Advice To Future Rowers

Salty Science’s general advice to future ocean rower

In January 2021 we decided to do this crazy thing–row across the Atlantic as part of the World’s Toughest Row!! None of us has ever rowed before. Few teams that took part in this challenge were from North America. We had so many questions, and found it so difficult to find out how past teams had tackled many aspects of this challenge–especially teams from North America! Three years later (January 2024), after many trials and tribulations, we finished the World’s Toughest Row–Atlantic as the fastest women’s team and the winner of the Murden trophy, the first North American team to ever do so! We wanted to share what we learned along the way for others thinking about tackling this or other similar challenge. Our experience might be especially relevant to North American teams (e.g. importing a UK ocean rowing boat into the USA), but some or our suggestions (e.g. watch schedule that worked for us, physical and mental training, boat systems, etc..) could be relevant to any team. We hope this is helpful!

Boat import, registration and shipping

Importing a boat into the US

When you first ship a boat from outside the country into the US, your shipper charges additional fees to handle the import process. Through the shipping and importation, you receive CBP Form 3461 and a bill of lading (important documents to keep—make sure your shipping agent gives them to you). You’ll have to pay duty, with the amount based on the value of the boat. If your boat is shipped on cradle and without a trailer, you’ll need to source a trailer locally. We had Magic Tilt trailers (Clearwater, FL) build ours so they have good plans for a trailer that works for an R45. Note that the trailers that come with new Rannoch boats don’t meet US Department of Transportation requirements (something about lights and perhaps other elements), though we know of several US-based teams that have used them here without problems. Our trailer had curved bunks that matched the shape of our hull instead of the rollers that come with the Rannoch trailers. The curved bunks help distribute weight over a wider area and reduce the likelihood of hull indentations from the trailer—perhaps especially when transporting the boat fully loaded.

Registering and titling your boat

Registering our boat was not technically required in Florida given that she is a rowing scull, but titling was necessary because she is more than 16ft long. Titling and registration also make it much easier to manage the ship’s radio license, EPIRB and PLB registration, future shipping and eventually a boat sale. However, Rannoch is not a US boat manufacturer (at least not as of 2023) so it can be hard to register the boat in the US. The Tax Collector’s office (or Department of Motor Vehicles or equivalent in other states) normally looks up the Manufacturer Identification Code (MIC), and since there is none for Rannoch you can run into a stalemate with the clerk. After many calls to the US Coast Guard, we ended up finding the most helpful folks who helped us (and the clerks at the Tax Collector’s Office) understand that our boat did NOT need a MIC because it was a self-imported boat (i.e. it wasn’t imported by Rannoch) for personal use. We had to produce the Form 3461 and the bill of lading to show this self-importation and at that point the clerk was able to create a Hull Identification Number valid in the USA, which they made to match the actual HIN on Emma’s hull.

If you need help from extremely helpful folks in this branch for the USGS, email rbscompliance@uscg.mil. The right person should be in touch shortly to help out. We were TOTALLY AMAZED at how quickly we got an actual call, from a really knowledgeable human, which helped us get all of this registration done properly.

Registering EPIRBs and PLBs

In the USA, EPIRBs and PLBs are to be registered with NOAA at https://beaconregistration.noaa.gov/RGDB/index. For US-based teams that bought a used boat (and beacons) from abroad, the beacons need to be reprogrammed with a US country code before they can be registered with NOAA. This can be done by folks who service EPIRBs and PLBs (we used www.solutiononemaritime.com) or by the manufacturer.

Reprogramming the AIS transceiver

To use VHF and AIS as a US-based boat, you need to register with the FCC and obtain a ship’s radio license which comes with an MMSI number. The MMSI number then needs to be programmed into the AIS transceiver. For a used unit this could be done by the manufacturer or a dealer. We had a Simrad NAIS-300 AIS transceiver and failed to find a local dealer (in Tampa Bay) who could reprogram the MMSI number for us so we had to contact Simrad (Navico) and ship the unit to them for reprogramming. That took about a month so definitely not something you want to start at the last minute.

