It was 2020, we were in midst of COVID and I was in the midst of an international move, or at least I was supposed to be. As my time at home increased while I waited for the greenlight to move, I ran across this weird and wonderful thing. People were rowing across the ocean!
To shed some light on why my response was awe and excitement, let’s rewind a little. My name is Nicole and in 2017 I rediscovered my love for rowing. I had done a semester of rowing at University but the 5am starts did not seem compatible with living in a dorm at the time. Fast forward 15 years and I had joined the West Australia Rowing Club. A river rowing club on the Swan River. It was fun and I built good connections there, but there was more.
A friend invited me to try Surf Boat rowing. For the non-Australians out there, Surf Boat rowing is a sport where you have four sweep rowers (each rower only uses one oar) and a Sweep (our coach and a person standing at the stern of the boat holding a large stationary oar that acts as the rudder. You start on the beach, just deep enough so that the boat is floating and at the gun we jump into the boat, row out through the break about 700m, around a buoy, and then back in, while trying to catch waves back in. It is exhilarating, and hard, and so much fun.
After I tried surf boat rowing I was in 100%. I had found a sport that I loved that I was ok at and that put me on the water 5 days a week. From that point on, the crew I was with was selected as one of two of the state female teams for West Australia. We competed at the World Surf Life Saving Championships were we came 4th and the Australian Surf Rower’s League Championships where we came 6th. But more importantly, Kat, Liz, Suzi, and Geoff became like family.
Rowing is a sport where, as Aristotle would say, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” Each of us as rowers are great in our own ways, but being in a Crew takes each of our strengths, when we use them in support of each other and put the team above ourselves, and amplifies them. With each stroke we are forming connections, we are aligning our rythyms. The more aligned and in sync you are, the faster you will go. From oar placement, to lean back, to the length of the stroke, every part of the stroke needs to be aligned with the stroke rower. And our stroke rower was Kat.
Kat has this unbelievable amount of energy and positivity and never shies away from a challenge. While we were rowing competitively (training 5 days a week at 5am and competing on Sundays), she was working 3 jobs, and working on a Masters. She was always running from one thing to another and approached each activity with the same level of passion and energy and optimism. She also has a great sense of humour and can diffuse any conflict. She was the perfect stroke.
Liz and Suzi took up the 2 and 3 seats and I rowed bow. In Surf Boat rowing (and in rowing in general), people often joke about the personality of the people in certain rowing positions. The common consensus is that the bow rower is the crazy one. This is because the bow seat is the first to go over the wave when heading out through the break…. meaning that at times the bow seat is several meters above the rest of the crew bracing for the descent after overcoming the break. It is a huge rush! I am not sure how or why I ended up in bow, but I can say that it is my favorite seat. It does also help that the bow rower in a Surf boat is a starboard side rower, which is my preference.
So, after a few years of rowing and discovering my love for the sport, when I saw what was then called the Atlantic Challenge, I was hooked! I found their website and did some research and immediately messaged the crew. While Suzi and Liz were not so keen, Kat was all in before I could even finish. She said absolutely and that was it!
With a partner in crime now confirmed, I broke the news to my husband, who is a seafarer, and he said this was a crazy idea! He said there was no way he would do anything like that and that it sounded awful. As a side note, I have found there are no neutral responses to this undertaking. There are those who think it will be an amazing adventure and respond very positively, and those who think it is crazy and awful. There are not a lot of responses in between.
It would be a year or two more before we found Annabel, our partner in crime and our third rower, making our team complete and we registered for the row, now called the World’s Toughest Row, but we have committed. Annabel is the sister of Hannah, my neighbor and best friend here in Romania. I of course like to spend time at Hannah’s house uninvited sharing life and stories and plans and talking about our kids and our work and everything else you do with a best friend. So when Hannah heard about the row, she immediately told me I had to meet her sister Annabel, an ultramarathon runner who recently found the World’s Toughest Row and was keen to do it! How fortuitous! Similar to Kat, it took almost no time to confirm Annabel was in and that she was a good fit for our crew.
We spent some time trying to find a fourth to round us out, but have not been successful and are happy with our team of three. Having said that, we have an honorary team member who has done most of the heavy lifting recently, Ade. Ade has guided us and helped us to create our logo, our website, our social media, and made what we thought was an insurmoutnable project possible. With Kat, Annabel, Ade, and myself all working hard and moving in the same direction, in time and stroke by stroke, we are all in and are working hard to make this dream a reality.
