Atlantic Row
Wanted poster
The idea to take part in the Atlantic row came about three years ago. I’ve been a boatman for 40 years and a rower for 50. I’m still rowing now. I used to row competitively – Henley and the world veteran championships. Then, I lost my rowing partner, so I gave up competitively and got on a bike.

There was a guy called Frank Rothwell who had done it when he was 70. I looked at him when he finished and thought “I could do that.” I thought to myself, “I’ll be 67 when I do it, so I might as well try and break the world record for the oldest pair to row an ocean.” I needed somebody over 62. I rang up all my rowing friends from different clubs that I rowed at – City of Oxford, Wallingford, Upper Thames, Henley – but I couldn’t find anybody who wanted to do it with me! They’d either got too old or thought I was insane!

I put a wanted poster on the Blue Marlin website (for people who have done or are planning to do the Atlantic Challenge): “Wanted: somebody over 62 to break the world record crossing the Atlantic in 2023.” I’d already put the entry in, and I had one reply and that was Ian Davies, my rowing partner. He’d already done it before, three or four years ago, but what I think swung it was his daughter and son-in-law were doing it the same year. In the end, we beat them! We did it in 66 days; I think they did it in 73 days.

Ergathon

I had a three-year plan to get sponsorship. We did a 24-hour ergathon at the Westgate Centre in Oxford on the rowing machines. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all the Univ Boat Club students who helped us. They’ve been behind us and encouraging us all the way. They came up to the Westgate and some of them did half an hour on the ergs.

Preparation

Atlantic Campaigns are the organisers – they organise Zoom meetings, and you go on an eight-day course down at Teignmouth for navigation, sea survival, first aid and radio. Then you get the boat, and you must do a minimum of 120 hours on the boat beforehand, 70 of those on the open sea. That is all logged so that they know that you’ve done it. We do that ourselves and send it to them. We did the 120 hours at Llyn Tegid (Bala Lake) and Porthmadog in Wales. After that, you’ve got boat and kit inspections.

Then you go to La Gomera, near Tenerife, on 1 December. The race normally starts on 12 December. That’s a mix of solos, pairs and fours, occasionally threes. The winners squeezed five in their boat.
Start

The organisers said it was the worst conditions the year we rowed in the ten years they had organised the race. Some people were having to put out their para-anchor. If the wind blows the wrong way, it acts like a giant parachute attached to the bow. It drags, say, a tonne and a half of water and that stops the boat getting blown backwards. Meanwhile, you rest in your cabin. When the weather changes and you can move a bit, you take up the anchor and off you go again.

Stormy weather

There was a storm when not long after we’d started by an island called El Hierro. We got caught in the storm and at one point it tipped the boat over, tipping me onto the other side. I remember looking up at the keel of the boat thinking, “This isn’t quite right!” It was at night, and I hurt my knee. That was about three days into the race. After three days of paracetamol and ibuprofen, I could get back on the oars, just not compressed strokes for a while. Then we got halfway and there was another storm coming in blowing us back to La Gomera. It split the whole team. The boats that were south managed to get away with it but the seven that didn’t were just getting blown backwards, downwards and sidewards. It took us ten days to do 150 miles. To give you some idea – we’d done 80 miles in one day and 320 miles in six days – so we were really frustrated with that!

Two men in a boat

It’s basically two hours on, two hours off, individually. So, the boat’s always moving. You can vary it. We were rowing from 10 o’clock at night until 10 o’clock in the morning, two hours on two hours off, so effectively you got six hours’ rest. Then we were rowing for an hour together and then somebody would carry on for half an hour while somebody else rested – so effectively on a two-hour stint we would row for an hour and a half and have half an hour off during the day. At the end we wanted to get some more miles, so we did an hour on and an hour off – so, just whatever suits the conditions and the crew.

Digging deep

Once it took us ten hours to do eight miles, because of the weather, basically to stop us going backwards. You were almost rowing stagnant but at least you weren’t rowing backwards!