Shipping your boat to the start line

North American teams that row across the Atlantic may have to pack their boats for shipment several months before the boat is due at the start line. We worked hard to minimize the likelihood of mold. We cleaned and dried the boat thoroughly and packed several desiccant pouches (westmarine.com ) in each compartment.
We packed the personal gear that we shipped with the boat in dry bags or large Ziploc bags (amazon.com). All our food was packed in gallon-sized Ziploc bags (more on that under “Food”). We learned that snacks spoiled quicker than expected with the heat and humidity they were stored in from mid-August onward, and by the start of our race (December 13), some of our snacks were stale even if their expiry date wasn’t until some time in January or February. This was especially true for crackers, chips and other crunchy snacks. If we were to do this again we might actually consider buying those snacks way later, flying with them as checked luggage and adding those to our snack packs in La Gomera.

Flares, fire extinguishers and cooking gas are all considered dangerous goods and technically are not to be shipped with your boat in the container. We know some North American teams simply chose not to declare those items and pack them deep inside their boat. We followed our shippers’ requests to give them a detailed list of all these dangerous goods and keep them aside for them to be sent separately by air. This ended up being very problematic; even though our boat and all the dangerous goods were delivered to the shipping agent in Miami in September, our dangerous goods were not with the boat when we arrived in La Gomera. Our shipper could not find anyone willing to fly with them, and struggled to find local replacements for all these items. Our shipper ended up finding the right fire extinguishers and flares, but the only reason we were able to find the right cooking gas is that some other teams had extra that they were willing to give us (the gas we found locally had a different connector that didn’t work with our stove). Ask very pointed questions about how your shippers will handle your dangerous goods (flares, fire extinguishers and cooking gas) to make sure it gets to the starting line on time!

Coursework and certifications

The World’s Toughest Row requires several courses to qualify for the race. Unfortunately, as a UK-based organization, the recommended courses were all British. It didn’t make sense for four of us to travel to the UK for training since equivalent courses are offered around the world, but it was a bit difficult to get approval for equivalents. Per 2023 race rules,

EACH ROWER SHALL HAVE:

1. A valid Short Range Radio Licence (VHF).
2. A valid RYA Sea Survival course completion certificate (or national equivalent).
3. A valid RYA First Aid at Sea certificate (or national equivalent).
4. A valid RYA Essential Navigation and Seamanship certificate (available online worldwide so no national equivalent accepted but superior qualifications will be accepted (e.g., Yachtmaster Theory).
5. A confirmation of completion of the Ocean Rowing Course.

Our team did the following courses:

1. Either a) IYT Marine Communication Master VHF Short Range Certificate or b) Canadian Power & Sail Squadrons Restricted Operator’s Certificate (Maritime)
2. Either a) Personal Survival Techniques (GLFCMA-736) as part of STCW95 training or b) Offshore Personal Survival Course from BC Sailing (Canada)
3. Either a) Elementary First Aid (GLFCMA-183) as part of STCW95 training, b) Diver’s Alert Network Diving First Aid for Professional Divers and Health Care Providers, c) the Canadian Red Cross Marine Basic First Aid & CPR/AED, level C, or d) a Wilderness First Responder (WFR, National Outdoor Leadership School [NOLS])
4. Either a) a US Coast Guard Captain’s license, b) an IYT Master of Yachts or c) a Small Vessel Operator Proficiency course from Transport Canada
5. Ocean Rowing Course provided online by the World’s Toughest Row safety officers.

Physical training

We were super lucky to work with an amazing coach, Cady Hart-Petterssen, based at Green Mountain Community Fitness in Vermont. Cady worked with us to build a custom plan to build strength, endurance and mobility that we started in earnest in July 2022, 17 months before the start of our race. She sent workouts in an app called SugarWOD so every day we’d do the work out and reported in the app how we did (e.g. distance achieved on the erg for a certain time, time to finish a certain distance, time to run through certain crossfit sequences, or weight we managed on deadlifts, squats, or other weights). Reporting in the app was a great way to set up some friendly competition and help push ourselves, give each other virtual fist bumps (for real, that was a thing!) and see our progress over time. Cady could then also adjust our individual goals based on each of our strengths. We sent videos or did video chats with Cady when we had questions or to correct our form. In our last training camp, we were also able to get Cady to join us for a few days, row with us on Emma and come to the gym with us to give us tips and do some tests.

