Row your boat - naked?
Rachel Smith and Lin Griesel have set off to set a new world rowing record. The ex-work colleagues plan to beat the current world record for crossing the Atlantic set by Becky Thorpe and Steph Temperton in 2006 (71 days, 22 hours and 24 minutes). Their plan to gain maximum advantage? Row naked!
The rowers set off on December second for their voyage across the Atlantic. Whether their plan to spend much of their rowing time in the buff is a publicity stunt or not, the duo is using this publicity to raise money for breast cancer care, an issue close to both of their hearts.
“Many people are shocked about us stripping off but it’s far better to do that than to have sore chafe marks from the salt water on our skin, so although it’ll be embarrassing having to whip our clothes off, it’ll be worth it if we don’t finish the race in agony.”
Lin and Rachel have spent over 2 years training and fundraising. Their arduous journey begins in La Gomera and ends in to Antigua, 2,935 miles later.
Should they succeed, it will not be Rachel's first world record. "I currently hold the world record for completing the 1000 metres dragon boat race in four minutes and seven seconds so I’m confident I can add another world record to my belt with the Atlantic race.” “Even if it does mean stripping off to do it.”
The Atlantic Rowing Race - Start and End Points
Click here to keep track of Lin and Rachel's boat (Barbara Ivy) in the Atlantic Rowing Race
Click here to visit Rachel and Lin's home page
Submitted By SeaGeek on 04 Dec
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Nice strategy! You have to
Nice strategy!
You have to stay behind them to get a view.
Written by Lin & Rachel at sea
Written by Lin & Rachel at sea
Thursday, 06 December 2007
"We’re settling into a routine onboard Barbara Ivy and it’s pretty simple – eat, sleep and row! We’ve rowed solidly for 48 hours up to today, in some amazing conditions. The waves are huge, over 30 feet today and some do have breaking crests so we got soaked. The nights have been really tough as it’s been unbelievably windy and you can’t see where you’re rowing at night, or what’s heading in your direction. "
"Still not much of the promised sun – so no sign of any naked rowing just yet. Thank goodness we brought our thermals is all we can say!"
Written by Lin & Rachel at sea
Over quarter of the way there!
Excerpts from L & R's blog
Thursday, 27 December 2007
"Well Christmas is gone and we’re cracking on to destination Antigua. We’re now over a quarter of the way there!"
"Lin managed to put together an interesting Christmas dinner that most would turn their noses up at. We had tinned turkey, petite pois, carrots, smash potato and gravy, we even had some cranberry sauce. It was a culinary delight to us – unfortunately Rachel’s didn’t stay down long as she was struggling to keep the boat steady in big seas whilst gulping down the food. "
"Today has been quite bleak until late afternoon with the sky covered in cloud. Great for Rachel as one of her Christmas presents was the book ‘The Cloudspotter’s Guide’! Maybe a few too many clouds to try to work out what it all meant, although we could hazard a guess – no water maker again today!!!
The waves are pretty good for rowing in though and we’re continuing to make great progress and love hearing how many miles we’ve done. We’ve been getting some great messages, not only from people we know. It would appear we’ve built up a bit of a following from overseas too.
Thank you to Kin from Denmark, Kim in San Francisco Bay, Nan Taylor in Texas, Pam Newby in South Africa, Bernice in Vermont, Eileen in South Africa, Emmanuel & Saupy in France and Reynhardt from South Africa. Please keep them coming, they really are the highlight of the day.
Love & hugs, Rachel and Lin"
HAPPY NEW YEAR
HOPE THIS FINDS YOU MAKING GOOD PROGRESS.
HOW ARE YOUR HANDS HOLDING UP?
WHATS THE HARDEST PART OF THIS TRIP SO FAR.?GOOD LUCK! WE WILL WATCHING YOUR PROGRESS.
HAPPY NEW YEAR AND SMOOTH ROWING1
ROGER WHITNEY,CAMDEN,DELAWARE
Written by Lin and Rachel at sea
"Kim in San Fransico Bay, we only got part of your message as the email address takes up some of the 160 characters. So in answer to the bit we did get, our hands are doing really well. We thought we would have really bad blisters by now but we’ve had a great combination of prevention for this and it has worked a treat. We have Kakadu kangaroo skin golfing gloves (they do sailing gloves too but the golfing ones had fewer seams) there’s a photo of a pair that have been used for 1 month in our gallery and a photo of Rachel’s hands as they are now. The other prevention is a blister stick given to us by New Wave from Germany, we’re not sure what’s in this but it works miracles when you do get blisters and shrivels them up to nothing. The only other thing is all the skin is peeling off our hands and feet but we think that’s down to them being wet a lot of the time and the salt water. We’re happy to answer any other questions you may have so please feel free to send more.
FOUL !!!
You don't look naked. Best wishes on your journey.
