A New Record!

Thursday evening 4 October, I phone Mike Oram, one of the most highly sought after Sea Captains for the provision of safety boats to accompany swims and rows across the Channel.  I ask him about the likelihood of our row taking place at the weekend.  Definitely not on Friday or Saturday he tells me.  With this in mind I arrange for the crew to do one final ergo training session Friday evening at Cantabs boathouse and to then go out for a beer and curry afterwards.  We have a great night, but the uncertainty of our crossing date weighs heavy on everyone.

As instructed, I phone Mike again Saturday morning to see if Sunday is a possibility.  He tells me he’s just not sure.  The forecast is optimistic for Sunday, but he thinks it might be too optimistic.  In his opinion the sea could still be too choppy for us.  However, Monday could be possible, but by then we could be heading straight into a strong headwind, which will make the row hard with the possibility that a fair bit of water might end up in the boat.  He says it’s our shout if we want to head down Saturday afternoon in the hope we can go on Sunday, but to understand that we might need to hang around for the day in the hope we can go on Monday, which also couldn’t be guaranteed.

A crew meeting is held to decide what to do.  The decision is unanimous; we’ll drive down Saturday afternoon and play the waiting game in Dover.

Everyone arrives in Dover at around 7pm.  I’ve booked everyone into the Premier Inn right by the harbour.  From the hotel the sea seems calm.  Another phone call to Mike confirms that we should be able to go in the morning and that we should be at the marina for 6.30am.  Everyone is excited by the prospect and we head into central Dover to look for a restaurant, preferably Italian. 

Dover Castle

We have no success in finding a decent restaurant in the town centre.  We do find two Italian restaurants but they’re both shut.  The best option seems to be a Wetherspoon’s pub, which is rejected by most of the crew.  We decide to return to the Premier Inn to try their restaurant.  As it turns out the menu choice is vast, good value and surprisingly good.  Most crew members only drink soft drinks, whilst the three oldest members; namely myself, Richard and Steve have a beer.  The younger crew members express their shock and disbelief at this.  That evening Steve suggests that everyone should guess what time we will make the crossing in.  The predictions range mostly between 5 hours 20 minutes and 5 hours 45 minutes.  I think this is optimistic and guess at 6 hours 15 minutes, which the others think is a rather damning indictment on my behalf regarding their state of fitness.  The truth is it’s a wild guess and I don’t want to build anyone’s hopes up.

Jason teaching Liza how to use the video camera

Alan deciding which pie to eat

The next morning most people walk along the seafront to Dover Marina.  I get a lift with Steve and his wife, Liza, our only supporter, to take the vast quantity of bottled water and food containers.  We find the boat and introduce ourselves to Mike Oram and his son, Lance.

The rest of the crew arrive and we set about getting ready to depart.  Someone then points out that there is no sign of Steve.  He has apparently gone back to the hotel to fetch something that he has forgotten.  I still don’t know what it was that he’d left behind.  The rest of us sit in the gig shivering in the cold whilst we wait for Steve to return. 

The crew wait for Steve to re-appear

At some point Lance Oram, our safety boat pilot and Mike’s son, asks what sort of time we were aiming for.  Someone tells him about 5 hours 30 minutes. “That’s ambitious, boys,” he says in response.

Moments later, with Steve back with his missing item (assumed to be either his watch or gloves) we push ourselves off and make our way out of the harbour at a slow pace to warm up.  We stop at the harbour entrance to allow a massive ferry to enter as the sun breaks through the clouds.  Once the ferry has passed we are off. 

Waiting for the ferry to pass. From bow to stern: Dennis in the passenger seat, Gary (bow), Steve (No.2), Jason (3), Andy (4), Alan (5), Jonathan (stroke).  Richard is in the cox seat taking the picture.

Spirits are high and a good deal of banter is dealt out amongst the crew.  The banter is mostly good natured mockery between the bow crew of Steve, Jason, Gary and Dennis, and the stern crew of Richard, Andy, Jonathan and me.  We are definitely one team made up of two halves.  The crew practise speaking in pirate talk as we make our way across the Dover Strait.  As we approach the English side shipping lane the order is given out to prepare cutlasses for boarding and looting a passing tanker.  The tanker in question seems reasonably close and unfeasibly big.  We are later told that it actually altered its course by a few degrees in order to avoid us.

