Atlantic report

A Whale of a Time?
Jonathan Gornall
The Pink Lady completes a quarter of her journey

ON MONDAY, somewhere between two and four am, on a gently rolling Atlantic Ocean, Pink Lady slipped past her first major landmark - if you can have such a thing at sea. Quarter distance to home. Our next target is halfway, which is about 400 miles (248km) from here, and if we can stick to 50 miles a day, just over 2.1 knots, we could do that in eight days. Theoretically, then, we could be home 16 days after that. But I've learnt out here not to count any chickens until they're hatched. We are holding our breath the whole time, just attempting to slip past weather systems.

At the moment we're in the grip of a north-flowing current. None of these currents is apparent to us, of course, but we have a weather router who has access to satellite technology and gives us a heads-up for what to expect.

Monday evening was calm and sunny, which is unusual for us, and we all sat on deck and celebrated. We never stop rowing, obviously, because that's the key to this attempt to smash the record, not to let even 0.1 of a mile get wasted, but we all sat there and enjoyed the sunset.

As the sun was going down we saw our first whale close up. It appeared right alongside us, about 100 yards off the starboard side, and blew off. It was a great moment: there are several expressions I've always wanted to use - "Hold the front page", "Follow that cab" and "Thar she blows". Well, last night I was able to say "Thar she blows". She then showed her tail and dived down. It was impressive, but you can't help but hope they have forgiven and forgotten the days of whaling, because our boat is tiny in comparison with her.

But if whale-watching was what this was about, I would have gone to Tenerife. We go through a cycle, like the ship's battery - which is run down every night and needs to be recharged by the generator - where we get completely run down, because this is relentless.

We have two night-time shifts, then another which we finish in daylight, by the end of which you are completely shattered. Absolutely wiped out. We have the iPod up and working now, which helps to keep us rowing through the night.

Sunday night was particularly difficult in the hands of the Atlantic, which seems to reserve its shock tricks for those occasions when visibility extends barely to the end of the oar. Morale on board is linked to the weather. Weather isn't good or bad, or hot or cold for us, but whether or not it's pushing us home. Falmouth, our destination, has attained almost mythical status in our minds. It'd better not be half-day closing when we get there!

Monday wasn't much better. I was sitting on the deck, rarely not awash with rain or spray, during my two hours off, not sleeping but tending to the water-maker. Though the sun is shining, it's not generating enough solar power to make our water. We fill our water bags with the precious fluid wrested from the sea by our desalinator, which eats electricity. To stop the ship's battery going flat we are also obliged to run our small Honda generator, so instead of enjoying the pure Atlantic air, I'm sucking in carbon dioxide from the overboard exhaust pipe. I'll probably return to the UK with fewer brain cells than I must have had to sign up for this trip in the first place.

Our true holy grail comprises the twin prizes of wind and current. We seek both, but both can seduce and mislead us. On Sunday, we found ourselves facing what must have been our third or fourth storm of the day, and faced a stark decision. Having manoeuvred ourselves at great physical expense around the Flemish Cap, which is a notorious patch of shallow water to the east of the Grand Banks, our weather router told us we faced being blown back north and on to it in what could be a force 8 gale.

We put out our anchor and debated some of the details, but realised we were still being carried north at two knots, which was astonishing, given that we row at that speed. That meant we could have been on the Flemish Cap in eight hours' time, in the midst of a terrifying gale. It suddenly clicked: why not row up-wind and sidle across the current? Miraculously, after rowing three-up, each man dropping out for a short 30-minute break for several hours we found we'd bypassed the Cap. The same current was also looping us back down, taking us further along our course. So we gained both ground and time because of the threat of the storm.

The Pink Lady copes elegantly with rough seas and rides gracefully up towering wave walls, slipping easily down their backs. We are confident enough to admire the potentially deadly power rising and falling all around us. A slip in concentration, however, and there is a rebuke: a painful kendo blow across one shin or another by a sea-driven oar handle. It is difficult to say when one day begins and another ends. Two watches of two men each pull six two-hour turns at the oars each day. It's all about concentration. Every stroke drives the boat home. I thought I would have lots of time to think, but if you start thinking or talking, everything can go haywire. That's partly why this is so exhausting - this demands that we give all we've got both mentally and physically. We're looking to smash a couple of records and we have to be focused at all times.
Depending on the type of rowing to be done, our two-hour breaks are spent either comatose or carrying out basic boat and personal admin. This incorporates making water, electricity or food and preventing one's body rotting away.

Being woken every four hours is by far the worst experience. The cabin we share contains two sleeping bags on a platform with no more than 2ft of head space, and can only be slid into. Once in and behind the hatch, which must be shut quickly in bad weather, the shattered crew must shed waterproofs and shoes before collapsing into sleep. Then, after what seems only a few seconds, you are being woken at 3.50am. The grim, clammy experience of pulling on your oils over your thermal inner layer follows. This is my daily all-time low, but I raise myself by kissing the pretty face that smiles at me from the waterproofed Polaroid I keep in the kit netting by my head.
Thoughts of home are always with us, but especially at 4pm when Mark the skipper talks to Bob Barnsley at mission control in Poole.

Our website now has a message board and Bob reads out the highlights over the satellite phone to Mark, who relays them to us. It's quite something to hear them as you work away at the oars. We love the messages; please keep them coming.