Meet Captain Chris - Blog post by Steve

Chris has previously rowed the Atlantic Ocean alongside his brother Matt back in 2014 - theirs was also an unsupported crossing, i.e. no planned help or assistance set up in advance. Chatting with Chris he told me that they'd underestimated the food required and needed to be resupplied 3 times - to organise these food resupplies, they'd contacted Falmouth Coastguard who were able to co-ordinate with shipping close by on two occasions. The last event was much closer to Antigua and a yacht was able to drop off some supplies a few days before they completed the challenge.

Chris has done an amazing job of setting up his charity Brainwaves and has raised a great deal of money - operating costs have needed to be paid and we are getting good publicity and attention on social media which is building a healthy pot.

I was able to stay at Chris and Donna's house during the first few weeks in Australia - they have enjoyed a great deal of support from friends and family who have all helped to drive this project forwards.

Chris has an interesting job working with JFD who specialise in providing submarine rescue solutions on a global basis - our boat was prepared in JFD"s warehouse in Perth so we got to see the submersible LR5 as well as pressure vessels designed to mate with stricken submarine hatches - all of which has to be maintained and ready for deployment at a moment's notice. I know this subject is topical considering the Oceangate incident within the last few days - we on board our boat knew that little could be done considering the depth the vessel was thought to be at and we hoped for a potential miracle which sadly was not to be.

We have had some interesting chats on deck around management and leadership styles and we"d exchange stories about how things have worked (or not) in our past and current careers.

For the past few days we've had to battle against headwinds and adverse currents, nothing too strong but enough to gradually sap your energy with little forward gain. It's certainly getting hotter now and our water consumption is going up to match it. Our water is stored on deck in 10 ltr jerricans and gradually warms up during the day - I left my personal water bottle in the sun too long yesterday and had to drink warm water - I won't make that mistake again!

Wildlife has been scarce; however, we had some whales off our port side yesterday afternoon although they were too camera shy to capture.

As it's a relatively calm day, Ben felt confident to fly his drone, so he's given it a spin and taken some pictures and videos of the boat underway - it'll take a bit of time to process, but I'll get a copy of the footage to add to another post - but I am sure that'll go up on Instagram in the next day or so.

OK, that's all for now....

Steve

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