Mental preparation and Team Dynamics

With all the time spent fundraising, taking care of all the logistics, and physical training, it’s easy to forget about mental preparation but this was a super important aspect of our prep! We worked with Terri Schneider, an accomplished endurance athlete and sport psychologist. We had several virtual meetings with Terri along with some homework, to work out the best personal strategies to get through the toughest time and figure out the best way to work together as a team, including communication strategies. Much of what we learned with Terri came in really useful in some of the toughest parts of the row. We would highly recommend incorporating this kind of training and hard conversations into your team preparation.

Boat and systems

So much to say here, we could go on for pages and pages! And we’d probably still be forgetting important information. But here are some important bits that we learned:

1. Have plenty of sandpaper, wire brush, and metal file in tool kit– helps with all of the corrosion
2. Bring two spare relay cards for the water maker electronics box. We had to replace ours within the first week of our crossing and it made us pretty nervous that we’d be stuck without a water maker if we had one more mishap! On that note, make sure you establish and follow really good protocols for your water maker. Ours went when the brine hose became disconnected at the deck junction inside from the water maker compartment, and it slowly filled the compartment with seawater until the pump stopped working. Had we kept a closer eye on the brine hose and checking that it was constantly pumping water overboard, perhaps we could have avoided this hassle.
3. Bring at least 2-3 spares for the sat phone cabin antenna attachment—those are super flimsy and easily break
4. Check on the autopilot early and often. Be prepared to fix any aspect of that system. We had Raymarine EV-100 autopilot arms that were amazing and, from what we hear from other teams, way superior to ST-2000 autopilots, which seem to overheat easily and often have to be swapped out every few hours. Given how important autopilots are, we actually set off with five of them (two used by previous owners of Emma, three new ones)!! In the end, no autopilot arm itself broke, but the pin used to attach the arm to the boat would repeatedly come loose on them. This is likely because conditions early in our race were so difficult with extremely large waves which made the autopilot work very hard. We had to swap autopilots mostly to reinforce the pin to autopilot attachment on the arms. But then, somewhere around the halfway point when we went to swap autopilot arms for this reason, we realized the pin had fused with the pin holder in the boat. We really tried to loosen it up but of course didn’t have heat and only had basic tools, and we got worried that we’d break the fiberglass in the boat as we tried to remove the autopilot. So at that point we committed to keep this one in place and did our best to reinforce the pin to pin-holder connection, essentially with a “splint” made from a small wrench and lashing line.
5. Calibrate your autopilot compass in flat water in training. Ours did not hold a heading consistently while we were offshore, which we noticed around the halfway point. This was likely because of the issue listed in #4—which likely messed up the rudder feedback. But we also never had double checked the autopilot calibration in training and once we were offshore it was too late.
6. Adjust and adapt! Given #5, we couldn’t simply set a heading on the autopilot and expect it would go where we wanted. Given that we were essentially going west, with a small decrease in latitude along the way, once we were about 10 days out and basically looking to make a straight line to Antigua, we worked out what latitude change we needed to see every day (and then every shift change, and every hour) to be going on this straight line. We wrote those target headings with a dry marker on the wall of the stern cabin, which we used as a whiteboard. The teammate in the stern position who could see the chart plotter would adjust the heading as often as needed to be as close to the aim as possible.
7. Bring a spare compass light. We had spares for so many things but somehow that’s one that we didn’t think to get. Our compass light burnt out a few days into the row so we couldn’t see it at night. The few times when we had power issues that required foot steering we made sure we foot-steered during the day so that we could use the autopilot at night, because it would have been nearly impossible to foot steer at night without seeing the compass.
8. Pack a radar reflector—why not? The WTR requires a radar reflector for the Pacific race but not the Atlantic race (as of 2023). We were told this is because there is little fog on the WTR Atlantic route and that with AIS, pinging on radars isn’t really very important. But radar reflectors are cheap (~$80) and there’s really no drawback to having one. In a situation where theAIS isn’t transmitting—because of a malfunction or total power failure—then being picked up on radar and triggering a radar alarm could make a real difference.
9. Pack a Search and Rescue Transponder (SART). Iit could really make the difference in a dire situation, e.g. if somehow you’re in the liferaft without a satellite phone or VHF. Our SART was a model that pinged on both radar and AIS.
10. Storing the roving solar panel on an R45 boat can be really challenging. We ended up creating a shelf on the roof of the bow cabin to store it there. We made this shelf by bending metal brackets with a blow torch so that their vertical sides were curved to roughly match the curve of the cabin wall. We then glued these brackets with 5200 adhesive and cut a piece of thick plastic to the right shape and slid it on top of the horizontal part of the brackets, then slid the solar panel on top of the shelf.
    
