On any expedition, the means by which you’re going to travel is incredibly important, as you need to have lots of faith that it will get you from point A to point B! This is even more important when rowing the width of an entire ocean. This vessel will be our home, our means of travel and, if we have an emergency, our means of staying safe until we can be rescued.
As part of the rules of the race, we have to make sure we have everything we need from the minute we leave, including lots of safety equipment and other survival-related items. All these need to be stored in the boat. If you look at the photos of the safety inspection, you can see it all, ranging from the food for the crew to the liferaft and radio equipment.
While we’re away, we also need to make our own water. We have some large jerry cans, but we can’t make enough to get us all the way across the Atlantic. We therefore have to have a water maker onboard that we can use to turn sea water into drinking water. This uses the same technology (reverse osmosis) that we use on our submarines when we are at sea to make drinking water.
We are rowing in a Rannoch 45 Ocean Rowing Boat called HMS Oardacious. The name is inspired by the real Royal Navy submarine HMS Audacious. The boat is made out of fiberglass and is 8.64 meters (28.3 feet) long and 1.74 meters (5.7 feet) wide at the widest point.
