Toughest week under my watch

by Matt Craughwell – Skipper

Day 26 Matt & Simon checking hull

With the calm of the Atlantic Sara G has not only had her toughest week of the expedition, but her toughest week under my watch.  Yesterday saw us post only sixty nautical miles with a mixed bag of no wind and swells from every direction.  Despite all of this the crew have battled on to make this small total. It has now made our world record attempt become the most difficult ten days we will spend at sea this year.  Morale is high and we hope for good weather soon, but it seems everything is against us at the moment!  The latest technical difficulty has been the loss of our electrical power due to the lack of winds and no sun for the past few days, this has meant we are now navigating the old fashion way like the old mariners used to.  We hope to have better news soon and would like to thank everyone for all the messages of support we have received, on days like this they mean everything to us.  We will continue to give it our all till we reach Barbados and hope to see a change of fortune in the coming ten days.

2000 miles on the ocean

by UK team on behalf of Mark Beaumont for the Independent

Day 26 - Ian & Mark

Due to lack of power supplying his laptop, Mark asked the UK team to give an account of what’s been happening on the Atlantic Odyssey.

With little help from the wind and increasing temperatures, it’s been another tough week for the crew who have until now still kept neck and neck with the WR. However, the last couple of days have been some of the slowest yet with heavy seas, poor swell and hardly any wind which has meant loosing 10 – 15 knots a day on the record. In addition to this, they came into cloud cover which along with the lack of wind meant they were taking in very little power on the boat. Their two 12 volt batteries similar to car batteries, were almost completely drained and so all electronics were turned off. The most important equipment the batteries power are the auto helm which controls Sara G’s direction and the water-maker. They are both big drains on energy but with no sun and little wind to feed the batteries, the crew had to start water rationing and for 24 hours were on one and a half litres of water each for drinking and re hydrating food. Water rationing also meant food rationing as a lot of the food is re hydrated, and when rowing 12 hours a day at this stage after three weeks of hard pulling on the oars, there was a noticeable physical affect on the pulling power of the team from dehydration and lack of food. Thankfully by later yesterday there was enough power supply to make some more water so the crew could start replenishing and this remains a priority along with the auto helm.

…READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE HERE…

Tied up and Rear of the Year?

Day 23 - Simon after checking the hull of the boat

Whilst the speed has not been as good as the team had wished for overnight, it was great to hear Simon in good form on this morning’s Heart breakfast show with Stuart and Natalie. To hear the reason why he was tied up and chucked over the boat and who he thinks he is in competition with for  Rear of the Year  listen to the full interview here.

The team are supporting the Heart charity – Have a Heart supporting ChildLine – and donations can be made via their Donation website which can be accessed here…The team are hoping to raise above £3000 by the journey’s end.