Photos - courtesy Atlantic Campaigns
members’ ac hievements
The Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge
Team Peninsula aboard the Dirty Oar from left - Sam Morris, MCC Member Toby Kendall and Will Drew. Three men in a boat called the ‘Dirty Oar’ recently rowed across the Atlantic Ocean to raise money for charity. MCC Member Toby Kendall, and his crew mates Sam Morris and Will Drew, formed Team Peninsula, that took part in the premier event in ocean rowing - the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge.
What made you want to row across the Atlantic?
The trio rowed more than 3000 miles west across the Atlantic from San Sebastian in the Canary Islands, to Nelson’s Dockyard, Antigua, in the Caribbean. Over 38 days and 15 minutes and more than 1.5 million oar strokes, Team Peninsula raised over £50,000 for charity.
How did you train for the race?
As well as an extraordinary feat of endurance rowing across the Atlantic, the team was highlighting the alarming impact of plastic marine pollution on our oceans. Here Toby tells of their sea-faring adventures.
As a former soldier in the British Army I enjoy adventure sports and wanted to try something out of my comfort zone. Having never rowed before and my greatest fear being swimming in unplumbed depths, rowing across the Atlantic Ocean seemed the ultimate challenge. At its deepest the Atlantic Ocean is 8.5km deep. Training started from scratch. We had a 5-day training course rowing as a complete team as Sam lived abroad during the pandemic, followed by various technical courses for ocean rowing. The rest of our training was in the gym with weights and rowing machines for 12 months, but this challenge is more about mental robustness and less about rowing technique. The ocean-going rowboat has a cabin at both ends, with three rowing seats. Tom, Will and I took turns rowing in two-man shifts of two hours on and one hour off during the day and solo for two hours on and four hours off through the night.
What was the hardest part? The hardest part was at the beginning, getting into a routine, making the most of our one hour off, getting enough sleep, eating properly and keeping up maintenance of the boat. Blisters are par for the course and ‘claw hand’ made it agony trying to close my hands after waking up - it’s a sort of repetitive-strain condition, but you row through it and after a while it settles down – until the next shift. And of course, we all got sore bums and suffered from sleep deprivation. Our food was a bit unappetising after a while - we lived off army style expeditionary rations – highenergy, boil-in-the-bag food, supplemented with chocolate and Haribos! I have never eaten so much in my life, but I still lost 14kg in six weeks, we were burning 7,000 calories a day.
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Muthaiga Country Club July - September 2022
www.mcc.co.ke
