Press Articles

June 01, 2002

High-tech British rowers aim for Atlantic record
By Jonathan Gornall

A TEAM of four British rowers plan to set out from Newfoundland tomorrow with a high-tech rowing boat in a hazardous attempt to set a record for crossing the Atlantic.
Skippered by Mark Stubbs, a former Royal Marine and Falklands veteran, the lightweight Skandia Atlantic Spirit is taking the tough west-east route across the Atlantic, which has already claimed five lives.

Leaving St John's and setting off across 2,083 miles for the Bishop Rock lighthouse off the Isles of Scilly, the crew will be aiming to pick up the 0.5-knot Gulf Stream to break the record of 55 days set more than 100 years ago by two Norwegians. With a final destination of Falmouth they also hope to be the first rowers to complete an Atlantic crossing on mainland Britain.

But the four, rowing non-stop, two on, two off, in two-hour shifts, must first drive their boat 350 miles over the treacherous Grand Banks, the fishing grounds off Newfoundland whose vicious unpredictability was brought to life in the film The Perfect Storm.

Between them and the Gulf Stream, and clearly visible from the cliffs above their starting point, lie icebergs: on Thursday at least 40 were reported in the vicinity of the start. Although the big ones are easy to spot, the very nature of rowing means that the rowers have their backs to the danger and, besides, it is the smaller "growlers" lurking just beneath the surface that pose the greatest threat to the 190kg carbon fibre hull.

Fog and storms brew fast in the region, where the sea is cooled by Arctic water driven down in the Labrador current. When storms do pick up, waves can reach 50ft, with only seconds between peaks, as the seas are driven over an ocean floor that can vary suddenly in depth from 2,000 metres to 60 metres.

Not only are the team determined to set a new west-east record, but they believe that the absolute rowing record for the Atlantic - 35 days, set in 1992 by an 11-strong French team rowing the more southern and less technically demanding east-west route - is possible.

Kenneth Crutchlow, founder of the Ocean Rowing Society, flew to Newfoundland yesterday with the Argos tracking beacon which will allow the organisation to display the team's progress on its website (www.oceanrowing.com).

"This is the roughest, toughest, coldest crossing that can be made," he said. "This is what adventure is all about. As a society we look for innovation and this attempt, with the space age material in the boat and the four-man crew, is definitely pushing the envelope."

Although all four men have trained scientifically for the challenge at the Benetton Human Performance Centre in Oxfordshire, and two of the crew have rowed the Atlantic before, their boat is the key to a fast time. Built from materials more commonly found on Formula 1 racing cars, it is a by-product of the ill-fated round-the-world Team Philips project by the sailor Pete Goss.

Goss, a national hero after his rescue of a fellow yachtsman in the southern ocean, set out to build a sailing boat capable of beating the record for sailing non-stop around the world. That foundered in December 2000, when he and his crew were forced to abandon the £4.5 million giant catamaran in an Atlantic storm. The Stubbs rowing attempt, one of the projects that the Goss organisation had been fostering, was delayed a year by Goss's problems. In the end, Stubbs had to buy his rowing boat back out of receivership.

Stubbs, a veteran of the 1997 Atlantic rowing race organised by Chay Blyth, knows that he has set himself a tough target, but believes that the risks are worth the rewards: "My motivation for the row stems from the Falklands War, when I realised how very precious life is. I vowed then to make the most of opportunities," he said.

Although he hopes to leave tomorrow in tribute to the Queen's Golden Jubilee, he will delay the start if the weather is too bad.

"The first 350 miles will be the toughest and most treacherous as we head south for the Gulf Stream, south of latitude 50, and we will have to row across a southwesterly wind. But starting from St John's has historic value for us: previous rowing attempts, the first flight across the Atlantic, Marconi's radio message. It was all from here."

The deadly route

Five men have died attempting the crossing:

The first were David Johnstone and John Hoare, whose boat Puffin was found upturned and abandoned after they had rowed 1,200 miles in 84 days. They had set off at the same time as John Ridgway and Chay Blyth, who in 1966 completed the first crossing since 1896 in 90 days.

Two other Britons have died in the attempt: Kenneth Kerr and Andrew Wilson, who were lost at sea within a month of each other in 1980. They, like the Skandia Atlantic Spirit team, also set off from St John's.

The most recent fatality was last year, when the American, Nenad Belic, a doctor, set off on May 11 from Cape Cod and was lost 151 days and 2,618 miles later in a storm off Ireland. Once past August, the risks increase as Caribbean storms drive up through the Atlantic.