Gemma

About Gemma

Posts by Gemma :

Day 31

This is how bright it can be when the moon and stars have no cloud cover!

Cap’n Morgan

Everything out on deck from the Aft cabin to repair a leak!
Marlin strike earlier resulting in a small hole in the hull. Seawater has got inside the double hull cavity and is leaking through the fibreglass seal into the cabin.
Hole fixed expertly by Dave with wood bung and water sealant putty, and we’ve made a temporary fix to the fibreglass in the cabin, but puzzled as to why it’s leaking into here as there’s no direct connection to the outside.
No sexy underwater photos this time as it was all hands on to repair.
Still, only 1,250 miles to go…

Day 26

The Maersk Seville passing within a couple of miles of us. Nice chat on VHF with their bridge, wishing us a safe passage.

Laura’s Christmas cake nearly gone 😟

An update from Jim featuring calm seas and Dave at the oars.

Day 24

Maintenance day with a sunset and sunrise on becalmed seas.

Day 22 – New Year’s Day

A snippet from New Year’s Day on board Invictus Atlantic, as the crew head into week four of the World’s Toughest Row!

Paul doing our daily water boil and flask fill so we all have hot water for our meals- what a legend.

The Captain!

Paul on hull cleaning duty today!

Day 21

Heading very slowly into a slow south westerly breeze until Wednesday morning, so taking time out to clean the hull again and do general cleaning and maintenance today.

“It’s just gone 5am in the Atlantic, I just wanted to share this short video which will be of rowing tonight, unusually instead of being a night full of a gazillion stars to look up at, we’ve had nearly 100% cloud cover so absolute blackness no stars no horizon, nothing. the only things we can see… this video is taken from the front rowing position… is our lights, I’ve actually got Luke between me and those lights but you can hardly see him. We can’t see the white ends of the oars. The nav light on the left shows bearing and the nav light on the right shows our latitude, longitude and speed so you get a sensation that the boat is floating in mid-air both Luke and I felt a sensation of the boat spinning which it isn’t, losing your sense of sight, your other sense are heightened so feeling the water, feeling the waves and the stroke through your hands of the oars, feeling the wind on the side of my ear so I know we are not spinning as the wind is coming in the same direction over my right shoulder every time I take a stroke and then the smell of absolute nothingness, the sea doesn’t smell of anything, it doesn’t smell of any human smells it doesn’t even smell of salt it just smells warm and damp, if that’s even smell, a really strange and surreal feeling the only other thing you can see if the phosphorescence off the blades four little small circles of phosphorescence disappearing behind his which makes it look quite magical like some strange flying carpet that’s tonight’s rowing experience. Invictus Atlantic, over and out.”

Day 20

Still Christmas here on Invictus Atlantic!

The crew is almost three weeks into the World’s Toughest Row. They have 1583.6 nautical miles to go and are currently sitting in 17th place, whilst in the four crew class, they are 11th and 13th in the men’s class.

Download the app and follow their progress with YB Races

Day 18

Dolphins came to say hello and the team had their first Marlin visit on day eighteen of the World’s Toughest Row. Just a day after the first Marlin strike hit the fleet. Team Graft had a hit that went through the hull, a storage locker, and out of the deck! Spike snapped off… see more here.

“Alerted by a large bump (which I initially thought may have been mud bumping into a floating bit of wood or something (I saw a plank of wood a few days ago). We then the lurking shadow below!! Turned out to be the Marlin eyeing up the 2ft Dorado (?) sheltering under the hill. The outcome of the fishy cat and mouse was uncertain but both had dissapeared some 30 mins later. Phew! Another day with Mother Nature”