Row an ocean, just you and the boat
The boat is barely twenty-four feet, about two small cars nose to tail, and then nothing but water in every direction. You row in two-hour shifts, day and night, ninety minutes off to eat and sleep before the oars again. Some days you cover forty miles, others twelve against a headwind that won't quit. Crossings run from forty days to more than ninety. Somewhere around week six the desalinator fails, and you find yourself elbow-deep in salt-crusted tubing at three in the morning, three hundred miles from anyone, fixing the thing that turns seawater into the only water you have.
Practical
- Cost
- $40,000–100,000+
- Best time
- Race departs La Gomera each December; most training happens year-round
- Difficulty
- Hard
- Time it takes
- 40–90+ days at sea, plus a year or more of training and fundraising
- What people get wrong
- People assume help is close by if things go wrong, but rescue at that distance can take days, not hours. Most who abandon the crossing do so from sleep deprivation and blistered, infected hands, not from storms.
- With
- Alone