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 progress slow, under 2 knots. This lasted for 24 hours.

The night shift was all quite serious tonight. Ralph made sure everyone was drilled on who came out the cabins and replaced which rowing position one at a time. You do not want to go over board in these conditions, especially at night.

I realised today that during periods over the first 2 days I couldn’t concentrate on one thing. My mind would be racing from one thing to the next continually. Not panicked but just a strange feeling and having to consciously try and slow my mind and think about one thing at a time, like keeping the pace of the oars or to concentrate on the speedometer and also my breathing. 

Since then I’ve been remembering/ thinking of some really random stuff from my past and childhood. Such as school trips I went on at primary school and family holidays.

My mind is a lot freer to think here. Usually every spare minute I have I have my head buried in my phone. Checking up on social media to see what everyone’s having for lunch. Out in the ocean that distraction is not here. My mind has time to just simply... think! Not one for the whole ‘New Year, New Me’ thing but I am going to make a concerted effort to use my phone less when I return. You heard it here first.

~ Duncan @rowingroy