Team Anna Victorious

Since our last blog we have passed a number of significant milestones. It is now less than 500 days until we set off for Antigua. We make reference in every update, but the passage of time seems to move faster and faster with so much still to do.

Secondly and probably even more importantly we took Emma from her barn and made the short trip to Sunseeker Poole with the help of Andy, Ed’s dad (and the age of his driving license). Emma was dwarfed by a range of luxury super yachts, but the amazing Sunseeker team carefully craned her into the water of Poole Harbour.

As soon as we set foot on her deck it all became very real: the way that she moved in the water and the rock as one of the crew moved around the deck and the realisation that this boat is bloody tiny and we have to spend over month on it.

We have trained on Concept 2 rowers and we’ve even had a go at rowing on the river in Bath earlier in the year, but nothing prepared us for how it would feel to be out at sea. We were steering manually which hopefully will not be the case during the race, when we will be using an auto helm that will keep us on a predetermined course. The presence of other craft and buoys in Poole harbour meant that this would not be wise. Fortunately for us we had a support team on a rib should be have got in any trouble. This was crewed by a wealth of maritime experience and their advice and guidance was really appreciated. They also managed to get some great footage and pictures.

We made our way tentatively out into open water with the inevitable occasional clatter of oars and finding that if you wear shorts with pockets the handle of oar often finds their way into your shorts and pulls you off the seat. We were soon in our stride and found that we could get over 5 knots in these calm conditions.

Once we were sufficiently far enough away from the shore and other craft Rob, and his lack of navigational prowess, was trusted with the helm. He then had the realisation that only he, Adam and the rest of the fair skinned population will understand: he was in the sun, there is no shade and in all the excitement of rowing Emma, forgot to apply any sun cream! He managed to find a bottle of factor 50 pretty quickly but never having been particularly dexterous or able to multi task, he only managed to apply cream to one arm before throwing the sun cream into the sea whilst trying steer through some very insignificant wash from a passing vessel. With parallels with Tom Hanks in the film Castaway when Wilson went overboard, Rob then had to face the likelihood of having to go into work later that day entirely sunburnt with the exception of my left arm. Luckily, we all had our own stash of sun cream and Rob was able to nick some from Ed to save his delicate skin. (For those of you worried about plastic pollution our support rib picked up the escaping sun cream which resulted in Rob looking like he had won the lottery).

This whole journey is new to all of us and we are determined to maximise every learning opportunity. We now know to apply sun cream before getting on the boat or in the cabin. Keep water close at hand, we all came off the trip feeling really dehydrated, we will tweak how we best achieve a good level of hydration this on future trips.

Take a look at our social media platforms (doitforanna) for some of the great footage taken of our first voyage.

In other news we had our monthly Zoom call with Dan Harris from GB rowing who has adjusted our training plan for August, so we are moving forward with our strength and conditioning as well as our rowing technique. We have dreaded 2k test on the Concept 2 rowers coming which will give us an indication of our progress.

Thanks to all of you for your continued support and encouragement. With less than 500 days to get, we need it!