Gurkha Spirit

Dateline Hong Kong 23rd June 2005

Royal

 Club

It is generally agreed among oceanrowers that finding sponsorship or, more precisely, the 'money' necessary to do an oceanrow is itself a major challenge.
Peter Moore worked at Carphone Warehouse and was solely sponsored by them; one of ‘Queensgate 4’ worked at Queensgate; Sally Kettle took her boat to a gas station off a busy road and was successful in raising considerable funds by going up to people and asking for donations. Nigel Gower and James Doust invited everyone they knew to 'a Black tie dinner', this raised some decent money for them; Chris Martin had a dinner and invited everyone he knew to Mosley boat Club; Roz Savage had a 'breakfast' in the City where Lord Butler, of her old college, encouraged those gathered to donate to her row; Andrew Morris and Sarah Donohue are organising a 'Caribbean Party', tickets are available to any interested persons.
It is a fact of life that sending 1000s of letters asking for support of an oceanrow most likely will not work in raising sponsorship. Simply put, you can either raise money the 'old fashion way' as Martin Wood called it - that is 'borrow from your father', - or, like Henry Dale, you can 'work harder at your job and pay for the row yourself'. Richard Wood had his local Butcher name a sausage after his row, and he got so much for every pound of sausage sold.
Rob Hamill wrote about raising money, he said 'cash is king'.
It has often been said by oceanrowers, that getting to the starting line can be harder than doing the row. Of course, this is not literally true but what is absolutely true is that without sufficient funds, from whatever the source, an ocean row is impossible.

It might at first seem a bit extreme to ship an ocean rowboat from UK to Hong Kong and back for 1 night, but for the former Gurkhas it was worth it.

Recognizing the difficulty of gaining sponsorship Al Howard and Nick Rowe - team "Gurkha Spirit" , - realised that in order to attract donations and sponsorship they should take advantage of the fact that one of their team was based in Hong Kong.
The team found in UK that they were probably chasing the same sponsors as many other oceanrowers had approached. It was necessary for a radical approach!

The team shipped their boat to HK through the ORS official shipper.

Stage 1 was to arrange for a Press Conference at the famous Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club to generate interest in the challenge. Kenneth F. Crutchlow explained to the press that Al Howard and Nick Rowe were 'adventurers' and that especially these days adventurers are worthy of support. The results were better than the team could have expected with stories in all the main Hong Kong papers and coverage on the main TV stations including Cable TV. This resulted in some real offers of sponsorship.

click on the image

Stage 2 was to host a fundraising dinner and auction, again at the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club. Tickets for the event sold out very quickly and they had a full house with over 100 attending on the night.

As the guests arrived for drinks by the pool they were greeted with the amazing sight of 'Gurkha Spirit' sitting in the pool.

 The highlight of the evening was the auction with prizes that included international air tickets, PALM PDA's and other donated goods and products.

The evening was an unbridled success and put the team well towards their financial goals.

As with most things 'ocean rowing' the whole concept was a gamble but it paid off because of the generosity of the Hong Kong community.
 

Inge Strompf-Jepsen, Commodore, said she herself enjoyed the evening and will follow team "Gurkha Spirit" during the race.

Kenneth F.Crutchlow, ORS