Rowing partner

Ian was ex-army, so he was organised and disciplined, and we got on well. That was our aim, that we would get together, that we would do the row and we’d still be friends and have a beer at the end of it – and that’s what we did.

He used to play rugby for the forces. He’s in his second remission of Myeloma (blood cancer). He’s a brave man. He could go into remission at any time.
He did the Atlantic row the first time with his army friends in a four-man. They joined Shrewsbury Rowing Club to get some experience and fell in straight away! Sea rowing is completely different from river rowing. I hadn’t done any sea rowing before this. The concepts are the same, sliding the seat and putting the blades in. I liked the way that the boat adapted to it. With your river boats, you get a bit of swell and that feels wobbly, but those ocean boats are adaptable to the conditions. The boat’s only 7.2 metres long. We took it down to the Westgate when we did the ergathon.

About a boat

There are cabins, with two hatched doors – these are shut, and you are harnessed on – a three-stay harness: you click on to a jackstay, then you’ve got your belt when you come out of the cabin and clip on to that.

When I got thrown overboard – I was on a short tether and a long tether – it doesn’t let you go that far out. The boat rights itself and you come up with it, clamber on the side and check you haven’t lost any oars or seats. Everything is either in the hatches or tied on with a carabiner. I didn’t have time to worry, I just thought “Is everything there?” and started bailing the boat out.

When you’re in the cabin this door shuts. They are watertight compartments. So that’s the bow cabin and that’s the stern cabin, with all the radio, chart plotter, Garmin (GPS technology), auto-helm that steers the boat and all the mechanics. You plot a course, and it should stick to it! Then there’s the staterooms and one rowing position here, one rowing position there. Then these are hatches where you put all your food. One’s your water maker and then there’s your batteries to run all your electrical things. You’ve got two solar panels, which run your water maker, all your navigation and radios etc. The water maker cleans seawater. They reckon it’s the cleanest water you’ll ever drink!

That’s the stern hatch – that’s a compass, which gives you the speed and direction. That’s the jackstay that you connect your safety harness to and then there’s a rope on the side and then you’ve got a belt on that connects it all up.

At sea

You start off about two minutes apart in La Gomera. If you go on Facebook and type in World’s Toughest Row and team Never2Late, Gary who did our social media put it on there. The end of the race is on YouTube, and the media boat comes out and does interviews.

When you’re out there you lose track of time very quickly after ten days. When we finished if someone had said to me that we’d been out 40 days 80 days I’d have believed them. It was actually 66 days. You eat, you sleep and you row.

Some people say that when you do something like this it changes your life and I can understand that if you’re younger, you might rethink your life and career, but not really for me.

Pan-pan and mayday

When you’re out there you’ve got two calls – a pan-pan, if you need assistance or advice, when any ship near you or the organisers will pick it up and give you advice, and then there’s mayday, which is basically imminent danger. That goes to Falmouth and then by law the nearest ship to you must pick you up.

It takes a long time to sink in that that was 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean – it wasn’t just going for a walk or doing a bike ride!

To start with you’re not really thinking about the distance, you’re just concentrating on getting into your daily rhythm. Then you start looking for goals. Your half-way one is good – you know then you’re nearer Antigua than La Gomera. Another one is probably 1,000 miles to go, then 500, then 100. The second half you start counting down more than the first half.

Keeping in touch

You’ve got the satellite phone, which you had to keep on between 1 and 3 every day so that the duty officer can ring you. They’ll ring you probably about every other day. If there are any problems they’ll ring you in the day. You could also phone home on your sat phone. Then you had a little dish you have to line up with a satellite in the sky, get a signal, and then you can connect your iPhone to it to send back pictures, but that was pretty hit and miss. If you’ve only got an hour off, it could take about 15 minutes to set it up and it might not be a strong enough signal to pick up or send any messages, and then it could take five or ten minutes to send a picture through, so that could be frustrating. I set up a family and friends Never2Late WhatsApp group. I think there were about 150 people on there in the end!

