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'Mad' rowers bid to break ocean record

TransAtlantic crossing: British foursome hopes to reach home in fewer than 55 days

By Richard FOOT, National Post

"Since I was a little girl, I knew my Dad was crazy."

So said Victoria Stubbs last week upon her father's departure for Newfoundland. Mark Stubbs, a 37-year-old British firefighter, arrived in St. John's with three crewmates and a 10-metre, yellow boat, which together the men hope to row across the Atlantic faster than anyone has before.

The families of the four rowers -- each considered "a little bit mad" by their relatives -- will spend the next month anxiously watching their loved ones' progress via the Internet, while the crew of the Atlantic Spirit endures the whims and icy weather of one of the most capricious oceans on Earth.

British adventurers, from left, Mark Stubbs, George Rock, Nigel Morris and Robert Munslow hope to leave St. John's, Nfld., on Sunday in a bid to break a 106-year-old record for rowing across the Atlantic Ocean.
(Photo: Joe Gibbons/The Telegram)

Skipper Stubbs and his British mates are attempting to break a high-seas record that has stood for 106 years. In 1896, two Norwegian immigrants to the United States sought fame and fortune by rowing a five-metre wooden whaler from New York to the Scilly Isles off the western tip of Land's End in England. George Harboe and Gabriel Samuelson made the open-boat crossing in 55 days -- a deed that never earned the pair much money, but still stands as the fastest rowboat crossing of the North Atlantic.

Englishman Tom McClean equalled the Norwegians' time with a solo row from St. John's to Ireland in 1987, but no one has ever cracked the 55-day feat.

The crew about to tackle that record includes three former military men with a heavy dose of high-seas experience. Mr. Stubbs fought as a Royal Marine in the Falklands War. George Rock and Nigel Morris are former sailors with the Royal Navy. The fourth and youngest rower, 24-year-old Robert Munslow, is a fitness trainer who talked his way into the adventure after hearing Mr. Stubbs talk about ocean rowing at a public lecture in Britain.

The crew expects it can reach England in approximately 33 days, weather permitting.

"We believe the boat we've got, and the technology we've got, will allow us to do that," Mr. Rock said during an interview yesterday.

Although it looks a little like a floating banana, Mr. Rock says the Atlantic Spirit is one of the fastest, most high-tech ocean rowboats ever built. Made of lightweight carbon fibre, the $150,000 craft weighs less than its four-man crew.

It carries a satellite phone and a tracking beacon powered by solar panels on the bow. Watertight compartments and water ballast tanks in the hull are designed to keep the boat upright should it roll over in a storm.

The vessel is designed more for speed than comfort. The mid- section carries three sliding seats and locks for three sets of oars. Mr. Rock says the crew plans to row two men at a time in two-hour shifts, each rower sitting fully exposed to the elements.

When they are not rowing, they will be resting at the bow and stern of the boat in cramped covered sleeping compartments stuffed with dry suits, electronic gear, a small camping stove and packets of dehydrated food.

"We hope to cover at least 100 miles a day," Mr. Rock says. "And if the seas get too big, we'll just get in our dry suits, climb into the cabins and hunker down."

Such tidy planning sounds better in theory than in practice on the high seas, a fact not lost on the crew. A quick history of Atlantic rowing offers proof of that. According to the London-based Ocean Rowing Society, only five boats have ever been rowed eastward across the Atlantic, most of them solo efforts. The longest journey was completed by Frenchman Joseph Le Guen, who left Cape Cod, Mass., in June, 1995, and landed in France after 103 days alone at sea.

Sixteen other attempts failed to make the crossing, including four lost boats whose crews were never heard from again.

"When you look at the statistics," acknowledges Mr. Rock, "the odds of making it aren't all that good."

Yet Mr. Rock is buoyed by the fact that both he and Mr. Stubbs have rowed across the Atlantic before, albeit on the far easier, but longer, east-to-west route. Trans-Atlantic rowing is a strange but popular sport in Europe. In 1997, Mr. Stubbs and Mr. Rock each crewed separate two-man boats in the first ocean rowing race, from the Canary Islands off the coast of Spain, to Barbados in the Caribbean Sea. The crossing took about two months, but most of it was over calm waters beneath warm, tropical skies.

"It was brilliant," Mr. Rock says. "We used to jump in the water to cool off."

Tackling the shorter but far more treacherous North Atlantic route requires boats to travel eastward with the Gulf Stream, from North America to Europe, dodging icebergs, fog and vicious weather on the way.

Mr. Rock says his crew will receive regular weather forecasts from a meteorologist in the United States, and even hopes to "outrow" approaching storms if forewarned of them in advance.

The critical stretch, he says, will be the first leg out of Newfoundland, where unpredictable weather and ice present the greatest danger. The voyage has already been postponed by a week because of poor local weather, but the crew hopes to depart St. John's on Sunday.

For now, the men are enjoying the pleasures of the city's pubs and introducing themselves to local members of the Coast Guard, upon whom they may call for a rescue should an ocean storm or faulty technology sink their hopes and dreams.

Mr. Stubbs, who carries people out of burning buildings for a living, has little time for naysayers and critics who bemoan the cost that ocean rescues place on Canadian taxpayers.

"These are some of the same people who drink and drive and have car accidents, and the fire service has to come and pick them out of it," he says.

As for the risks facing four men in a featherweight boat on the open ocean, Mr. Stubbs says he is more likely to die by being hit by a car while riding his bicycle at home in England, than in rowing across the Atlantic.

And as he tells his anxious family: "It's a fantastic, beautiful place out there. The sunsets, the stunning rainstorms, the clouds -- the only time I completely switch off from the world, and concentrate on one thing, is out on the ocean."

June 4, 2002