Christmas Day, Final Battle With Mother Nature and our Broken Rudder
Day 14 Christmas Day After bringing in Christmas with our cups of tea, it was time to get serious. We only had 8 miles left to go to the Lanzarote Marina. We just had to get around the headland, along the coast and into the Marina. Sounds easy right? Well let me tell you differently. It was one of t...
Christmas Eve, Land Ahoy!
Day 13 Christmas Eve Land Ahoy! We woke up to the sight of land on the horizon. Lanzarote!! After 2 beautiful days of rowing in flat calm conditions assisting us perfectly towards our desired bearing it was time for it to change. Almost as if Mother Nature didn’t want to let us out of her grasp with...
From Foulies to Suncream and a Slap in the Face
Day 11 From full foul weather gear to just a pair of shorts within 4 hours. After a brief spell yesterday of rowing in the direction of the waves and wind before it became too difficult (with our broken rudder) we put the rudder in full lock again into the waves and then rowed one oar each on the p...
Morale Low
Day 9 Morale low. We were expecting flat seas and calm winds from now until Sunday giving us the best opportunity to head directly to the canaries and hopefully make it in around 4 days. Unfortunately we woke to the evident rough seas and strong winds meaning we would have to row with what we had....
Para Anchor, Battery Issues and Rudder Problems
Day 7 20% battery power remaining! We got up at sunrise and pulled in the Para anchor after the 2nd night having been crammed into the cabins. Again, we went to set off but the attempts at fixing the autotiller had not worked. We tried more things to fix it but in the end we realised it must be the...
Big Swells
Day 5 Big swells! 5-6 meter swells for the majority of the day! We have made good speed though and made decent progress which makes up for the slow speed yesterday. The rope holding the daggerboard snapped today... not ideal but not exactly a show stopper. I was in the Aft cabin this afternoon with...
Rough Conditions and Random Memories
Day 4 Westerly wind Persistent, consistent, relentless. The wind was blowing choppy waves at a high frequency into our starboard side. Every time we were hit by a wave it would rock the boat, before the boat had chance to recover it would be hit by another and so on. As you can imagine this made pr...
Getting Into The Swing of Things!
Day 3 The conditions this morning were amazing. The water was so flat, there was still swell but it was so smooth with virtually no ripples of waves to rock the boat. We glided through the water as we rowed through the day. Obviously that didn’t last for long and the conditions changed in the after...
First 24 hours on the Ocean
Day 1 Official start time of Atlantic Allies World Record Attempt: 12:46 GMT 12 Dec 2017. Ralph, Chris and Danny took the first shift out of the Marina, with myself and Neal switching in momentarily so Ralph could call The Association of Ocean Rowers to notify them of our start time and so Chris cou...
Preparation Timeline Update So Far
Ola from Portugal! Welcome to the Atlantic Allies tracking page and combined team blog! Today is Wed 6th December, we were due to depart on our great expedition today. However, due to the unfavourable weather we are now expecting to depart on Fri 8th December at 1200hrs GMT. To kick off the blog her...