You could also follow the whole race on the YB Races app – which was updated every four hours, so lots of the students and staff were following us. I think even the Master was following us at one point!

A lot of people took their families out with them to Antigua to make a holiday of it, but I didn’t really want that – I’m the sort of person who just wants to get it done and get home. Also, you don’t know when you’re going to land – so Ian’s daughter and son-in-law – you’d think in a pair you could do it in 50 or 60 days, that’s the usual, but because conditions were so bad everybody suffered by about eight days. So, they had their children and grandparents waiting for them in Antigua for three weeks.

Finish

When you finish, the next day you clean your boat, get it inspected to make sure you haven’t thrown anything in the sea and then it gets taken across the dockyard, put in a container and shipped home.

Then it’s sold – they do well on the resale. The two women we bought ours from bought it for the 2021 race, so we bought it with one crossing, and we sold it with two crossings to a couple called Glimmering Sea who are doing it this year. So, we’ll be able to track them and watch them!

When I got to Antigua, all I wanted was a table full of cold beers. There are two support boats – 36-foot yachts. The support boat caught us up with about three weeks to go and took a few pictures of us. We asked them if they’d got any cold beers, but they said it’s not worth it – because the race is unassisted. If you take anything from them then it doesn’t count, and you’re disqualified.

Dreams

You get some weird dreams. Both of us at some stage thought there were more than two of us on the boat! Sometimes if you’d got an hour or two-hour gap, you’d wake up after three quarters of an hour, put all your stuff on ready and then realise you’ve got another hour to go! Ian did that a lot more than me – he’d come out of the cabin half an hour early.

Feeling seasick

We were well apart from when I went over the side and thought I’d broken my leg when my knee swelled up. We had two nights on the para-anchor when I was in the cabin just taking ibuprofen and paracetamol, got back on the oars but couldn’t do compressed strokes. You get blisters on your hands, and they turn into callouses. A lot of people use gloves, but we didn’t. It’s amazing how quickly things heal out there, I don’t know if it’s the salt air perhaps.

It’s funny – the first thing you do is you lose the fat on your bum! In the end you’re sitting on the bones of your bum and that’s uncomfortable. You’ve got your seat, you’ve got padding on your seat and that moulds into the shape of your bum, but the bottom is where you’ve lost all your fat. You sometimes get sores but my top tip for that is sudocrem! You also get horrible little salt sores which are painful.

You take sea sickness pills before you go and during and eat ginger biscuits. I thought I’d be seasick, but I wasn’t. Both of us had a little nausea for two days, but that was it. Some people really struggle with that. If you’re like that for over a week they’ll take you off the boat because you’ll get too dehydrated.

Wildlife

We saw some dolphins and a couple of blue whales. I was eating my dinner one night and a blue whale came right by the boat. We had turtles swimming past. The woman who finished behind us, Mel, had an underwater GoPro, and got a shot of a tuna that was being stalked by a marlin trying to hide under the boat! The marlins are the ones that attack the boats. The average is four attacks per crossing and at least two of them were holed by marlins this year. You have some tapered bungs and, depending on the size of the hole, you just bung it through and seal it up. One got the stern of our boat but nothing too bad. Most of the boat is compartments. So, you’d seal it up and drain it out.

You’re so far from the world we live in now, you haven’t got to think about anything, you’ve just got to focus on what you’re doing. After ten days you lose all concept of time. You have your food, you have your rest, then you’ve got your own times in the day, to do your solar panels and water making, for example.

Rations

You have wet and dry rations, a bit like army food. The wet rations you can open and eat, the dry rations you boil up some water with the jet boil, add the water to it and you’ve got a hot meal. I loved them. You lose a lot of weight. I was lucky, I only lost six kilos. The woman who finished behind us lost 22. She said she couldn’t get on with the food – she had to hold her nose to eat it towards the end.

