584 - ADAM RADCLIFFE - EXCLUSIVE First Podcast After Rowing From NYC to UK!

34:23Yeah. And people are like, oh, you're a vlogger. How many subscribers you got? Like 10. Yeah, right, right. It's so weird though, isn't it? Because like you might be creating content that's better than like someone else. Yeah. But then if you tell someone in the street you've got 10 followers and that other person, who could be shit at what they're doing, says they've got a million for whatever reason, the person you're speaking to will feel more... What am I trying to say? People are inclined to go towards the one with the numbers. They'll go, he knows what he's doing and you're wasting your time.

34:58Not that you're at the start of the journey. It's mad, isn't it? What did your friends think of it when you told them you were going to go fly to the Philippines? I was pretty I think I curated my friendship circle quite nicely like everyone was quite you know inspired and inspiring like trying to help me do whatever I wanted so they were all just like let's just let's see how this bold move got and let's see how this one plays out like they were all pretty yeah pushing me on so yeah did you have to learn to be good on camera because most people are shit yeah I was so bad like anyone can go to my Adam Radcliffe is my full name you can go to my YouTube channel and filter by oldest obviously well obviously I'm going to do that yeah hi I'm Adam when I'm starting a YouTube channel, I'm going to do some cool stuff.

35:38How long would you say you've started? How long did it take for you to get comfortable on camera? Because I still find it awkward. Oh, sorry. What's that mean? Why did I just say Fiddler? My Spotify was playing. Oh, it's Halloween for some reason. Yeah. How long would you say you started to feel comfortable on camera? I think it was about a year and a half until I could start talking without knowing exactly what I was going to say. So I don't know if you guys have this as well. You pre-scripted stuff, would you? Often if I was going to talk in a public place, I'd be like, I have to know exactly what I'm going to say or I'm just going to stutter.

36:09Right. But now if I know what I'm going to say, I'm going to talk about this and then this, I can free ball it. I'm sure you guys would do it like that as well. Did you hate your voice at the start? I got over that quite quick. Did you? Yeah. So yeah, I think I did, but I've speak to so many people who are not used to being on video and they hate their voice. I think it's the thing with the older generation as well, isn't it? Because we're always on camera. Your YouTube channel's looking pretty sick, mate, to be honest. I've got that plaque on the way. Have you? Yeah, finally. The 100k plaque.

36:38Yeah, yeah. I don't know where ours is. What are you on on YouTube? Happy I was on 770k. We must have loads of plaques. I've got a lot of plaque in these. Where's the worst place you've been? Evening, buyer's remorse. Buy a new car, I'll be moving in. Let's get started. Sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana. You what? Yeah, great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it. So there's no... No, no buyer's remorse. More like buyer's rejoice. I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it. Buyer's rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana. Limitations and exclusions may apply.

37:23See our seven-day return policy at Carvana.com. I really don't like Egypt. Oh, okay. Cairo is just a... You're a walking dollar sign in Cairo. Really? And there's no respect for your personal space. so like if you want to go and see the pyramids they're obviously magnificent and the only ancient wonder of the world still to be standing but you know I was wearing like my G-Shock not even a nice watch and someone goes to like grab your wrist and then they're like come this way and then I tried to go to the pyramids like just as it was closing and the security guard like literally pulled his gun and I'm like so unnecessary I just won't go in alright wow you should have just shown him your vein on your bison he would have walked away seen these guns right so yesterday you were kind enough to ping me over a list of some of the stuff you've done and we want to get onto the row that's the main thing that's what you're fresh off the back of but let me just read the listeners some of these crazy crazy things that you seem to have done so 70 plus solo skydives from 15 ,000 feet climbing the highest mountain in Costa Rica in 16 hours shits all over your three peaks solo ascent of the highest volcano in Central Africa rowing 250 miles through the deserted islands in the bahamas what was that like that was amazing it was the most unscripted adventure yeah you could imagine so it was actually the same boat that we rode across the atlantic oh wow um it was deserted it was deserted off the canary islands which are just off the west coast of africa right yeah and a team was trying to row across the middle of the atlantic and they after four days were like this is we're not cut out for this so then they got helicopter rescued after four days and left the boat the boat then spends 12 months floating all the way across the mid-atlantic until it lands on a deserted island in the bahamas unmanned but unmanned entirely unmanned hence why it took like a year to go and someone spots it word gets out to the owner the owner knew my mate jack jarvis who i did this row with yeah he calls me and i'm in ecuador at the time and he says there's this boat on a deserted island you fancy it i'm like yeah so so i fly from ecuador to the bahamas and there's a small island called north alutha right and um the owner of the boat comes out fixes the electronics and we kind of have to convince the police we're like yeah this is really our boat like let us take it away um get it up to what you can you just claim this boat yeah he had the like the proof of purchase so like we had to prove it hang on what do you say because i'm quite thick you'll learn this about me what do you mean because i thought your mate had just found a boat no so he knew the owner he told us this oh he knew the owner yeah okay so the owner got told your boat's in the Bahamas and my mate knew the owner right so the owner's Chris right and my mate's Jack yeah and so Chris and Jack fly out to the Bahamas right and um yeah I join them and then we kind of get it working alongside Brucey who was also he's an ex-rural marine who was also on this road okay and so three of the four that went across the Atlantic all went to the Bahamas to this small island and we tell the police like yes this is our boat try and fix it up um and then we have to try and get it to Miami and that's 280 nautical miles because we want to get it to the mainland states to fix it for this proper crossing.