FOUL
Lost your TEETH? H n(c:
weight
Have you been able to maintain your weight or are the clothes feeling a little loose. Good luck on the rest of the voyage.
Dan
Written by Lin and Rachel at sea
IN RESPONSE TO ROGER WHITNEY'S (YACHTPALS) QUESTION:
‘What has been the toughest part so far?’ We always said that getting to the start line was the toughest thing to overcome and it was, as it took over 3 years of hard slog to get us there. However, the toughest part of the actual challenge has to be over New Year when we had such awful weather. It’s difficult to explain how it was so tough as when you think about each element of what was happening, it’s not all that bad, but it was relentless and really did get us both to breaking point. Basically the waves were huge and breaking over the boat all the time, every item of clothing we had was constantly soaked and covered in salt, we couldn’t get anything dry. The wind was so strong that we had a constant fight on our hands to keep the boat going in the right direction. We were exhausted and had numerous aches and pains adding to the stress and we didn’t know when it was going to ease up. We also had constant cloud cover which meant we couldn’t make water. We were also missing home, our partners, Paul & Charles and Lin’s son, Liam. Add this little lot up and you can see how it can get you down.
A couple of things really helped us to snap out of the lows though. Messages from people thanking us for doing what we’re doing to help others, the fact that there is no alternative – once you are out of sight of land, there is no turning back so if you want to stop, you have to be rescued and sink your boat, and a niggling little voice in Lin’s head from someone who said she wouldn’t do it (watch me)!
Outstanding!
Naked or not, you ladies dazzle me. What a feat! If I was 30 years younger... Well, I still wouldn't be able to keep up!
Calm seas, fair winds, and may your voyage be swift and smooth.
Written by Lin and Rachel at sea
Excerpts from Lin and Rachel's Blog:
"Kim in San Francisco Bay – Great to hear about all the support from across America from Yachtpals.com"
"Yesterday we faced quite a big decision. We’d been aware for some time now that there’s life Jim but not as we know it, growing on the hull of our boat. Some of the other crews we know have been in to scrape off the little suckers but we hadn’t really felt confident enough to do that yet. We had a chat with our friends Joe & Andrew on Jaydubyoo and they said scraping off these critters had made a huge difference to their boat speed. So there was nothing else for it, someone had to go in! What some of you may not know is that Lin had to work really hard to overcome her fear of water before setting off on this challenge but was quite willing to go in to do this job. However, Rachel is much more confident in the water having done scuba diving and surfing etc. so she stepped up for the job on this occasion.
Mid afternoon the water flattened a bit and with Lin on fin watch, Rachel tied a rope on and with some trepidation, slipped over the side. It was amazing, the water is the most fantastic shade of blue and crystal clear, not to mention around 5,000 meters deep in this area. Armed with mask, snorkel and scraper, she started to work her way from the front to back of the boat to remove the thousands of little critters off the bottom of the boat. She was soon joined by some friendly company in the form of a rather large fish that we think was a tuna but we couldn’t find the label! He was an impressive specimen about 3ft long. He was a happy fella, thinking all his fishy birthdays and Christmas’s had come at one as he munched his way through the detached and homeless critters. He did get quite close a couple of times, so much so that he nearly got Rachel’s foot in his face, which made him back off fairly swiftly. He also seemed to get a little impatient if Rachel wasn’t scraping quickly enough and swam around looking at her for more critters before chasing after them into the deep blue sea. Thankfully he was the only creature we saw but a container ship appeared fairly close by while Rachel was in the water so Lin had double duty of watching that on the radar etc. too.
Rachel was rewarded for her hard work with a much deserved hair wash while Lin watched on with hair wash envy!!!
The exercise has proved to be very worthwhile as the boat seems to be moving much more smoothly through the water and we think we clocked up much better mileage last night."
"Home comforts that we’re missing:
"That’s all for now – we’ll be back again soon.
Love & hugs, Lin & Rachel"
rachel and lin
God Bless you girls!
Written by Lin and Rachel at sea
Excerpt from Lin and Rachel's Blog:
"We appear to be making fantastic progress since Rachel cleaned Barbara Ivy’s bottom and are fast approaching the half way mark – we await confirmation of that!
We mentioned before that we have a bit of a global following, well this seems to be even more than we first thought. Yachtpals.com have members worldwide following our progress and sending messages through Kim in San Francisco. Hey if any of you are in Antigua when we arrive, it would be great to catch up with you. We’re both doing our Day Skippers Course next year too, courtesy of Plain Sailing in Brixham, Devon, so maybe we’ll join Yachtpals.com.
Bye for now
Love & hugs, Lin & Rachel"
Story continued...
Story continued at: http://yachtpals.com/story/atlantic-row
Crossing the Atlantic Part 2 - Second Half of the Atlantic Rowing Race
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