Thursday 20th August- 9pm
What an Emotional Rollercoaster ride!!
After a really good night’s sleep aboard Penny B, I woke up ridiculously early this morning.
I think my body is still firmly programmed into shift-pattern mode and has absolutely no idea what’s going on anymore!
There was no alarm demanding that I get dressed and row. No tide we needed to catch. No passage plan that needed checking.
So I put the Jetboil on, made myself a coffee and just sat there.
Hatch wide open.
Sleeping bag wrapped around me.
Watching the world go by.
That might sound completely unremarkable, but after nearly two months on the North Atlantic, sitting in bed with the hatch wide open is an absolute luxury. Out there, opening the door could mean inviting half the Atlantic into your bedroom!
And for once there was nothing I needed to do.
It gave me time to think.
And goodness me, there has been a lot to think about.
What Just Happened?!
The last nearly three months have been…
Epic. Exhausting. Amazing. Horrible. Beautiful. Brutal. Hilarious. Terrifying. Magical. Never again. When’s the next one?
Sometimes all of those things within the same day.
But the last week has been an emotional rollercoaster on a completely different level.
Seeing land for the first time was an enormous high.
By my 9am blog last Friday, 14th August, we thought we had just 12 nautical miles to go to Newlyn Harbour.
Twelve miles!
A short final hop and then the big celebration.
Or so we thought.
Then we hit the tide.
With around ten miles remaining, it became so strong that despite both of us rowing HARD, Penny B was going backwards.
So we kept rowing.
For the entire six hours that the tide was against us, we pulled simply to try to reduce how quickly it pushed us backwards.
Then finally it turned.
And we went for it.
For the next four hours we rowed like we had never rowed before.
The miles came down.
Excitement started building again.
We genuinely thought we were going to make it.
Even if we couldn’t reach Newlyn itself, we were getting close to an anchorage. We could drop the hook, sleep, then row those final few miles in daylight the following morning and get the hero’s welcome we’d been imagining.
We got to just over a mile from that anchorage.
Eight miles from the harbour.
And then…
We started going backwards.
Again.
I cannot adequately describe the desperation of those next few hours.
We looked at every option we could think of while watching Penny B being swept away from where we desperately wanted to go.
Eventually, there simply weren’t any sensible options left.
At 10.30pm, I requested a tow.
And my heart sank.
From Devastation to Perspective
In that moment, I genuinely believed we’d failed.
For those first few hours, I managed to convince myself that everything we’d just achieved had somehow been for nothing.
Of course, it hadn’t.
But exhaustion isn’t particularly good at rational thought.
I’d had around four hours’ sleep in three days and pushed myself physically and emotionally to absolute empty.
The following day my glass gradually started filling again.
And by that evening it was literally filled with wine, which certainly helped!
After a proper night’s sleep, I woke up with a completely different perspective.
We had rowed across the North Atlantic.
We’d battled some of the toughest conditions I’ve experienced on any ocean.
We had demonstrated huge mental and physical resilience for thousands of miles.
Eight miles couldn’t possibly erase that.
And then came another twist.
The tow has subsequently been described by officials as extremely insignificant in the context of the crossing, particularly compared with assistance that has occurred during other notable record-breaking rows.
Then we discovered something even bigger.
We’d already finished.
We Crossed the Finish Line Without Even Knowing It
The official finish for the ocean crossing was not Newlyn Harbour.
It was Bishop Rock, marking the western extremity used for the finish of the crossing.
We had crossed it under our own power.
The ocean row was already complete.
The world records stood.
Which was obviously incredible news…
But it also left me asking one fairly obvious question:
Why on earth didn’t we know?!
Throughout the preparation process we’d repeatedly asked what evidence was required to demonstrate that we’d completed the crossing unassisted.
We’d been told that at the finish we needed evidence of us reaching land without assistance, ideally somebody filming us coming in with some form of timestamp.
At no point did it occur to us that there was another defined finish line offshore.
Why would it?
We’d specifically asked what we needed to demonstrate that the crossing was complete.
So when Penny B crossed that line, neither we nor everyone following the tracker knew we’d just finished.
There was no screaming.
No video home.
No huge announcement in the log.
We didn’t even eat the last of the Pineapple Friday pineapple!
We simply kept rowing.
And That Actually Mattered
Missing that information wasn’t just about missing a celebration.
It affected the decisions we subsequently had to make.
We believed that until we physically reached land, accepting assistance would potentially invalidate the entire crossing.
So when we eventually found ourselves exhausted, being swept backwards by the tide and unable to reach safe anchoring depth, we genuinely believed the choice might be between asking for help just short of completing the crossing or somehow finding the physical strength to continue.
With more than 25 years’ commercial maritime experience, I was always going to make the safe seamanship decision.
No certificate or record is worth making a dangerous decision for.
But for the following 24 hours I genuinely believed that decision had cost us the records.
