Thursday 16th July- Day 21

Today marks three weeks at sea.

In some ways it feels like we've been out here forever. The days seem to merge into one another, each made up of rowing, sleeping, eating and checking the weather.

Yet in other ways it's flying by.

It's strange how time behaves in the middle of the Atlantic.

The greyness continues.

Paul is now convinced he won't see the sun again until he gets back to Florida!

I've made him a promise that there'll be glorious sunshine waiting for him in the UK, so I'm relying on all my friends back home to keep it that way. If we get there and it's grey... we've agreed we're simply carrying on to the Canary Islands where it's warmer!

Yesterday morning we went back onto the parachute anchor expecting to be there for around 24 hours.

But by 6pm, although the wind was still coming from an unhelpful direction, it had eased significantly. We looked at each other and thought...

"Let's give it a go."

We weren't exactly flying along, but we were making progress in the right direction, and after spending so much time sitting on the anchor it gave us a huge morale boost simply to be moving again.

By 11:30pm, however, our speed had dropped to around 0.5 knots.

Ironically, that's about the same speed we drift while sitting on the parachute anchor.

There didn't seem much point exhausting ourselves to achieve exactly the same result, so we made the decision to stop rowing and deploy the anchor once more for the night.

We're becoming quite efficient at it now.

The parachute goes over the bow.

The lines are checked.

Everything is made secure.

Then it's time for one of my favourite parts of the day...

Gordon Ramsay's Dangerous Kitchen!

Armed with our homemade windbreak, we managed to get the Jetboil working well enough for me to make a hot coffee and soup while Paul tucked into a pot of ramen noodles.

It felt almost normal.

Then it was time for bed.

And what a night's sleep!

I climbed into my sleeping bag, finished the last few mouthfuls of hot soup, set my alarm for 7:30am and promptly fell asleep.

Apart from the odd moment of turning over, I slept for a full seven hours.

Luxury!

In fact, I woke up before the alarm.

I climbed out on deck with a mug of coffee in hand. It would have been even better with a spectacular sunrise, but the cloud had other ideas.

You can't have everything.

By 8am we'd both finished our coffees and were back on deck retrieving the parachute anchor ready for another day's rowing.

We're moving again now.

The wind has shifted to the south-south-east, which still isn't ideal, but for the moment we're making progress, and that's all we can ask for.

I suspect the next few days will follow the same pattern.

Row whenever it makes sense.

Anchor whenever it doesn't.

I must admit...

If it didn't add about a week to the crossing, I'd be more than happy to spend every night on the parachute anchor!

There's something rather lovely about getting a proper night's sleep and starting the morning with a peaceful coffee on deck.

It almost feels like a normal morning routine...

...just 1,000 miles from the nearest kettle.

---

Dawn

“Together Paul and I are rowing home — the long way round.”

Hometown Row

📩 You can have Dawn’s blogs delivered directly to your inbox here:

👉 https://dawn2609.substack.com/

🌐 Or visit the website:

www.rowaurora.co.uk