Atlantic Odyssey: Day 5 – Tough Miles

Welcome to the Atlantic Odyssey blog. The Independent is the proud media partner for this incredible world record attempt as a team of six men look to row across the Atlantic Ocean in under 30 days. Mark Beaumont, one of the crew on board, is writing exclusively for The Independent, direct from ‘Sara G’. You will also find a live satellite tracker and audio updates from the vessel so be sure to check back here for the latest news.

It has taken five days for me to be able to look at a computer screen without being sea-sick and so this blog is a minor miracle!

My last blog was written up from a phone call.  Right now I am sat in the cramped rear cabin of our ocean rowing boat on my two hour rest between rowing.  This relentless cycle of 2 hours on 2 hours off has been very tough to get used to.  The toughest of my shifts is 5-7am when the moon has gone, so there is no light at all. It is horribly disorientating when you can’t see the motion of the waves around you. By last night I had at least stopped being sea sick, but the sea was its biggest yet and when you are racing along at 4 – 7 knots, being thrown around by big waves, it’s like being strapped into an unrelenting and unpredictable roller coaster.

Having only being out here 5 days, the thought of 30 is very intimidating and so I am keeping things simple and trying to take it shift by shift. It was hard to eat anything for the first 4 days at sea – but now that we all have our sea legs, our appetites have returned and our top propriety is to get past dehydration and weakness through burning abut 10kcal a day and only eating about 2000.

The good news is that we are marginally up on WR pace, but there is a very long way to go and we need to get south as fast as possible and pick up better conditions to keep on track.  Check back soon for more info.  Once I’ve had better sleep in I should be able to write more informative blogs. For now, my powers of observation are limited to ‘ wow., that is a lot of water.

Listen to the Atlantic Odyssey Channel – 10th phonecast – from Simon Brown

Listen to the Atlantic Odyssey Channel – 11th phonecast – from Aodhán Kelly

Listen to the Atlantic Odyssey Channel – 12th phonecast – from Aodhán Kelly

Listen to the Atlantic Odyssey Channel – 13th phonecast – from Mark Beaumont

Listen to the Atlantic Odyssey Channel – 14th phonecast – from Matt Craughwell

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