The White Cliffs of Dover - can you spot three mistakes on bow side?

Our safety boat.  Stroke side blades looking good.

The tanker that adjusted its course to avoid us.

When we reach the shipping land the first mate on the safety boat comes to the deck and shouts out, “You’re doing great guys. Do you think you can maintain this pace?”  We answer in the affirmative. Unbeknown to us at this point the two man crew on the safety boat are amazed at our progress.  Mike Oram is also tracking us from the shore and radios the boat to check there isn’t a mistake with the GPS tracker.  We’ve reached the English side shipping lane in an hour, and this usually takes most amateur crews two hours. 

Giving it some long, firm strokes.

Meanwhile, onboard Angela (the name of our fibreglass Adventure Gig) we have no idea how well we are doing.  The banter continues but we remain focused on the job at hand.  Whoever is in the cox seat points out any mistakes and the oarsmen do their best to correct these.  In general, the team work is impeccable.  The bow team periodically question the ability of the stern team to steer the boat straight.  The stern teams response to this is generally to shout back, “Shut the f**k up and row.”  Steering the gig with nothing to aim for on the horizon is difficult.  In practise we are suppose to stay about 10m to the side of the safety boat, but if you’re calling commands out to the crew and focusing all your attention on what is happening in the boat, it is easy to drift either away from, or closer to, the safety boat.

We have two distractions during our crossing.  First we are aware that there is a Channel swimmer ahead of us.  They’ve been out swimming since 2am.  As we pass we slow down and give them a massive cheer.  The female swimmer smiles and waves back.  A little further on we notice a plane overhead that seems to be flying towards us.  As it sweeps overhead Steve shouts out, “That’s my mate, Greg.”  Greg circles a couple more times in his Piper Cherokee and we all wave to the plane.  This was a great surprise to everyone except Liza.  The guys on the safety boat are also thrilled by the fly-pass.  They tell us they’ve only experienced one other fly-pass before and that was for a RAF crew.

Greg's view of boat and crew.

After rowing for two hours the first mate is back on the deck shouting at us, “You’re halfway.  If you maintain this pace you will set a new record”.  There is a stunned silence on the boat as the disbelief settles over us.  We had no idea we were going so well.  From this point on there would be no more cheerful banter.  With a record in sight everyone decides to knuckle down and do the best they can.  There is very little chat for the next hour and a half, just the cox shouting out commands and correcting individual errors.

I have no idea what the others are thinking.  I keep expecting the sea to change.  The crossing has been much calmer than anyone could have expected.  We’ve certainly trained in much rougher conditions, which has obviously been a great help.  However, I don’t allow myself to believe that we can actually set a new fastest time for the Channel crossing.  Every now and again we are hit by a rogue large wave.  We suspect that this is the bow wave of a tanker that has long since passed.  But I’m bracing myself with the expectation that these waves will get bigger and more frequent as we proceed.  To my relief this doesn’t happen.

As we get closer to France, Lance and his first mate come out on to the deck of the safety boat more often to give us encouragement.  “Come on guys, you’ve got about 4 miles to go.  Hang in there.  You’re doing a great job,” they shout out at us.  “Three miles to go, boys.  Fantastic rowing,” we hear from the safety boat.  Jonathan is coxing now.  He tries to make some sort of motivational speech which is shouted down.  “Shut the f**k up and just tell us to row,” is pretty much the unanimous response from the crew.

With two miles to go the call is given to increase the power of the strokes but to maintain the stroke rate.  Everyone puts everything into their strokes.  Things get a little untidy at times.  Everyone is shouting and correcting other’s mistakes.  “Dennis, you’re going in late”, “Richard, straighten your blade”, “lengthen your stroke, Steve”, “everyone, stay in time with stroke,” are just some examples of the corrections being shouted out.  It is almost impossible to hear Jonathan.  I shout over my shoulder for everyone to be quiet and let Jonathan cox.  We don’t need eight coxes in the boat.  Amazingly the last two miles turn out to be the fastest.

France, ahoy!

France is looming large.  We are heading for a rocky outcrop, not the beach we had all envisaged landing on.  When we are about 50m from shore the safety boat sounds a klaxon.  “You did it boys.  Well done.  You’ve set a new record,” the first mate shouts at us.  “Take a few moments then paddle back to us when you’re ready.”

