Archive for July, 2015

Day 51 – Preparations for Hawaii

Laura Penhaul By

Day 51 – Preparations for Hawaii

Day 51, over 1600miles rowed and approximately only 725miles left to go to Hawaii – woohoo, finally! So with our arrival now looking in sight of 2-3weeks, thoughts have turned to preparing for the next steps back on land in Hawaii.
Normally around now, if you were rowing the Atlantic race or the New Ocean Wave race, you’d be getting pretty excited that it felt like the home straight to finishing. Although we are certainly excited to be getting to Hawaii, the emotions are mixed. For Izzy it’s the finish line, for Emma, Nat and I, it’s just the end of the first leg and we still have 2 more to go of equal lengths. So although we will be excited to reach land, we know that the celebrations will be short lived and after a good nights kip, it’ll be straight down to the boat to get us turned around and ready to leave for Samoa in less than a week. Don’t get me wrong though, looking ahead to making landfall in Australia there will be an unbelievable amount of celebrating without a doubt!

Over the last couple of weeks we’ve been closely liaising with Tony to arrange restock of certain kit or replacement kit from our sponsors back in the UK. They have all been amazingly supportive and without question have organised with Tony, delivery of equipment prior to his departure from the UK. So special thanks to:

  • McMurdo who are sending us out additional S20’s which are personal AIS beacons (will give off a signal that can be picked up by the chart plotter if someone goes overboard) and also a replacement PLB as we dropped one over the side by accident at the beginning of the row.
  • Raymarine who have already sorted out a replacement fixed VHF for us after we broke one of the handles off by falling against it heavily.
  • RM Bearings who have turned around within 3weeks, a whole set of brand new ceramic bearings for Emma and Tony to fit when we arrive. Huge thanks to RM for this as it was technically our fault for having damaged some of the bearings due to our seat set up on the first leg part A.
  • Marlow Ropes who have kindly sent through some additional dyneema so we can adjust the steering rope, so thank you Marlow for being so efficient!

The list of boat maintenance is slowly extending and includes things like, replacement of the hand rails that have slackened in the heat, trimming back the oar handles to stop bashing of thumbs on the overlap, making new seat cushions, buying the food for our snack packs, making up approx. 300 snack packs, cleaning and re packing the boat… etc. etc. On reflection from San Francisco, I definitely want us to have at least 1 day off from the row to have a break and appreciate Hawaii, as we were hoping to do this in San Fran but things got so busy that it got overlooked and then departure was fairly rushed. With both my parents and Nat’s parents coming out to see us, we plan to have a day with them and then the other girls will have a day off too to chill out. Being out in the ocean certainly gives you a chance to reflect and realise the importance of family and I know I have fallen short before in being complacent that my parents are always there for me, so it would be great to spend some quality time when they’ve made such an effort to fly out and support us. Keith our Sport Psych has already been in touch to get the ball rolling on preparing us mentally with our expectations pre, during and post Hawaii. We’ve always said that getting back in the boat in Hawaii will be one of the toughest things we have to do, especially seeing Izzy leave and heading for the comforts of home. The bonus though is that we have Lizanne joining us, which we can’t wait for! Lizanne, bless her, I can only imagine what she must be feeling right now, mixed emotions of excitement, with worry and anxiety of the unknown. Blimey, I know how I felt leaving San Fran and I know the project inside out, so for Lizanne coming into it just a couple of months shy of our launch is an unbelievable test of character and true testament to both her and Meg (joining us from Samoa) for the trust they show in us and the row. We have allocated time to provide Lizanne with a handover and introduction to life on Doris as well as practice drills such as emergency procedures and para anchor deployment.
So Hawaii bound we finally are, with an estimated arrival looking around 19th July but you never know the weather (especially with us!). So all being well, we can’t wait to arrive at Honolulu Yacht Club and thank Steve Dixon for all his support. We look forward to receiving our lays, drinking a cocktail, eating a good few meals, having that first amazing shower and a solid nights sleep in a comfy bed…

Personal message:
Simon Taylor-Young – Simon I wanted to take a minute to say a huge thank you for your ongoing support, I’m truly humbled. We love hearing of your news and receiving your comments on our blogs. My apologies for not writing sooner, we weren’t able to receive the blog comments until recently so we’ve been playing catch up and absolutely love that we can now read them. Love to the family xx

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Day 50 – Blame it on the weatherman

Isabel Burnham By

Day 50 – Blame it on the weatherman

We’ve heard that there is a bit of a heatwave in the UK at the moment. As I explained in my day 46 blog, we’ve been learning to live with some serious sunshine out on the Pacific as well of late, until about 72 hours ago. And then the rains came.

On Monday evening, just as the sunset shift was ending, the skies started looking an ominous grey colour and the wind picked up. Laura and I took over for the first night shift and the heavens opened. The whole of Monday night and much of yesterday was spent rowing through a series of mini rain storms. Out on Doris’s exposed deck, we are completely at the will of the elements. Looking out of the cabin on Monday night and yesterday you could see two figures sitting at the oars, trying their best to hide inside their wet weather gear, with the hoods pulled down over their heads to the eyes and the necks pulled up to under their noses. Laura and I wear glasses to row at night and soon could see nothing for all the water droplets on them, so were rowing blind.