Atlantic Campaigns work out it’s 60 calories per kilo per day. I was roughly 75, I had to take 4,500 calories a day, normally it takes about 2,000 per person. So, you make up your own snack pack: 65 of those of things that you like, like flapjacks, peanut butter, raisins, bag of nuts with raisins in it, jellybeans and haribos, 3,000 calories per bag. I had one ration in the morning and one at night.

The boat probably weighed about a tonne and a half. There’s no way you can pull that against the conditions, so you must work with them.

Traffic conditions

You see some boats – that was good fun. You’ve got two forms of navigation: you’ve got your radar which works off the antennas, so our boat is only 2.1 metres high that works out how far it goes across the sea to pick up another antenna. Because we were only this high nobody could pick us up on the radar, so we had some calls – you’ve also got an AIS (Automatic Identification System) which is a satellite assistance, which beams down to them, so we can see them and can see other boats. We had some boats calling us up saying “we can see you on the AIS but we can’t get you on radar, who are you and are you ok?” so we said “we’re only a 7.3 metre rowing boat so that’s why you can’t get us on the radar. A couple asked us if we needed assistance, but we told them we were fine.

There was one, a yacht that was behind, who actually tacked alongside us who were a family going to the Caribbean who just wanted to see what we were! Some of the ships at night were great because you could see them – you’ve got to be careful that they’re not on a collision course with you. Usually, the stern light is higher than the bow light – so you’d think “right, there’s the bow light, there’s the stern light” and you can see a green light at the side – so red is port and green is starboard – so you know that’s going sidewards, it’s not coming straight towards you.

Surfing the waves

For 99 per cent of it you just saw the sea. When the waves were so high that you couldn’t see the horizon, those were the best times. The best times were right at the start when we had the biggest waves and if you’re going with them, all you can imagine is you’re down in a trough, you can see this wave and it’s the size of houses, so what you do is you take a few big strokes, it will take you up and carry you up and you take a few big strokes at the top and then you surf the wave at the top, and you look at the speed – 7.8, 8.3 – and then you wait for the next one to see if you can beat the speed. It was an amazing feeling. Once you get used to the boat and you’re confident in the boat, they were great times they were. You’re basically surfing in a boat. Usually, they come in twos. And then sometimes it was just like a millpond and you’re thinking, “This is the Atlantic Ocean?” The Thames is rougher than that! You’re in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and it’s like a mirror. That was the sort of thing you had to work with.

That’s one thing I did learn. Here you can plan what you’re doing of an afternoon, tomorrow, a week, but there it was hour by hour. You get your hopes up. We’d done 320 miles in six days, and you think to yourself, “We’ll be in Antigua in ten days” and then the safety officer says, it was on a Saturday I’ll never forget this, it was blowing us backwards and we weren’t getting very far and he said it would be like this until Friday. So, you’re counting the days down and you make the best of it. So, Friday when the wind comes you make the best of it. They say it was the worst conditions since Atlantic Campaigns started ten years ago.

To put it in context the guy, Frank Rodwell, did it three years ago when I had the idea, he was 70 then and it took him 56 days as a solo. He did it this year, he was 73, and it took him 64 days. So that eight-day gap was what it was this year for most people.
We both thought it would be 56 days, which it would have been because the women didn’t have much wind and they did it in 59 days. It still takes a while to sink in but 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean, you’re not going to be in charge of that – it’s going to be in charge of you!

If this inspires anybody to walk, to jog, to run an extra mile, then it’s worth what we did. You never know, one of our rowers might do it one day. If a silly old boatman can do it at 67! Are you Univ students or not? The students were brilliant all the way along, asking how we’re getting along.

I didn’t rest when I got home on the Friday. I pumped up my tyres and went for a bike ride on the Sunday. But I thought to myself, “Hang on a minute, this doesn’t feel right” because of the amount of muscle you lose doing something like that… you’ve got no calves because you don’t use your calves. I’ve got a little dog I take down to the boathouse, Oscar, in his basket. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I took him, and I’d done an erg with the boys on the Tuesday, and I thought “I really need to give my body a bit of time to recover here, so I took it a bit steadier.”

