Friday 10th was quite a relaxing day, the sea state was calm and there was no cloud cover making it blistering hot. It made it feel like a 2hour watch was much longer as the sun zapped the energy out of your body.

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We managed to maintain about 4.2knts of boat speed for most of the day and this was in the right direction to the south.

During the day we took some time to do a deck tidy and found a few flying fish had become residents on board rose.

Niall has been coaching from the start of the journey on my rowing technique and I am coming on well. I am now able to keep the stokes in time and not dig my oars in too deep. When you get it right the boat glides along beautifully.

We decided to experiment with the watch rotations so that each person could at least once a week have a 6 hour off watch period. This means that once an evening one of us has to row solo whilst the other 3 sleep. Niall did first to trial the process. I then had the opportunity to row the 01:00 - 03:00 shift solo. At first I was nervous but after 30 mins I put on my headphones and turned up the music. The time then flew by along with the boat maintaining a 3.2knts single handed. At points just watching the reflections on the oars can be mesmerising, along with the chainlinks in the ocean which are created during your recovery stroke from droplets hitting the sea water.

We finished the day by treating ourselves to a another locker of meals which gave us a new selection of menu options, now including salmon and broccoli pasta, spagbol and chicken fried rice.


From Colin's blog