11. EVERYTHING should be tied to the boat. That includes the day’s food bag, every water bottle (we had bungee from a fore/aft lashing line in the gunnel that allowed us to use the bottles yet have them on a short leash), the pee/poo bucket, the toilet brush for the pee/poo bucket, all the seat pads for the rowing seats (mostly tied to each seat), the spare oars, EVERYTHING. Velcro “zip ties”, along with good lashling line and good knot-tying skills were really key to tying everything well. Double/triple check all your lines and knots. Replace any line that is too old so you don’t lose something overboard unexpectedly, and make sure that all bowline knots are secured with a zip tie or a few extra hitches.
12. Silk sleeping bag liners were an amazing item to have in the cabins! We each had our own, so that we could quickly roll out our own “sheet” when it was our turn to sleep. The silk liners felt truly amazing even when the mattresses where pretty soggy, and dried really quickly in the wind/sun.

Preparing for Emergencies

On top of all the coursework and on the water training that we did, we also worked through a lot of hypothetical emergency scenarios. We had other people with offshore experience write these scenarios for us; we’d first go through them on our own to all have a chance to think through the scenario, then reviewed them as a team. Some of these scenarios were over the top and a bit scary, but going through them was immensely helpful in three main ways:

1) helping prepare Emma in the best way possible—in some cases we realized we’d need one extra item to successfully navigate through a certain emergency or needed to pack our gear differently
2) help us agree as a team on the best way to handle certain problems, so that we can reduce disagreements offshore
3) build confidence in our skills and preparedness

We also met with several past ocean rowers to get any advice they had for us and listened to all the podcasts we could find about ocean rowing. We learned something different from each of these meetings and picked up many tips from the podcasts. The Ocean Rowing Club podcast is a good source of a lot of interviews with past ocean rowers. This podcast with the crew of Fight Oar Die 2022 (the year the boat capsized and wouldn’t right itself, which ended in the rescue of the crew by a passing ship) is really worthwhile to listen to https://aroundthebuoy.com/episode/ep-78-fight-oar-die-rescue-at-sea. There are a bunch more out there if you search for ocean rowing on any podcasting platform. Check out this podcast https://shipwrecksandseadogs.com/blog/2024/04/28/catching-up-with-team-salty-science/ if you want a good account of our experience!

Oars and rowing

When we got Emma she came with two sets of Croaker oars. We ended up getting three pairs of Concepts2 oars, which were way lighter than the Croaker oars that came with the boat and that we much preferred to row with. We ended up getting two sets of Concept2 oars with larger blades (which we preferred) and one set with smaller blades (same size blade as the Croaker oars onboard, which we figured would be good if we were too tired or injured and couldn’t row with the larger ones).

We got oars with rubber handles from Concept2 which worked great with us! We were told the rubber wouldn’t last through the crossing so we were prepared to remove it if it fell apart and sand the oar handles to the wood, but the rubber lasted through two months of training and the whole crossing! We hardly got any blisters with this, when we had lots of blisters with the Croaker’s unvarnished wood handles in training. Another difference is that we ordered the Concept2 oars to fit our hands (small (31mm) handles) and that may have contributed to fewer blisters.

While we had limited problems with hand blisters, two of us did get them in the first few days. We use our rowing gloves made by TheCrewStop as well as grip pads made for weightlifting to get us through those first few days, and whenever we’d feel a blister coming on.

