🌅 Hometown Row – We’ve Arrived in La Gomera!

dawnysmiff
6 days ago
2 min read

Hello everyone,

We’re finally here! Both Paul and I arrived in La Gomera on Sunday, and today was our first full day of official race preparation — and what a day it’s been already.

🚣‍♂️ Fleet Briefing & Straight to Work

We started the morning with the 9am fleet briefing, joining all the other teams taking on this year’s World’s Toughest Row. There’s an incredible atmosphere here — excitement, nerves, focus, and the energy of people who have spent years preparing for this moment.

After the briefing, we headed straight to the boat park to find our boat and get to work.

The job list for today was simple:

Unpack all equipment
Lay everything out for inspection
Repack the entire boat ready for launch on Thursday

It was a long morning, but a satisfying one.

✅ Passed Inspection With Flying Colours

One of the biggest milestones of race prep is the official safety inspection, and I’m thrilled to say we passed with flying colours.

A huge amount of time, care, planning and experience goes into ensuring our boat meets the very high safety standards of the race — and it’s always a relief when the inspectors confirm everything is in perfect order.

⚙️ Still Plenty To Do

Although inspection is complete, the work doesn’t stop here. This week will include:

Fine-tuning and perfecting our packing plan
Testing all systems (communications, navigation, watermaker, power, steering)
Making small adjustments as needed
Tracking early weather patterns

It’s still too far out from race day for anything reliable, but early hints suggest a fast start, which could be a baptism of fire for less experienced crews.

But for our team — with our combined experience — we’re ready for whatever the Atlantic wants to throw at us.