"Easy oar."  We've made it.

It doesn’t really sink in what we’ve just achieved.  It’s almost an anticlimax.  We had expected to be rowing for 5.5 to 6 hours, but here we are, just off the coast of France in about 4 hours.  It seems too unbelievable.  As we sit there congratulating each other a group of French sea kayakers appear with big grins on their faces.  The person who seems to be the group leader comes close and says something to us in French, which I assume is congratulations.  Their presence confirms we’ve arrived in France, and it’s nice to have a welcoming committee.

Our welcoming committee.

We wave goodbye to the kayakers, turn the gig around and paddle up to the safety boat.  We’re helped onboard and congratulated by the crew and Liza. 

We did our crossing in 4 hours 3 minutes.  Lance tells us the previous record was 4 hours 24 minutes.  However, later in the day we discover that an N-Power team set a time of 4 hours 19 minutes back in July this year.  Regardless of what the previous time was, we had set a new record.  I looked around at the crew proud of our achievement.  When I had the idea of rowing across the Channel back in April I couldn’t have possibly imagined that this would be the outcome.

Time to start the celebrations

The first mate and Lance Oram

The record breakers

The ride back to Dover on the safety boat takes three hours.  This helps us to realise what we’d done that morning.  Back on dry land we shower and have a meal before making the drive back to Cambridge.  Everyone orders burger and chips, i.e. finger food, with the exception of Jonathan who has a roast dinner.  When his meal arrives he discovers his hands are in too much pain to be able to use a knife and fork, this is about 5 hours after finishing the row.  The rest of us feel smug for ordering food that doesn’t require cutlery.

We head off from Dover in three separate cars, agreeing that a big celebration is needed the following weekend.  I’m heading back with Jason.  Every now and again Jason lets out a restrained chuckle as the realisation that he is a record holder starts to dawn on him.  It’s been an incredible day.

We're on. I hope!

If all goes well we could be making our way across the Channel at 7am tomorrow morning.  There's a chance the sea might be still too rough following the recent storm.  If so we'll be hanging around to see if it will calm down during the day so we can make our crossing.  Weather forecast for tomorrow is excellent.  If we can't go tomorrow we'll hang on in Dover another night to see if we can row on Monday.  The sea should be o.k. on Monday but we'll be rowing into a head wind, and this means we can expect to get wet in the boat as some waves will make it over the bow.

In terms of funding raising we have raised a total of £6052.27.  This is from the crew justgiving page, which has a link to the right, plus a separate page set up by Gary and Jason, and all gift aid donations.  Thank you to all you awesome people who have been incredibly generous and shown your support.

The Last Training Session!

With any luck we had our last group training session today.  We’re due to cross the Channel next weekend if the weather is kind to us.

All crew mates, with the exception of a poorly Dennis, met at Milton Country Park this morning for what we hope will be our last group kettlebell training session.  Gary and Richard also ran the 5k Parkrun.  I was there as a volunteer as I’m still recovering from last weekends 92 mile run along the Thames from Oxford to Walton on Thames, but that’s a different blog.  The seven of us swung our kettlebells, and some people stopped to wish us luck and a few people even chucked some money into our collection bucket.  We’ve currently raised about £1500 on Jason and Gary’s justgiving page and a further £1800 on the group page.  We might yet reach our £5000 target.

We had our final sea row training session on Wednesday 19 September.  The trip was memorable for a few details.  First of all Dennis proved to have a stronger stomach for rowing in choppy seas than he does for being a passenger in the back of a car.  The safety boat that Mike, our rowing instructor, was to use was not working so he had to hire a boat from the other side of Hayling Island.  This meant we had to depart from the harbour without supervision and meet Mike an hour later.  We made a bit of a mess of getting out of the harbour, mainly because Mike was shouting at us from the harbour and we couldn’t really hear him over the drone of a nearby generator.  We avoided hitting anything, but our attempt at getting away from our birth was not pretty and Mike was at risk of a seizure.  He was probably regretting letting us out in the boat on our own and without any supervision for the first part of the journey.



Getting Deborah into the water.

