Throughout life, we make mistakes, learn from them and (hopefully) never make the same mistakes again… so what did I learn from our expedition around Skye? The answer is a lot.
Lesson number 1
Always put the rudder in before you try to do anything!
This lesson hasn’t been shared publicly yet, but for any aspiring ocean rowers, it’s an important one and we look back on it now and laugh a lot! Depending on how steep the slipway into the water is changes whether you can put the rudder in before you launch the boat or not. In Skye, it definitely wasn’t steep enough and none of us fancied a swim in the freezing cold Scottish water. During training on the day before, Charlie from Rannoch Adventure said “don’t worry if it isn’t steep enough, you can use the pontoon and reach under the boat to fit the rudder”.
Our pontoon was 1km from the slipway, no problem we thought, we can just row over as we would in a normal rowing boat, how hard can it be without a rudder…… and here comes lesson number 1. Scott and I set off rowing and quickly realised that the tide and wind would helplessly push the boat round in circles each time it caught the side, leaving us in disarray. Without a rudder in we had nothing to keep us going straight through the water. Anyway, the end result was we ended up having to row backwards so the Drogue helped to keep us straight. Rowing is a pulling exercise we spent our first km of the exped pushing instead - #hardestrowofthetrip 😊
Once we got to the pontoon it turns out it was too high to reach under anyway, so someone ended up going for a swim…. In the future, don’t be a wimp, get in the water and put the rudder in first, it’ll save a lot of time and effort.
Lesson number 2
Let your feet air on every occasion.
By the end of the first day my feet hurt. They weren’t blistered or rubbing, they were just sore all over. For the whole of the first day I didn’t take my shoes off once, I never let my feet air, and it was so hot (not what we expected in Scotland) that my feet were probably wet all day and I didn’t notice. I also took two pairs of Nike Metcons with me, a new pair and an old, battered pair. I’m thinking for the future two different brands of trainers might be a better idea, so they have a slightly different fit for any rubbing that I do encounter. I suppose the question next is which ones do I go for? At nearly £100 a pair, trial and error could be an expensive game…
Lesson number 3
Eat everything all the time…
I like food, actually I love food. I’m not one to skip meals and I’m always thinking about what my next meal is going to be. We had 3 main meals and a 1500kcal snack pack on board the boat for each day. We set off on the first day after breakfast and I didn’t eat anything until we anchored up to wait for the tide to change that evening when I then just ate a main meal and got my head down to sleep for a few hours. Fast forward 2 days and arriving at our final anchor point I was starving. I was so hungry, probably verging on hangry. I sat and ate two main meals, a full snack pack and I started tucking into the additional rations we had onboard (mostly chocolate bars).
Lesson learnt, eat before and after every shift even if it’s just a bite of something small. Hydration is also key so keep drinking, even if it does mean you need a wee every 5 minutes…
Lesson 4
Waves are cool, but sleep is definitely more important.
Everyone thinks that we want to row in nice still waters, but we actually want the opposite. Still water is hard work to gain any considerable speed (not as bad as head winds, or working against the tide), and you have to really work for every metre. Ideally lots of rear wind, which pushes us along and creates some nice big waves that we can surf along on it’s some of the best conditions for ocean rowing. When you hit the wave at the right time and it pulls you along, it’s great. Everyone tells you about it before you set off but until you experience it, you don’t realise how fun it is.
But when something is fun, you can so easily forget about the important things like eating, drinking, washing, taking social media content, and the most important thing, sleeping! And when sleep is in short supply, sitting on the roof of the cabin (clipped on of course), singing along to the speaker, enjoying life and surfing the waves can incur a slight problem, you forget to sleep. Fast forward to the night shifts and yawning was now my favourite thing to do along with how long you can close your eyes for and stay in rhythm with the person in front of you. I wonder if sleep rowing is a thing, I’m sure I’ll find out in the not-so-distant future.
The whole expedition was a steep learning curve from start to finish but every day is a school day especially when you’re doing something for the first time. I can’t put into words how incredible the whole experience was from start to finish. As I’m writing this I’m smiling just thinking about our next trip and how many memories we made as a team going around Skye.
We will be setting off on our next on-the-water training week on the 14th August, and we can’t wait!
Media Lead, Laura Barrigan