Day 10 - Surfing the High Seas!

It has been an interesting 24 hours mainly due to the weather. As I mentioned yesterday we were experiencing some strong winds and big swell, almost immediately after I finished yesterdays update the decision was made to stop rowing as to continue would have been unnecessarily dangerous. The swell reached about 6m at times and with oars catching in the water and the boat beginning to surf there was real potential for somebody to damage a thumb or get an oar in the ribs. So for the first time in over a week we got a break from the 2 on 2 off routine and I even managed to get about 3 hours sleep in one go! In poor conditions many of the smaller ocean rowing boats are forced to go to sea anchor and sit out the weather, we have a significant advantage in that we have automatic steering so once that is programmed we can allow the wind to blow us along, this means we can still make good ground even when not rowing, about 3.5 mph. We finally got back to the oars at 1900 just as the sun had set and we were quickly back into routine, rowing through the night. I have now rowed over 100 hours and in excess of 120,000 strokes since the start of the trip, by the time we get to Barbados I should have done about 5 times that!! Mike