The rain didn’t manage to dampen our spirits though, and the night shifts were spent singing as many songs as possible which mention the weather. Take it from me, there are a lot. While the continuous rain can get miserable, the warmer temperatures now mean that we don’t get too cold and a wash with fresh water is lovely, removing all the salt that has collected onto Doris’s deck, our skin, clothing and life jackets. The feeling of freshness is, however, very short lived, as the 12-15kt winds mean that we are still being splashed by waves crashing over the boat.

Today we are celebrating 50 days at sea since Santa Barbara (66 since San Francisco) and the rain has made me realise how lucky we have been so far to avoid much rain, or any storms. Today we are back to bright bright sunshine, another reminder of just how changeable conditions on the Pacific are.

In other news, we have started to receive a lot of visitors, particularly at night, as flying fish have started to land all over Doris. Most are tiny, 2-3cm, but the other night Laura was hit by one that was about 15cm. We have read that they can grow to be as big as 1.5 ft! Each morning as the sun rises we have to go about the process of picking them off the boat. They have a bluish tinge and dragon-like wings. We have seen the larger ones gliding through the air and they go a remarkably long way. Today we are joined by shoals of beautiful mahi-mahi, with their bright light blue bodies and yellow tails.

The last couple of nights two fast moving shearwaters have also been circling very low around the boat, close to the rowers. They make me jump when then fly by unexpected, but it’s great fun to be seeing more wildlife again and to have them so near.

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Day 49 – Our Best Year Yet!

Natalia Cohen By

Day 49 – Our Best Year Yet!

Update: In the last 24 hours we’ve been treated to the highest winds we’ve had since leaving Santa Barbara. Intermittent squalls have come with dark, menacing clouds, driving rain and waves faintly visible by the misty moonlight coming at us from all angles.
Safe to say we’re all wet again but not quite as cold as we were. We are thankful for some fresh water to rinse out our salt encrusted wet weather gear but find that as soon as that happens, we get dumped on by yet another saltwater wave undoing all the good work! However, yet again, we remain in high spirits and still laugh at ourselves and with each other. Why?

I am truly dumbfounded and quite frankly astounded by how the 4 of us have dealt with life over the last 49 (or 65 from San Fran) days.
Why have we not wanted to kill one another?
Why have we not had moments of complete frustration with how long this leg is taking us?
Why are we not completely delirious from sleep exhaustion?
Why do we never complain about getting up every two hours to go and sit on the oars in driving rain, pitch black darkness, rough sea state, cold or hot conditions?
Why are we still joking, laughing, looking after each other and in essence…working amazingly well together as a team?

There are definitely a number of reasons…but for now I want to share one of them with you.

I love how there is a universal order to how things happen in life.
2 serendipitous moments led us to working with the amazing Andrew Duncan at New Level Results to create a Best Year Yet programme that has helped streamline us as a team and get to the start line as well as how we are functioning out here on the Pacific.

Flash back to 2001 when I was working in Nepal and I met a group of people who had just come back from the most successful summiting of Mount Everest in history. They had broken 4 World Records and their elation at conquering the roof of the world was incredible. First blind man to summit, oldest man to summit, first father/son team to summit and most people to summit at any one time.
Turns out that they had been following a Best Year Yet programme.

Flash back to 2012 when I was working in Mallorca and my path crossed with Andrew and we spent a few hours talking about values and with the aid of his value cards I had to whittle down 10 of my top important life values into only one.

Andrew and I remained friends and reconnected in the UK when I got involved with the row. Turns out that the programme offered by Andrew was the glue that allowed us to put procedures firmly in place and gave us a solid framework to follow to improve our effectiveness as a team – vital to the success of the expedition.

Although we are all very different characters, we are able to work really well together as we have a shared objective and shared values. This is very important.
We’ve always had clear objectives.
Best Year Yet (BYY) helped us set out our objectives, our top 10 goals and prioritise what needed to be done. It was just what we needed to keep all our admin together in one tidy and effective package.
We needed an online system that would not take up too much of our time and would help us all focus on the job at hand and keep us all on track. It made each of us accountable for championing certain areas and get results!

The other great thing about the program is that we have an external coach/facilitator work with us. They are objective, there is no personal tie to the project and they can offer a unique professional perspective.

Our project has been in 2 stages:
Stage 1 – Getting to the start line Essentially setting up a business. We had to deal with areas including sponsorship, PR/Media/Marketing, logistics, finances, legal and admin
Stage 2 – Successful crossing of the Pacific, the expedition

Below are some of the guidelines we came up with for Stage 2.

Coxless Guidelines
1. Believe in yourself, trust in each other and the strength of the team
2. Row with SPIRIT (our values)
3. Be unstoppable, stroke by stroke

Coxless Paradigm
Control the controllable and conquer our Pacific

Major Focus
Enjoy the journey! Live in the moment

Inspiring and encouraging others to reach their full potential is exactly what New Level Results and BYY aim to do through their programmes and is also exactly what our expedition is all about. A HUGE thank you to Andrew and the team and we look forward to our next review in Hawaii! We’re certainly doing our best to ensure we all enjoy the journey x

moustache

www.newlevelresults.co.uk

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