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TALISkER WhISkY ATLANTIc ROWING chALLENGE

Many people have asked why I took part in the tWAc race and when did I join the team. this was a challenge I had wanted to compete in for a while and I have had numerous friends take part. the completely unsupported nature of the race certainly got me intrigued and the battle against mother nature is no small challenge. I was asked to join lat35 in 2020 and the lockdown had just come into play. At that point I was looking for a challenge to guide me through lockdown and give me something to focus on outside of work. Since serving in the British Army, I have always had an appetite for a differing array of challenges and many of these have been endurance based. I have completed a handful of ultra-marathons and long distance cycling events spanning up to 10 days in duration. however, never has an opportunity come my way for such a long duration endurance event and one in which you really are challenged, not only physically, but also mentally. So, it was very much a new realm for me.

Training during the first wave of the COVID pandemic had its complexities and so we had to be resourceful as gyms were not open for the majority of our training period. My wife, Thea, had sourced some weights for us at home and we had a pretty good setup, and with the addition of a rowing machine, I was in a lucky position. When the gyms reopened it meant we could vary our programmes. We had an amazing physical and conditioning coach in Gus Barton who specialises in ocean rowing training. He had us all on individual programmes that mixed weights, rowing machine sessions (killer sessions!!) and core stability/mobility sessions. As a team we had to complete a minimum of 120hrs on our boat and we managed to squeeze this into a five-day training camp and then four long weekends. We had the added complexity of Dixon being based in New York and so we had to get him over to the UK for all the boat training. In addition to time on the boat we had to undertake the following courses: medical training, sea survival, radio and navigation courses.

The motivation behind taking part in TWAC was that it is the ultimate challenge and there is no other event like it where you come up against physical and mental hurdles, fully unsupported, and the biggest element you face is mother nature. Being on such a small boat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean is something that is very humbling, and you quickly remember all the things you take for granted back at home. I wanted to complete this race in aid of our newly formed charity which is part of the Pelorus group. It’ s a stand-alone, registered charity, with a dedicated team and a board of trustees to ensure it delivers far more than a traditional travel company foundation. The new conservation charity has a mission to protect, preserve, and promote ‘at risk’ wildlife and environments across the planet. “The goal of the Foundation is to protect hundreds of square miles of wilderness by 2025, ” says the charity. “This will be achieved by creating and building on projects that accelerate the pace of change towards a more sustainable future. The Foundation will support a spread of marine and land-based programmes, in partnership with local charitable partners, to tackle core sustainability issues such as wildlife crime, marine conservation and forest protection. These will be selected for their ability to make the greatest impact on the degradation of flora and fauna, and to empower and employ local communities. ”

Having completed the row we are often asked what were the biggest challenges we faced and as a team we prepared for most eventualities and war gamed them with our coach, Angus Collins. However, I don ’t think any of us would have thought that we would be hit by nearly every challenge we had thought of and then some more. Our first big issue was on day three when our boat lost all its electrical systems. This was a big problem as we were left with no navigational instruments, GPS, radios, water maker and autohelm. Hand steering the boat takes up a lot of manpower as you end up having three people on all the time and this therefore reduces the rest time. I had to rewire the boat and do this whilst on the satphone to the electricians at the boat yard in the UK, not an easy job whilst in large swells mid Atlantic. We then had some tremendous storms that nearly resulted in us capsizing twice and snapping an oar. During one of the storms, Dixon and I were on the oars and had to row for six hours continuously. Although the race is unsupported, there are two support vessels that make their way across the Atlantic during the time of the race, their main aim is to gather media on the teams, and they do not see all the teams as it depends if you are on the same course. Our boat was made by Rannoch and, for four people, we used an R45 which is 28ft long, we had two cabins, one in the bow and one in the stern. I was in the stern with Todd and in our cabin, we had all the navigational equipment, autohelm, battery monitors and radios, therefore we managed and looked after all of these functions throughout the row. This is also the smaller of the two cabins and there is enough room for one person but in storm conditions there could be two of us in there! We opted to go with a fantastic brand of freeze-dried food called Firepot, a Dorset based company, who supplied us with our main meals to which we would add water. We decided that we would have two breakfasts and one main savoury meal a day. In addition to the Firepot, we would have snack packs made up of trail mix, biltong, pip n nut sachets and another nut butter brand called Resilient Nutrition. Each day we would be consuming 5,500 calories.