Specs on the Concept2 oars that we preferred (larger blades):
BLADE: Sweep Macon Large (blade length 58cm, width at tip 18cm, width at broadest point 21cm)
COLOR: RAL 6018 Yellow Green
SHAFT: Skinny
LENGTH: ** CUSTOM: 320CM **
HANDLE: ** CUSTOM: UNVARNISHED SCULL NARROW 31MM **
GRIP.INNER: ** CUSTOM: N/A **
GRIP.OUTER: ** CUSTOM: BLACK RUBBER SCULL **
STIFFNESS: ** CUSTOM: FS MED FLEX **
PITCH: 0 Degrees
INBOARD: ** CUSTOM: 80-92 **

Specs on the Concept2 oars with smaller blades that were nice to have
BLADE: Scull Macon Large (length 50cm, width at tip 14.5cm, width at broadest point 18cm)
COLOR: RAL 6018 Yellow Green
SHAFT: Skinny
LENGTH: ** CUSTOM: 320CM **
HANDLE: ** CUSTOM: UNVARNISHED SCULL NARROW 31MM **
GRIP.INNER: ** CUSTOM: N/A **
GRIP.OUTER: ** CUSTOM: BLACK RUBBER SCULL **
STIFFNESS: ** CUSTOM: FS MED FLEX **
PITCH: 0 Degrees
INBOARD: ** CUSTOM: 80-92 **

Other Rowing Considerations

We learned on day 5 that rigger plates can bend and you should carry spares! A big wave from the side at night pinned our two starboard oars under the boat. When we got the oars back out we realized the rigger plates were bent! One was bent way beyond use and with no spares that immediately meant that we were down one rowing station for the rest of the crossing. Not a big deal given we had three rowing stations on the boat, but it made us very nervous that more could bend and render more rowing stations unusable.

Rowing barefoot is doable and awesome, but you need to prep the foot plates right. It took us some time to figure out foot straps that worked but in the end this worked pretty well by using Dakine windsurf neoprene foot straps on the webbing (each end cut off, making a slit on each end to slip the webbing through the neoprene strap), gluing neoprene from an old wetsuit on the heel, and a thick yoga mat on the bottom. Best to train barefoot and develop the right calluses, as some of us just kept getting blisters on our heels and had to go back to shoes. Perhaps more neoprene padding on the heel would have been better.

Foot plates set up for barefoot rowing

Watch schedule

Over and over, we heard that teams of four adopt a 2 on, 2 off watch schedule. That’s what we did for all of our training rows. But we found it really hard to get enough sleep in less than two hours off the oars. After hearing a podcast where the rower said they did 3 on, 3 off and swore by it, we decided to try something different for our crossing and keep our options open. We set off with multiple schedule options printed on laminated sheets so that we had an easy reference when/if we decided to change schedules. We agreed to start with 2 on, 2 off during the day (6am to 6pm) and 3 on, 3 off at night. While we knew that it would be hard to stay awake and keep good power through a 3-hour rowing shift at night, the benefit of being able to sleep ~2.5 hours at a time (as opposed to ~1.5 hours at a time) seemed really worth it. Keeping the daytime rowing sessions to two hours felt better in terms of heat and sun exposure. We really liked this schedule and basically stuck with it for the whole crossing, except for one night when one of us was too seasick to row and we switched to a 3-person watch pattern, and one night when conditions were so difficult that we preferred to switch every two hours. Twice during the crossing, we inserted a one hour shift at midday to adjust to the changing sunrise and sunset times.

We also offset our rowing shifts, meaning that Isabelle and Noelle (in the bow cabin) would swap out at a different time than Lauren and Chantale (stern cabin). This allowed us to row with two different people, helped break up the rowing shifts, and helped get through watch changes without losing too much speed. Here is our spreadsheet with our various potential schedules. Grey cells indicate a rowing shift; white cells an off shift.

We never rowed three up after the first hour out of La Gomera. Very quickly into the row, the conditions were super fast and having a third rower probably wouldn’t have made much of a difference to our speed, and five days in our middle station was unusable due to the bent rigger plate, so rowing three up wasn’t an option from that point on.

Daily Life Onboard

Bring a waterproof barrier to separate yourself from wet mattresses. Our mattresses were soaking wet with seawater within days of leaving La Gomera. We managed to dry them out a bit when things got calmer, but once the mattresses are salty they’re always pretty wet. We tried so hard to clean and dry ourselves after our rowing shifts, but then we’d lay down on wet mattresses so we could never stay dry. We’d lay down waterproof jackets on the mattresses to stay a bit dryer but those weren’t very comfortable would bunch up quite easily. If we were to do this again, we’d pack something like a tent footprint or some other large and lightweight waterproof barrier.