Charity begins at sea

When the pandemic happened, I said to my wife that you can’t just lock people up and expect them to be ok. I was very lucky because St John’s kept me on because I’m a lone worker at the boathouse, so I used to cycle in and get lots of jobs done that you wouldn’t have had time to do when the students were there. I thought that the people who would suffer more would be the young people. You don’t hear much from them. The adults can speak but might not want to say that their son or daughter were struggling. So that’s why I linked up with Papyrus. Ian has myeloma, so he wanted to raise funds for research into that – and to inspire anyone who may have myeloma not to sit at home but to get out and do whatever they want to do.

Univ

I have worked as the boatman for Univ for about thirty-eight years. It’s an extension of my hobby – I love it. Working with the students, helping them out. I’ve done the base camp and different things. So, I look after the Boathouse for the College, and do all the repairs when the students smash the boats up. I do all that at the Boathouse – the end bay is a workshop.

I’ve worked with St John’s and Corpus Christi for slightly longer, but then Univ didn’t have a boatman and their equipment was in a terrible state, so they asked me.

Old boathouse

I was there shortly after the old boathouse burnt down. You had an old Victorian boathouse up there that burnt down in 1999. It took seven years to get this one. They’re pretty spoilt with the facilities.
The old boathouse was an old Victorian wooden structure. There’s actually a painting of it upstairs in the Club room, the old one. But it needed a lot of money spending on it, so really it was a blessing for them. It really had some character – I think it was a grade two listed.

I knew Norman Dix well. I used to go up and see him in the place where he used to live on Osney Island. He had a little stream out the back of his house. We buried his ashes in the Thames – me and Pete Bowley. He asked that we row a skiff up and drop him in by the Univ boathouse. He was a good sculler in the days where, if you worked with boats, you couldn’t race because you were classed as a professional not an amateur. He used to be a Scout at the College in the afternoon I think and a boatman in the morning.

Wooden boats and oars

In the old days it was all wooden oars. That’s how I served my apprenticeship, all wooden oars and wooden boats, and now it’s all carbon fibre oars and carbon fibre boats. They’re lighter, stiffer and more durable. The oars last longer. The boats are lighter and stronger.

It depends on the damage, but the modern boats are generally easier to repair. If they take out a shoulder or something like that, but the thing with wood is it had to be right, because you could see it. Now, if it’s not right, you can have another go and paint it! You put a patch on a wooden boat – it’s a very thin veneer, so it sticks up like a sore thumb.

Head of the River

I’ve seen it all. The Men were Head of the River in the late 80s, 90s I think it was. And now the Women are. I’ve got a theory that by the time I retire, because colleges go up and down, they’ll all be in the same place as they were when I started! There’s a good set up there at the moment, and the coach Jono, he just brought everything to life down there.

It’s hard for students because of their work commitments. Rowing, no matter what level you do, you have to train six days a week when you’re novices so, you know, it’s a very competitive sport and you have to put a lot into it, so it’s difficult for the students. The last few years, the men and the women, apart from it being frustrating not being able to get on the river because of the floods – the results are going up, but they’ve had to put the hours in. Jono had to take them down to Dorney Lake, all over the place, down the tideway, which is a big commitment at the weekend for students. But things are looking good for Univ.

The amount of time you spend on the erg or on the river depends on what the coach will set up, but you would be doing something six days a week and sometimes twice because they’re limited – undergraduates can only row until 8.30 in the morning and then they’re supposed to go and do their study 8 til 1, so some crews get out in the afternoon sometimes. You’re only allowed so many crews from each college out, so they split them up, and then they’ll do evenings as well.

You’ve got three main races: first term is the novice races at the end of 7th Week, that’s a regatta for the novices because usually first term is to bring the novices on. You keep the other crews going. In second term you have the Winter bumps race, known as Torpids, where they’re trying to catch the crew up in front and move up divisions trying to get to the Head of the River, which Univ are and then the main one is Summer Eights, which is fifth week of term, and that’s the main bumps races. Saturday’s the main day when they get all the Old Members there.