The biggest story of our row was the Blue Marlin incident. This was the rudest awakening I have experienced and something that we as a team had never dreamt of happening. I was sleeping in the stern cabin on my off shift and its was just after 2pm in the afternoon, Todd and Dixon were both on the oars and suddenly we were hit by something that felt like we had been rear ended by a vehicle. The force of the impact moved our boat two to three feet and with the almightiest bang. I woke immediately and thought we had been hit by a giant wave similar to some we had experienced during the storms and my immediate action was to ask if the boys on deck were ok? They reported back they were fine but asked if I was ok as they thought we had sustained some serious damage to the rear of the boat. I calmly said all was ok and lay back down in the cabin. Seconds later I screamed with a huge amount of expletives!!……… and reported back that we had been hit by a giant spike and that the hull was penetrated, and we were taking on water. On further inspection the bill of the marlin had penetrated the bottom of the boat and come through into our cabin and missed my thigh by no more than one cm. Our immediate action drills kicked in, and we called the race organisers and set about repairing the boat. Jono came back to the stern cabin and between us we sawed off the bill and plugged the seven cm diameter hole with epoxy resin, on top of this plug we then set about sealing the leaks with a petal formation. Each application of resin takes approximately 40/45mins to set. Jono then went into the water to apply the resin around the two/three inches of the bill that was still stuck in the hull. The whole incident took about six and a half hours to repair and then we were back underway.

Seconds later I screamed with a huge amount of expletives!!……… and reported back that we had been hit by a giant spike and that the hull was penetrated, and we were taking on water.

Messages soon started to make their way home via our Garmin in reach and sat phone but when we started the race, we had a much smarter setup with a very advanced communications system onboard provided by Inmarsat and Advanced Tracking. This gave us full capability to do Instagram lives and send media back to everyone at home. When the power failure happened, we lost our communications systems for the remainder of the race, from then on, we had to rely on just the satphone. This was a big blow and morale was certainly affected by not having that connectivity with home. Our team were incredible and still managed to keep people updated on what was happening across our social channels. Thea, packed 59 letters for me that she had received from family, friends and colleagues and these really came into their own for raising morale and support for what we were doing. As a team we spoke at length about mental resilience and the challenges we would face. We also took time to understand each other ’ s touch points, our strengths and weaknesses and any personal matters that may bubble up when exhausted and in an alien environment. You have to look at the challenge day by day as the enormity of it is too much to digest otherwise. Making sure you praise each other for the hard work put in and the small gestures is key to keeping everyone pulling in the same direction.

We learnt a vast amount as a team and some of the key areas were to make sure you have goals set to strive for and that getting the right balance between work and life is so so important. Taking time to concentrate on something different and focus on achieving outside of your work is key. We also need to take time out from the digital world and social media etc, putting our phones down and enjoying the environment around us and the people we are with is one of the key lessons learnt. Go out and seek new opportunities and train yourself to be optimistic in your outlook and you will reap the rewards.

I spend a lot of my time active, outdoors and seeking out adventures and believe this has an incredibly positive impact on my mental well-being. It is so important and links very much into what I said earlier. I take a lot from being out in the open environment and we as humans are made to explore and be curious about our surroundings. Being outside gives you the time to reflect and clear the mind of the stresses of life. I find when I am undertaking anything from running, cycling, climbing, to adventures it focuses the mind and you must fully commit to that activity and not let the mind wander. So, what is my next adventure? I am enjoying being back on dry land and having some down time whilst also getting back into work. I am currently living and working in Austin, Texas, and building my company, Pelorus, here in the USA. There are a few challenges that are shouting out at me and some unfinished business such as Everest, so watch this space…

Before ... After ...

JImmY cARROLL (c 00)

An A-Z of the School Prizes

OVER ThE YEARS, mANY SchOOL PRIzES hAVE cOmE AND GONE, OR ThEIR NAmES AND PuRPOSES chANGED. IN WhAT IS INTENDED TO BE A SERIES uNcOVERING ThE hISTORY OF OuR SchOOL PRIzES, WE LOOk AT ThOSE PRIzES AT ThE START OF ThE ALPhABET – A TO B.