Bring a spare toothbrush!! One toothbrush was lost in the Atlantic just a few days into the trip, and it would have been really devastating had Noelle not brought a spare that she was happy to give to help a teammate!

Below is the personal packing list that we agreed to, which worked pretty well. A few additional details: we found that Woxer 5in Baller underwear was great to row in because there were no seams to add chafe as we rowed. We used cotton t-shirts from Zenkai Sports which have amazing anti-odor properties. We could wear these shirts for many days in a row without any smell.

Food

Variety is your friend! We were incredibly lucky to have all of our expedition food donated by manufacturers. With that, we got a wide variety of recipes from 5-6 different companies. One teammate ate an entirely vegan diet during the crossing, and her options were far more limited due to fewer vegan recipes on the market. We did not try each individual recipe before the crossing, but we did try a few options from each manufacturer. We each packed 3 meals per day (x44 days = 132 meals per person) and 1 large snack pack per day to hit our daily calorie requirements (as set by WTR – this came out to ~4000 per person for us).

Selecting our daily meal rations

Noelle kindly volunteered to head up nutrition for our crossing and came up with this amazing system to allocate all this food fairly, and also calculate all the calories for each person. This ended up culminating in a morning that she dubbed “the Hunger Games”. At that point we had all the food lined up in piles by meal type, and we had several boxes of gallon-sized Ziploc bags, along with several sharpies. Rules of the Hunger Games were simple: we each took turns choosing our meals of each day at sea: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, etc… For each day, we’d pick breakfast, lunch and dinner and put all three in a Ziploc bag marked with the day and our initials.

After a few hours, we had 44 days’ worth of food lined up for each of us. We needed to pack a total of 55 days for the whole crossing, but 11 days of this was made up of MREs or “wet rations” so we only needed the 44 days of dehydrated food. Noelle put together this great spreadsheet that included every meal we had in our pile with calorie count, and for every round through picking a day’s meals we’d pick the meals we’d chosen in the spreadsheet, which automatically calculated the total calorie count.

This means that we each got to pick our own meals and could only blame ourselves if we weren’t happy with what was on the menu. We then calculated the average daily calories from our 3 meals to figure out how many calories were required for our daily snack packs.

Snack Packs

Planning, sourcing, and organizing snack packs is hard and takes way longer than you might expect. Plan accordingly. We each needed ~2400 calories of snacks per day, and we again prioritized variety. We came up with a basic daily formula (4x chips/crackers/salty items; 1x bar; 2x biscuits; 2x sweets; 1x nuts; 2x fruits; 1x other) that ensured we would hit the daily calorie requirements and include a variety of options. Then, we used that basic formula to create 7 different snack pack combinations to ensure we had a different combo every day of the week. Our day 7 packs were always special – they included each person’s favorite treats (or things that were too expensive/heavy/etc. to have daily) and surprise notes from loved ones.

Some favorite snacks included dried fruits, chocolate bars, and applesauce/smoothies. Many of the crackers/chips were fairly stale by the middle of the crossing, so would recommend against bringing too much of that for teams that have to pack their boat several months before the start date like we had to.

MREs

Our MREs or “wet rations” were entirely made up of Fillo’s products—super tasty Latin foods ready to eat. We didn’t separate those by teammate, just put all the food in Ziploc bags and put them at the very bottom of the food compartments—expecting that if we had to use them, it would likely be just for the last few days of the crossing.

Packing

Each person’s daily ration of 3 meals was packed into a separate ziploc bag, and we used a piece of colored duct tape to identify bags for each teammate. Daily snack pack rations were also packed into individual ziploc bags for each person using the duct tape system. To pack our daily rations in such a way that enabled easy access during the crossing, we taped four daily meals bags (one that belonged to each of us) with duct tape. This made for one “string” of Ziploc bags per day that included our daily meal rations. We could quickly open the hatch to a food compartment on deck, grab the first bag we reached and know we had food for four people for the day. We kept this day’s food in a mesh bag on deck so it’d be easily accessible.