It hadn’t.
We’d already crossed the finish.
And that also explains something else that has bothered me.
We Never Actually Celebrated Arriving in the UK
When we were towed into Newlyn, there was no celebration.
I didn’t even get off Penny B.
I slept aboard.
The first time I physically stepped ashore was around 8.30am on Saturday morning.
Paul was still asleep in his cabin.
There was nobody waiting.
No cheers.
No hugs.
I walked towards the shower block on my own with tears in my eyes.
And the first person who decided to speak to me was a local gentleman who apparently felt that was the ideal moment to explain all the things I should have done differently with my route.
Thanks for that, mate.
His advice was completely irrelevant to a rowing boat that had just spent 50 days at sea, with no engine, trying to negotiate exceptional tides while physically exhausted.
But I’m sure it made him feel better.
Idiot! 😂
Why I Haven’t Deleted That Post
The morning after the tow, I wrote a very emotional personal statement saying I was devastated and felt I’d let everyone down.
I’ve considered deleting it.
A couple of news articles have subsequently used that post as their main angle, lifting quotes written by somebody who’d had roughly four hours’ sleep in three days and completely ignoring the extraordinary things we’d actually achieved.
That’s disappointing reporting.
But I’ve decided the post stays.
Because that’s genuinely how I felt at that moment.
This expedition isn’t only the polished photographs, world records and smiling videos.
That’s part of the story too.
It just needs a rather large caveat:
Read what I wrote after I’d actually had some sleep!
So Why Were Those Tides So Powerful?
There was another ingredient in all of this: the timing.
We were arriving around spring tides.
Despite the name, spring tides have absolutely nothing to do with the season. They occur around new moon and full moon, when the gravitational effects of the Sun and Moon line up and reinforce each other. This produces a greater tidal range and, importantly for us, stronger tidal streams.
And we’d just watched a solar eclipse.
A solar eclipse can only happen at new moon, when the Moon passes between the Earth and Sun. So the eclipse we watched on 12 August happened at exactly the lunar phase associated with spring tides.
The eclipse itself didn’t cause the powerful tides. The two things were connected because they resulted from the same alignment of the Sun, Moon and Earth.
So we’d managed to arrive off one of the most tide-dominated corners of the UK, in a rowing boat, just as the tidal streams were running particularly strongly around spring tides.
Excellent! 😂
Now We Get to Do the Arrival Properly
All of this has made me realise just how important Burnham-on-Crouch on Saturday 29th August is going to be.
That is going to be our real homecoming.
And this time…
WE ARE DOING IT RIGHT!!!
If you can, please come and be part of it.
We aim to be at Burnham Sailing Club at 1pm, at the park end of the riverfront, where Penny B will come in and we’ll finally step ashore properly.
There’ll be an interview on stage, a brass band and loads happening in the park.
Then Penny B goes back on the water and we’ll row through Burnham to the Royal Burnham Yacht Club, where this entire journey will finally come to an end.
Come and have a drink with us.
And if you want to stay, there’s a curry buffet in the evening followed by live music and dancing. Just contact the Royal Burnham Yacht Club beforehand so they know numbers.
After everything that’s happened…
I think we’ve earned a party.
And Back to Today…
As for the rest of this morning?
I did very little.
And it was wonderful.
I sat in my sleeping bag aboard Penny B, caught up on some admin, drank my coffee and watched Salcombe slowly come to life outside my open cabin door.
No three-hour shift.
No alarm.
No headwind.
No 2-knot tide trying to send me back to Canada.
Just a little bit of time to appreciate quite how much has happened.
Just after midday, we got the harbour taxi ashore and went for coffee and lunch.
Then came something I haven’t had much need for recently…
Shopping for clothes that aren’t designed for rowing!
It felt quite strange wandering around looking for normal clothes after so long where my entire wardrobe decision has basically been based around whether something is warm, waterproof, quick-drying or can survive being covered in salt water!
Later, Guy gave us an amazing tour of the area by boat.
What an incredible history this place has. It was lovely to actually explore it from the water without having to pull on a pair of oars to get anywhere!
And after everything that’s happened over the last week, having a day where we could simply enjoy where we were felt very special.
The evening finished with a G&T on a roof terrace, followed by a lovely pub meal before getting the river taxi back to Penny B.
And that’s where I am now.
Back aboard our little floating home, tucked into my sleeping bag and getting ready for another proper night’s sleep.
Quite a contrast from where my head was less than a week ago.
Tonight I’m warm, fed, happy and incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved.
Tomorrow we’ll start working out exactly what happens next.
The weather will have its say.
The tides will definitely have their say.
And I’m sure Penny B will find some way of keeping things interesting!
But we’ll work it out.
Let’s see what tomorrow brings and how the journey to Burnham pans out.
Night night from Penny B. ❤️
Dawn
“Together Paul and I are rowing home — the long way round.”
Hometown Row
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