 However, we made it out of the estuary without incident and met up with Mike in his hired rib just before we hit the open sea.  Once out in the big blue of the Solent we had to deal with a side wind that was gusting between gale force 4 and 5.  This made rowing challenging and we frequently found ourselves rowing out of time.  Richard found himself being pulled apart by Mike for rowing too short, something we all need to pay attention to and correct on the day if we need to.  It was also made clear to us that once we’re in the sea we can’t carry on as if it's going to be a leisurely row.  To make good progress and to allow the cox to steer everyone needs to maintain firm pressure on their blades for each and every stroke.  It certainly isn’t going to be a jolly day out.



Looking a bit out of time.

 Crew positions for the row have now been fixed.  The bow team consists of Steve (who is frequently referred to as Grandpa as he’s the oldest crew member), Jason, Gary and Dennis.  We tell these guys that they are the powerhouse of the row, just so they feel better about their positions.  In reality all they have to do is shut up, not think and row.

In the stern we have Jonathan, Richard, Andy and I.  Each of us has to take a turn being the stroke and cox.  The stroke is the one person who everyone else in the boat should be following.  The stroke aims to set a consistent stroke rate of about 24 strokes per minute and to not vary this if at all possible.  This is easier said than done in a rolling sea.  The cox is responsible for steering the boat, keeping everyone in time if needs be by shouting commands in time with the strokes rowing, shouting motivational comments and making sure we don’t hit anything big.  It would be embarrassing if our row was brought to an end by us hitting a blooming big tanker. 

Looking much better.  From front to back (stern to bow) Andy (stroke), Jonathan, Alan, Grandpa Steve, Dennis, Gary (bow) & Jason in the bow passenger seat.  Richard took the picture whilst in the cox seat.

Whilst Jonathan is the shortest person in the crew he seems to relish being in the cox seat so that he can shout at everyone.  He definitely seems to have the biggest voice.  Somehow I feel he takes particular delight in correcting any of my mistakes.  I believe he’s getting me back for all the times I’ve pushed him hard in a personal training session.  I find Richard’s coxing strangely reassuring.  It must be something to do with his West Country twang adding to the experience of being in a Cornish gig.

We all started having doubts about Andy’s coxing abilities, but it’s too late to make any changes now.  On our return to harbour, and whilst rowing without supervision again, Andy steered us up the wrong channel and we found ourselves outside the wrong harbour.  We only confirmed that we weren't where we were suppose to be by using the GPS tracker on Richard's mobile.  What would we do without mondern technology?  To get us back on track Andy decided to ignore the channel marker posts and to take a short cut to the main estuary.  What he didn’t realise was that we were going over sandbanks on a falling tide.  The alarm was raised when Jonathan hit solid ground with his oar and we looked over the sides of the boat to sea ground just below the water’s surface.  Seconds letter blades of grass were poking up from under the ripples of water.  I had visions of us having to jump out of the boat to push it back to deeper water.  Fortunately we got back to the main channel and back to the right harbour without further incident and having agreed not to tell Mike about getting lost.  However, he was curious as to why we were half an hour late so in the end we had to confess.

We then had our last debriefing and motivational chat from Mike Gilbert.  He told us that we were good enough to make a crossing of the Channel in conditions up to gale force 5, the strongest winds that they will contemplate taking a rowing boat to France.  He also told us that we should be capable of making the crossing in about 5.5 hours, much faster than we had anticipated, but this is largely dependent on very good conditions.

It’s amazing to think that all our training is now behind us.  The experience so far has been amazing.  As the person who brought all these guys together for the challenge I can say that I am incredibly proud of all of them.  I think we’ve made very good progress with the training.  Early on Richard referred to us all as a bunch of misfits, which is a fair description of us.  For a start there is over 30 years separating the oldest and youngest crew member.  Our fitness levels coming into this challenge also varied considerably.  Richard was used to doing half marathon and marathon rowing events on a rowing machine, but no one else, other than me, were used to doing long endurance events.  To row for over 5 hours across busiest shipping lane in the world is going to be an incredible experience.  Mike put it into perspective as he said goodbye to us, informing us that more people have climbed Everest than have rowed the Channel.  I think it’s great that we’ll be part of such a small group of people.