Coffee + Surprises

Two of us are regular coffee drinkers and didn’t want to give up coffee on the crossing. In the end it wasn’t so much about caffeine and waking up but much more about having a daily treat and some comfort from home. Of course, ease of preparation is key but we didn’t want to just get instant coffee since most aren’t very good AND loose instant coffee powder is likely to spill on deck or get blown off in the wind—just seemed like a really messy proposition. We instead used this great coffee called Bean Bags—essentially coffee grinds in a tea bag!! We then had proper coffee that was super easy to prepare and didn’t spill everywhere.

Each of us also packed surprise snacks to bring out and share at different times during the crossing. These were great morale boosters, especially the canned fruit. Be careful not to pack canned beverages in the “wet” deck compartments as the cans will quickly corrode and the liquid will escape. Sad times.

Medical

Our medical kit was probably similar to other teams and of course it included everything required by the World’s Toughest Row, with several additional items that made sense for us. A few of items that we added and found really useful included:

• Zofran (Odansetron), a prescription nausea medicine. One of us suffered from extreme sea sickness in the first few days, and while no other medicine helped, Zofran worked wonders.
• Prescription anti-inflammatory cream (Triamcinolone acetonide) and which really helped control bum rashes when they’d flare up.
• Several tubes of thick, zinc-based diaper cream/paste for bum rashes. Triple Paste was the one that we liked the best, but having a variety to try was great. Yes these creams get all over your clothes and that sucks, but it was infinitely better than to keep rowing in a lot of pain from the bum rash. Amazingly, the salty scientist with a really bad bum rash was able to get her behind back to a good place with these creams along with the Triamcinolone acetonide cream, without skipping any rowing shifts
• We packed our medical supplies in five large ziplock bags, one per ailment (e.g., infections, gut complaints, UTIs, pain, allergy/inflammation). All drugs were packaged in small plastic bags in individual doses or full courses (e.g., for antibiotics), with labels containing the name, purpose and dose/frequency info. This went into a large dry bag. We also had two small dry bags (the ‘bum bags’), one for each cabin, each with an assortment of bum creams, pain meds, personal meds, and a few bandages. This reduced the number of times we needed to dig into the large med bag.

Timeline of when we did various things

January 2021: Sign up for the race

June 2021: Launch our website and social media channels and start fundraising in earnest

August 2021: Chat with teams that have boats for sale

October 2021: Contract on Emma, which was set to do the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge starting in December that year with team Anna Victorious, with a $5000 deposit, payment plan, and plans to ship her straight from Antigua to Florida after their race.

December 2021: Land our first big financial sponsor, woohoo!!

January 2022: ¾ of the team in Florida for the Surf Expo, a fundraiser, and some in-person rowing in the Gulf. Covid restrictions kept one teammate away from this meeting.

March 2022: Emma arrives in Florida!! Ron Jon’s Beach ‘n Boards Fest

July 2022: Start physical training with Cady

August 2022: First training camp with Emma and all four Salty Scientists in Florida!! Week long, our first experience rowing Emma, making a plan for the next 14 months, deciding team roles

December 2022: Cady’s 2-week physical test, what a great way to see how we’re all doing. Great lessons for physical and mental endurance

January 2023: Second week-long training camp in Florida, accomplish our first overnight row

June 2023-August 2023: The whole team moves to Florida for a two-month training camp. With everyone maintaining full-time jobs, we mostly rowed 3-4 hours a day in the morning then would move to our work in the afternoons and evening. We were super lucky to have friends who lent us this amazing condo on the water with a boat lift which means that we could easily launch Emma. And the condo was a short walk to a gym. We did a few overnight rows and accomplished our longest row (36 hours) from a Friday night to Sunday morning, in an excruciatingly hot Florida summer. Did all the work needed on Emma, went through all the WTR’s mandatory lists to make sure we have everything on board, bought and packed all the meds and food needed.

Mid-August 2023: Final fundraiser in Ozona, boat wrapped with race colors, everything packed onboard for the race.

Late September 2023: Trailer Emma to Miami for shipping

October 4, 2023: Emma ships out of Miami

November 21, 2023: Emma arrives in La Gomera

November 28, 2023: We arrive in La Gomera

December 13, 2023: Race start