ASTON BINNS PRIzE FOR SPANISh On the wall beside the pulpit in the School Chapel is a brass memorial plaque to former modern languages master Francis Aston Binns (1859-1898), who died in September 1898 in a climbing accident. Francis, who had studied at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was awarded a Taylorian Exhibition in French (1885) and Taylorian Scholarship in Italian (1886), came to teach at Sherborne in 1892. A passionate climber and a member of the Alpine Club, on the 16 September 1898 Francis reached the summit of Aiguille de Grands Charmoz (3,445 metres) but was killed on the descent when he fell into a crevasse. In 1922, the Aston Binns Prize for Modern Languages was founded with a bequest left by his sister. In more recent years the prize has been awarded for Spanish and it is fitting that the winner of the prize in 1995 was Andy Nurton (m 95) who now teaches Spanish in the MFL department. BARNES ELOcuTION PRIzE Despite the belief of former Barnes Elocution prize winner Cecil Day Lewis that the prize he won in 1922 was named after the Dorset dialect poet William Barnes, the prize is in fact named after Walter Mew Barnes (1856-1909) who attended Sherborne School from 1867 to 1875. After studying law, Walter became a barrister and returned to the family home on the Isle of Wight where he served as Chairman of the Ryde Pier Company. Following Walter ’ s death his siblings founded the Barnes Elocution Prize at Sherborne. The prize was to be awarded to the boy who ‘in competition best recited, delivered or declaimed from memory a piece of English prose or verse ’ . In 1994, Giles Robinson set for the competition a verse option from Shakespeare ’ s Sonnet 34 and a prose option from the opening page of Sebastian Faulks ’ The Girl at the Lion d’Or. The winner that year was chris martin (m 95) who chose the prose option and, according to Giles, was the only boy to correctly pronounce the name of the French town Janvilliers! BERÉNY PRIzE FOR FRENch It is perhaps surprising that the artist Didier Berény (1901-1993) founded a prize at Sherborne for French rather than for Art. Born in Frankfurt, Didier was amongst a group of six refugees given a temporary home at Sherborne during the First World War. He attended Sherborne School for 10 months from March 1915 until December 1915 when he left to join his parents in Spain. Didier was evidently grateful to the School and Headmaster Nowell Smith for the brief time he had spent here and in 1928 presented the School with a portrait of Nowell Smith, and in 1948 founded the Berény Prize for French. Previous winners have included former Vice-Chancellor of Oxford colin Lucas (f 59), the film critic Anthony Lane (c 80), and more recently hugh Ridgway (a 21) who, having been awarded 3A*s at A level, is going to read French and Spanish at Manchester.

hAROLD BLAIR PRIzE FOR DIVINITY The Harold Blair Prize for Divinity was founded in 1985 in memory of Harold Blair (1902-1985) who served as assistant chaplain at Sherborne School from 1984 to 1985. Harold’ s connection with the School, however, went much further back – the son of missionary parents, he was christened at Banda in India by Foss Westcott, the brother of Sherborne ’ s headmaster Frederick Brooke Westcott. During the Second World War Harold served as vicar of Horningsham in Wiltshire where he acquired ‘ an odd medley of jobs ’ , which included acting as chaplain for an RAF camp and for a girls school which had been evacuated to Longleat House. It was during this time that Harold became friends with C.S. Lewis who he invited to Longleat to ‘deal

with airmen, girls and aristocracy

’ . Rather appropriately, a recent winner of the prize was, Benedict mercer (b 20), son of Sherborne ’ s former assistant chaplain the Rev. Col. Nicholas Mercer.

BOW AWARD First presented at Commem 2003, the Bow Award has become one of the School’ s most popular awards, given as it is to a boy who had made an outstanding contribution to the pastoral welfare of others in the School. The award honours Charlie and Louisa Bow who in 1988 bequeathed to the School their property at Newell Grange. The first recipient of the award was Tom Edwards (a 03), whose brother harry (a 10) also won the award in 2010. ALISON BLENkINSOP PRIzE FOR hISTORY This prize was founded in 1955 in memory of Alison Blenkinsop (1900-1954) who was married to Edward Blenkinsop, a modern languages master at Sherborne School from 1944 to 1959. Alison, who had a history degree from Oxford and had also taught the subject, lived at St Kilda in Long Street which became a home-from-home for Alison ’ s nephews and nieces who attended Sherborne Girls ’ (Fenella Garrod) and Sherborne School - John Garrod (b 53), Andrew Garrod (b 56), David mallam (a 55) and marcus mallam (a 62). Winners of the prize have gone on to become notable historians, journalists and authors, including Patrick moynahan (a 59), Tim heald (g 62), Andrew harvey (b 69), Robert mccrum (b 71), Timothy Garton Ash (m 73), Jonathan conlin (b 94) and charles Gammell (d 01).