One hot weekend of training

Another brief update.  It was to my great amazement that all 8 crew members got together for not just one, but two training sessions over the weekend.  First off we all met at Cantabs rowing club at 5.30pm on Friday for an hour session on the ergos.  We had planned 90 minutes, but the erg room was a sweltering sauna, plus the one person who we needed to arrive on time to let us all in was almost half an hour late, as is the way with these things.  Although we cut the time down we did step the session up by doing intervals of hard efforts.  Everyone was well and truely dripping with sweat by the end of it.  A beer or two was most definitely well earned that evening.



At Cantabs rowing club.  Back row: Steve, Dennis, Andy, Gary. 
Front row: Alan, Richard, Jonathan, Jason.

 Then on Saturday morning Dennis, Jonathan, Gary and Richard made it to Milton Country Park to take part in the weekly 5k parkrun.  There weren't any PBs this week given that it was already very hot by 9am.  I was delayed at home as I was finishing off a sign board to help attract attention to what we're doing.

Following the parkrun Jason, Steve, Andy and myself met up with the others for a one hour kettlebell session.  We had a good long warm-up before I put them through a challenging programme, which I call my 30s challenge.  The aim is to do seven exercises and complete 30 reps for each exercise, as follows:

• 30 one arm swings on each arm,
• 30 bent over rows on each arm,
• 30 squat thrusts,
• 30 snatches - 15 per arm in one set per arm,
• 30 press-ups,
• 30 kettlebell squats - 15 with kettlebell in rack on right arm and 15 on left arm,
• 30 shoulder presses - 15 per arm in one set if possible.

We didn't quite end there.  We then did a lot more swings and a series of core exercises.  Then Jonathan made us pose for a series of photos:

The Kettlebell Crew at Milton Country Park.
Andy, Gary, Steve, Dennis, Alan, Jason, Joanthan & Richard.

The Misfits.  How on Earth are we going to make it to France?

That wasn't quite all for my weekend.  With an utra marathon also coming up, I set off this morning for a 20 mile training run.  I left the house at 8am, but it was already warm.  I don't know how hot it was by 10am, but at this point I was flagging and decided to cut my run short by 2 miles.  Fortunately, I had the option to do so.  What a scorching weekend it has been for intense training.

Caught In A Riptide

Yet another belated update on the crew's progress.  On Saturday 21st July we had our third outing in the gig and for the first time we made it out to sea, rather than being stuck in the estuary around Hayling Island.

As 21st July was the first Saturday of school holidays, traffic was horrendous.  It's a shame we didn't have the foresight to see that coming.  The crew arrived at Hayling Island looking frazzled after such a long drive.  Everyone only just arrived in time to get changed and almost immediately jump into the boat for our four hour row.  We were also a man down, as Dennis was ill with a chest infection and under Doctor's orders not to do strenuous exercise.

One of our goals for our third outing was to try out possible crew positions for the final row and to practise change overs without bringing the boat to a stop.  We decided that Steve, Jason and Gary would make up the bow team and that the three of them would have to row the entire four hours.  Myself, Richard, Andy and Jonathan made up the stern team, with each taking on stroke and cox duties.

We also found ourselves setting off in the boat without having a rowing coach on board.  On this trip we'd be joined by a different coach, Steve Woods, but he would be alongside us in a separate rib.  To be left to our own devices in the boat felt like we'd made massive progress and had a lot more responsibility on our shoulders.  Everyone seemed to step up their game accordingly.  On the previous rowing trip it took several minutes for everyone to find the rhythm and to be able to row in time with the stroke.  On this occasion everything seemed to click from the first paddle.  Previously backing down (rowing backwards) to get away from the jetty was a real mess, but this time we were organised and the boat slipped away from the jetty with ease.

Once we were out of the marina and rowing on the wide estuary heading out to sea we made rapid progress, which was helped by the falling tide.  We had great weather and many other people were making the most of it.  We found ourselves sharing water with a huge fleet of sailing ships, which meant the cox had to be extra alert.  Go from the calm of the estuary to wide open sea was like stepping through a door to a different world.  The waves weren't as choppy as our previous trip, but the boat was still lifted and rocked by fairly big waves.  However, we managed to continue to row in time with stroke and make good progress.  This would change we had to turn back for home.



From stroke to bow: Jonathan, Alan, Andy, Gary, Jason and Steve.