Bumps

It can take a while for people to understand the bumps racing. We’re never there, we’re always down the other end at the start. We have long five-metre poles. You’ve got three cannons: a five-minute cannon – that means all the crews have got to get onto their stations, a length and a quarter behind each other from Donnington Bridge, all the way down the river to the pub. Thirteen boats. They hold on to a cord and the cox must keep hold of that. The minute gun goes and then we push them out with our poles. We get the boats straight and the tension out of the cord. The race starts and then they try to catch the crew in front. The cord comes from the bank, so the cox will hold on with one hand, so they’re all attached. If they let go of it, they are penalised. They’ve got to keep hold of it until that cannon goes. Some experienced coxes will throw it in the river and then, “Quick, grab your bung line. Otherwise, you’ll get disqualified.” So, one hand is here, one hand is here. When it goes, they put their other hand on the steering. So, it’s the cox that does it, not the rowers.

Not all the crews will go past Univ. It’s slightly different in Torpids, but in Summer Eights say if number six bumps five then they both stop and pull over to one side, so they stop rowing and don’t go any further. All the crews who got bumped don’t go any further. It’s only the crews that haven’t that row past Univ. So, you may have thirteen crews starting, and only four will finish! If you get a chance, it’s worth having a walk down that side. You get a fuller picture then of the start.

They’ve got some drones to capture it from above, I don’t know if they’ve done it this year, but they’ve done it in previous years. A boat club produced it and followed the crews up the river.

How many boats you have depends on how many rowers you’ve got! Summer Eights, Univ usually has double figures – nine or ten boats. The big colleges – Oriel, Pembroke, Christ Church maybe, Univ.

You start off from where you finished last year, so if they finished first then you start off first and the other crews will try to bump you. So, you’ve got divisions. You’re effectively taking over from someone from the previous year and then you try to work your way up. Say you’re in Division 2 and you’re starting off in 2 and you bump the crew in front, then you make up to number 1 then you’ll go up to the next division. I think there’s 13 or 14 divisions, seven men, six women – it might be seven and seven now. The aim is to get up that ladder.
Univ I’m pretty sure are Head for Torpids. They’re doing very well. Second or Third in Summer Eights possibly. Univ is a fairly small college. Some of the big ones, such as Christ Church, Oriel and Pembroke, seem to get more rowers and will encourage rowers into their college, international rowers, so a lot of them will part of the Blues. If you look at the Boat Race, it will have which college they’re from. There will be very few Univ. I think Christ Church had six of the Blue boat in their crew. They rowed against Cambridge in April and then in Summer Eights. It’s hard to compete against them, but Univ has done very well.

Notable Univ rowers

Acer Nethercott got a silver medal at the Olympics. There’s a memorial stone to him.

Quite a lot of students have come through my doors!

Down by the river

At Summer Eights, when the race finishes as quarter to seven I’ll come back up to the Boathouse and right the damage ready for the next day. Saturday it’s usually an hour earlier because they have the dinner. I’ll go up there and have a drink with them. I don’t come to the Boat Club dinners anymore. I used to, but it’s too much rushing around when you’ve done a week where you’re not home until 10 o’clock at night. It’s a very busy week.

Hertford College Boat Club is further down the river, about 500 metres down the same side – there’s Hertford, St Catz, St Hilda’s and Mansfield. They share a boat house. We share with Wolfson, St Peter’s and Somerville. In the old boathouse, St Catherine’s were in there and Linacre were in there, but when it burnt down, they got places in other boathouses. Years and years ago Wadham were in the old boathouse as well and then they built their own boathouse the other side.

The easiest way to describe it is that every door is a different college – if you look across to the other side you’ve got Christ Church, then you’ve got LMH, Trinity, Magdalen, New College and Balliol, they share.

What’s next?

Well, I’m getting my kidney taken out tomorrow!
(Jim’s kidney surgery was successful and he’s doing well!)