BOWEN hISTORY PRIzE Founded in 1887 by Edward Ernest Bowen (1836-1901) of Harrow School to encourage the study of modern history. Bowen was an old friend and former colleague of Sherborne ’ s then headmaster E.M. Young. Today, Bowen is famous in the annals of Harrow ’ s history for having written the Harrow School song ‘Forty Years On ’ , and also as housemaster of The Grove and for founding the school’ s modern side. Previous winners of the Bowen prize have included Harold Temperley (b 1898) who went on to become Professor of Modern History at Cambridge and Master of Peterhouse, and Alan Lennox-Boyd (g 1923) who served in Winston Churchill’ s peacetime government. ROS BOYD ART PRIzE This U6 Art Prize is awarded in memory of Rosalind Boyd (1952-2002) who for many years worked in the Art Department alongside her husband Trevor Boyd, Director of Art 1980-2001. An artist in her own right, Ros was also ‘ an inestimable force in the artistic life of the School’ and with Trevor hosted at Hyle House a succession of international artists-inresidence.

TOm BuGBIRD AWARD FOR FELLOWShIP IN SAILING Awarded in memory of Tom Bugbird (g 98) to the member of the Sailing Club who contributes the most fellowship to the Sailing Club each year. Tom was a keen member of the Sailing Club and, having just finished his A levels and left Sherborne, he was on his way to help at the Sailing Club at Arne when he was involved in a road accident. In his obituary, Andrew Yorke described Tom ’ s love of sailing a dinghy in a fresh breeze around Brownsea Island or out to Studland. A few weeks after Tom ’ s death it was learnt that he had achieved A grades in his A level mathematics, further mathematics, physics and chemistry exams.

Extended OS News

ThE WAShING mAchINE PROJEcT FOuNDATION

“Just on the way to northern Iraq. Does anyone know anyone there who’d like to try out our manual washing machine for people in need?” An inventor friend had posted on LinkedIn.

The clear answer was yes, there ’ s an Old Shirburnian in the shape of Tom BadhamThornhill (f 07) who was working out there with the UN International Organisation for Migration, managing some refugee camps. Fast forward a couple of days and they were meeting for a drink to discuss plans and a connection with Oxfam ’ s Iraq innovation lab to trial the prototype.

Fast forward another two years and working with Founder/Inventor Nav Sawhney we develop and deploy solutions to people in need. Working in conjunction with The Washing Machine Project and Care International we developed and deployed 30 manual washing machines as a pilot to Iraq. Collaborating with Electrocomponents PLC as our global charity partner and other stakeholders we have significant growth plans ahead to develop from the pilot to large scale production in the coming years.

Tom is now based in Cox

’ s Bazar, Bangladesh, working in camps in an area where around 750,000 Rohingya are living. This is one of the largest refugee settlements in the world. That’ s a lot of people who need the dignity and hygiene of clean clothes!

Publications

Patrick Barwise (b&m 1964) and Peter York The War Against the BBC Publisher: Penguin

Angus cater (c 70) Harrac Goes South in the steps of Tilman and Richardson Available from www.anguscaterltd.co.uk

Will Facey (f 66) Charles Huber: France ’ s Greatest

Arabian Explorer Publisher: Medina

mark Floyer (h 73) Scrabbled Publisher: Paekakariki Press

Patrick Francis (ex-Staff) Old Yet Ever Young, A New History of Sherborne

Jerry haigh (d 59) Reindeer Reflections, Lessons from an Ancient Culture Publisher: RMB

Ben Jeapes (h 83) Ada Publisher: David Fickling Books, 2020

Peter Oborne (d 74) Assault on Truth: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism Publisher: Simon and Schuster

The Fate of Abraham: Why the West is Wrong about Islam Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Antony Thomas (a 59) In The Line of Fire: Personal Memories of a Documentary Film Maker Publisher: Unicorn