We had headed out to sea directly away from Hayling Island.  The return row to the island was easy enough, but as we approached the mouth of the estuary it became harder and harder to make progress.  At the time I was sat in the cox seat and I found myself shouting at the crew to dig in and row hard in order to make some progress.  I could see two buoys that we were aiming for, and I could also see the full force of the water coming out of the estuary and spilling around and over the buoys with great force.  It was no wonder that rowing had suddenly become so hard.  Apparently we were rowing against a riptide.  I'm no expert but we were later told that certain atmospheric conditions can have an effect on the tide and increase it's force.  To give you some idea of the effect of the tide, for most of the row we made progress at a rate of 1 mile for every 12 minutes.  On the approach to the mouth of the estuary it took us an hour to cover 1 mile.  In the end our support boat had to come to our rescue and tow us beyond the worst of the tidal current.  We weren't the only boat in trouble, even some of the sail boats had to get a motorised tow back to harbour.

After a short tow we were cut loose and left to our own devices again.  Everyone dug in and we rowed back to harbour at a fairly fast pace.  Jason was pretty wrecked from the previous hard work, so we gave him an unplanned turn in the cox seat.  Every time someone had to change seats in the boat we managed to keep the boat moving forward by making sure that at least two people were rowing.  With Jason in the cox seat we put in short bursts of hard efforts on our return trip.  We also rowed the very last kilometre flat out, which was a great moral boost at the end of a hard four hour sea row.

Once back on dry land everyone was elated by the experience we'd gained from the trip.  It was hard to believe that this was only our third time in the boat as a unified crew.  Although everyone had just put in an awesome level of work, energy levels were high.  In fact the crew was almost unrecognisable from the travel weary car drivers and passengers who arrived at the marina earlier that day.

Since our last row fitness training has continued with running and kettlebell workouts.  We've been missing out on group ergo sessions, but most of the crew are doing this by themselves.  As we're now into August many people are away on holidays and group training sessions are becoming more sparse.  But this will change once we head into September and have just one month to our crossing.

Wet Runs and Soggy Fitness Trails

The crew have been working hard this weekend.  Three of the eight (Steve, Jonathan and Richard) managed to get up early enough Saturday morning to attempt the 5k parkrun at Milton Country Park.  Following a night of heavy rain the parkrun route was mostly one big puddle.  Only Richard managed to complete the whole 5k, but the other two should still be applauded for given it a go. 

The rest of us had reasonably valid excuses for not being there.  Myself and Gary were out with Jason to celebrate his 40th birthday.  Andy was also out late Friday evening, although I don't know if there was any particular reason for his revelry other than it being what you do when you're still in your 20s.  An age that is a distant memory for most of us in the crew.  Dennis couldn't join us as he was still on holiday in Spain.

Andy, Gary and me managed to meet up with the other three at 10am for a one hour kettlebell session.  This will be the first and last time that I will ever do serious training with a hangover.  Jason had promised to join us whilst under the influence of alcohol, but we all forgave him for not attending given that it was his birthday.

We had all agreed to meet at Girton Recreation Ground this morning to tackle the Trim Trail.  This is a reasonably substantial assault course with a good variety of obstacles and exercise stations to tackle.  Five crew members made it, including myself.  I also bolted on a 10 mile run from my home to Girton and arrived just before everyone else got there.  I then led the crew around the trail and told them what to do at each station.  I then set t everyone off and we kept at it for the next hour.  In this time everyone completed the trail between 4 to 6 times each, and all were pretty exhausted by the end.

Walking press-ups on the balance beam

Rope climb - no legs

The field was a little soggy in places

We'll give that one a miss

6 to 10 dips.

20 lifts of the beam.

Richard on the cargo net climb

10 jumps

Jonathan contemplates the height of the leapfrog station..

..and then has a go.

A couple of weeks respite for the crew

The crew have had an unintended easy couple of weeks recently.  I was away running in the Isle of Wight Ultra Marathon over the 30 June/1 July weekend, so was unable to take charge of any weekend training sessions.  Some crew members did their own thing, whilst others had a weekend off.  This past weekend has also been an easy weekend for the crew.  Some have been unavailable for training, so I decided not to do a training session for the few who were around today.  In hindsight I think it would have been a good idea for us to have met up just to maintain the impetus in our training.  It will be back to normal next week with a Saturday morning parkrun and kettlebell session for all those who can make it, which should be everyone except Dennis, who is now on holiday in Spain.