come out of it, for them to overcome it and live a happily ever after life, because to me that’s what people like Rashid and Patricia deserve.

However this was one of those cases that fate/ faith whichever you want to believe, had taken that opportunity away from them. After 3 months of treatment, battling against the odds, Patricia was diagnosed with secondaries in her spine. She was given 3 months prognosis to live which was cut short to surviving only a few weeks.

The other night Rashid showed me a video that he took of Patricia by her bed side 2 days before she passed away. It was a video where she could barely open her eyes, she went through giving each member of the family a message, reminiscing of funny anecdotes fluctuating between moments of hallucinations to clear lucid strong messages, expressing her desires of Yasin to be cared for and brought up within their tight family with only memories of joy and happiness.

Whilst I sat trying to control the tears that were rolling down my face, not only did I feel the sadness for Patricia trying to fight for her life, for the life that she’d so desperately wished for and had in her hands for such a short period of time, but I’m sitting here watching it with Rashid. Her husband who is now left to care for their child after loosing the love of his life. To care for a beautiful child Yasin who is a spitting image of his mum, a reminder on a daily basis of her presence. A man that has all these memories, these pictures and videos that he’s watching knowing how happy they once were and that he will never see or feel that happiness again.

If there was something we could do to bring Patricia back for Rashid, Yasin and their family, I would do it in a flash, but instead the only way we can help, is by keeping her memory and story alive.

By making this row a success, it gives a platform to share this story and many others that Breast Cancer Care provide the support for. This row is not about us, it is about those women & families that have had to face and fight adversity but don’t get a chance for their voice to be heard.

‘Live and laugh every day, spend time with your family and love your family, live with nothing left un-said or undone, knowing that if today was your last there would be no regrets.’ Patricia Elouahabi

Another weekend, another Coxless Crew adventure! This time we headed to the Brecon Beacons with 6 of our lovely applicants to test our teamwork, resilience and sense of humour. I’m pleased to say that all three remained intact and we had a fab weekend.

Briefing

We headed down to the Brecons on Friday afternoon where we were briefed by the brilliant Matt and Ali from Fieri who were organising the weekend. A quick navigation lesson and some packing followed before grabbing a couple of hours sleep. The day started at 3am when we got up, breakfasted and headed off on the first leg of our adventure. Our super support team of Matt and Ali, Keith our super performance psychologist and our favourite Coxless Crew supporter Ella waved us off and we headed out into the dark with our map, compass and enthusiasm. Each checkpoint revealed a task which required us to function as a team and work together to solve a problem.

Task 1

4am and we’re off!

Navigating

As we progressed through the day we bonded as a team and learned a lot about how to work together and this translated into much improved performance and success in the tasks. Everyone had the chance to lead the group while walking and during a task learning from each other’s mistakes and highlighting each other’s strengths within the team. It also allowed us plenty of walking time to let us get to know each other better. Stories were told, laughs were had and songs were sung while we climbed hills, crept through magical Narnia like woods and waded through bogs. Feet took a bit of a beating with blisters and slight trenchfoot needing patching up between legs. However everyone remained smiling and supporting each other in a top team effort.

Approaching a checkpoint

18 hours and over 50km in and we’re all still smiling!

After 23 hours we reached our final checkpoint following some interesting night navigation and summoned up the last of our energy for the final task. This involved running up and down a hill with barrels, planks and wooden pallets (thanks Ella!). An awesome sense of achievement and post exercise high was quickly followed extreme tiredness. Reviews were written (probably fairly incoherently) and then we grabbed a couple of hours sleep.

Task requiring logical thinking after 21 hours of hiking

Sunday morning saw some hilarious attempts to get down the stairs to breakfast. We then reviewed our performance with Matt, Ali and Keith going over everything that we had learned and things we need to work on. A great end to a really great weekend. I have no idea how we are going to choose the team as everyone really embraced the experience and contributed to the success of the exercise.

Still smiling on Sunday

Posing!

Massive thanks need to go to Fieri, Matt and Ali for organising the weekend and sharing their knowledge with us, Keith Goddard for his input, assessment and general awesomeness and Ella for her support, camera work and banter. Finally to the six lovely ladies who joined us thanks for making it such a success, you are all awesome and part of the Coxless Crew team.