Two British women have become the first female crew to row non-stop and unaided across the Pacific.
Jess Rowe and Miriam Payne spent close to half a year at sea as they rowed from Peru to Cairns, Australia, travelling around 8,000 miles in their 9m vessel, Velocity.
They slept in intervals of two hours, swapping over, and faced intense heat, equipment failure and power issues over more than 160 days on the ocean.
Speaking to Sky News this morning after completing the journey, Ms Rowe said: “It doesn’t feel real. It hasn’t really sunk in yet. It feels like only yesterday we left Peru to set off on the Pacific Ocean, but it’s amazing to be in Australia.”
She added: “We didn’t really have any moments where we were terrified. We absolutely loved every minute of it. There were definitely some pretty brutal challenges along the way and some equipment failures, that kind of thing.”
Ms Rowe said there were worries after a first attempt, when their boat’s rudder broke.
“We were fearing it would all be over on just our first weekend,” she said. “But we weren’t really terrified. It’s pretty peaceful out on the Pacific.
“We didn’t really have any storms, although we had some times where there were big waves. A lot of the time we had really calm weather, which is actually a lot harder, and the rowing is harder and it’s really hot. It’s quite intense heat.”
‘We thought we might have to swim to shore’
Ms Payne said the last few hours of the row, with the end in sight, ended up being “a bit dramatic”.
She continued: “The wind was way higher than forecast, we pretty much had to row into a 20-knot headwind. We were outside the channel coming in. We thought we were going to have to run aground and swim to shore, we were like, are there crocodiles and sharks here?
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“We just said to each other we can’t come this close and lose the record in the last five miles, it’s just insane.
“But we just kept on going and radioed up the Marina, who said there was flatter water ahead and the wind was going to calm down.
“We were rowing as hard as we could and we didn’t have much left by the time we finished. It was a bit wild!”
