Rowers

boat number 5

Domani

Rik Knoop ( 34 ) Holland	Michael Tuijn ( 32 ) Holland

Hi there. For the people who do not know us yet, we are the team from Holland that is going to compete in the Atlantic rowing race 2001. We are Rik Knoop 33 year welder / mechanic and Mike Tuyn 31 year social worker. Rik spent 6 years by the Navy with the submarine service and was a rugby full back for 11 years. When he got problems with his knee he started rowing by the Navy in lifeboat rowing races. Mike is an adventure cyclist and made cycle trips all over the world. He started rowing for his school and is together with Rik in the same team three times national champion. We also have a third rower Ralph Tuyn 29 years nurse and pro adventure cyclist. We are preparing for the race since 1998. We have two boats, a training boat ( the boat in the picture ) and we are still building the raceboat. We did already many rowing trips at sea and tried to row from London to Amsterdam but made it to Calais because we had very strong wind against us and together with we had a very hard and dangerous trip. It is very difficult to row an ocean rowboat in the North Sea because the waves are very short so we hope with the longer waves on the Atlantic ocean that the rowing will be easier. We have a lot of problems with finding sponsors, even for a practise rowing trip to Norway we did not find a sponsor. With the sponsors that we have we have a lot of problem to get the money so it is very hard to prepare for the ocean. It is probably a problem that every team has. We had allready a lot of publicity in the newspapers, magazines and t.v. and we row for a good cause : a organisation for handicaped people. Becauce our internet site is not in english we hope that we inform you enough about us and hope to hear from you to. Maybe you have some tips about sponsors? our one left for us. Great Rik And Mike.

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