40:25Right. So you knew at this point that you were going to do this New York trip? Well, the other two, the other guys did. So Jack Jarvis, Royal Engineer, spent 10 years in the military, and David Bruce, Royal Marine, 10 years in the military. Right. They were like, they were keen to do it, and they'd done ocean roads before. And I was like, sounds pretty scary, lads. Like, I'm not sure I'm up to it yet. Let me do this little one first, and then we'll see. Yeah. So we went, and yeah, the plan was to do it. And I was like, yeah, yeah, I'll do it, I'll do it. But I hadn't fully committed yet. And then we ended up spending like eight days island hopping through the Bahamas in order to get the boat back.

40:58Because when you're rowing, obviously, you don't go that fast. You can only do like two or three knots. Right. And so if there's strong winds, like two knots or three knots of wind, it will just push you or even more, like 10 knots of wind. Yeah. You just can't row into it. Right. So we'd have to get to an island, stop, get to an island, stop, get to an island, stop. And then we got it to Miami. Fucking hell. And one of the islands, like it's very shark infested waters in the Bahamas as well. And one of the islands we got to was like completely uninhabited. but we thought it was going to be inhabited when we got there.

41:25So we row up to it and it's just this one family living there. And they're like, they thought we were like a broken sailboat. They're like, what are you doing here? They're like, oh, we're just going to pull up, rest here, go to the shops. Could they speak English? Yeah, they were actually American expats. Oh, right. And the Bahamas, the Bahamians speak English as well. Oh, right. Okay. And they just had this island on their own. Yeah. So they just like built this, like used solar panels and like big tanks of water for their fresh water. and they fish using the, like literally catch their protein from the ocean and then they bring their carbohydrates, like loads of pasta and stuff when they fly in.

42:00Wow. And they were like, no, no shops here, sorry. Yeah. But then they welcomed us in, taught us how to spear fish and we were like, this is just the weirdest experience. Is this all on your YouTube channel? Yeah, it's all on the YouTube. Fucking hell. Do you document everything you do? I try to, yeah. Yeah. So you go to these, what was it, eight different islands or something like that, you said? Yeah, I'm four of them in the end. Okay. And then you get to Miami. Yeah. And you're fixing the boat up in Miami, are you? Yeah. We get it then sent to Maryland because Jack had some family there. And then we, over the next year, planned this expedition, tried to get sponsorship.

42:32It cost us like, we had to get 30 grand's worth of sponsorship. So like went to different companies, asked them for, you know, we'll put your logo on the boat if you sponsor us. Yeah. And then we got it ready for June this year. Obviously June just gone. Right. What's the boat like? Talk us through it. We know nothing about boats. Yeah. It's tiny. It's way smaller than you'd imagine. Right. So we're going from, if there's like a canoe and a ship, where are you? Way closer to the canoe. Like the length of this, shorter than the length of this room, like seven meters long. And if you think seven meters long, but one person sleeps on one side, so that's two meters gone.

43:07So you've got five left. One person sleeps on the other side. That's another two. So you've got three left and you just got like three meters of deck space where two people are rowing at all times. Fucking hell. So that you can't actually, unless you're sleeping or rowing, there's no space to be anywhere. and it's only a meter and a bit wide so literally like that wide yeah so you're like hobbling over each other to get round and uh if you want to use the toilet like the bucket you have to um stop someone rowing in order to do so so it really is crammed wow and you can't stand up so literally it's my first time standing up five days ago in two months because you're just like holding on to things as you move around yeah so so you'd you'd obviously had a big experience to this boat before you actually set off on this this latest mission yeah well you did was that not enough to put you off it was actually good question because i remember the last night as we were rowing into miami obviously i'd agreed verbally to these guys to do the atlantic one yeah and i woke up at like because you have to do shift patterns of like two hours on two hours off or three hours on three hours off i woke up for this midnight shift you know what it's like when you wake up in the middle of the night after two hours everyone knows it's like oh my god i I just want to go back to sleep.

44:12Yeah. And now I've got to exercise. Yeah. Worst possible combination. You'd probably have a full English. Exactly. So I remember waking up and you wrestle with your subconscious. And I thought to myself, remember how shit you feel now, because they're going to ask you to do that when you get on land. And like, just don't do it because it's so horrible. Yeah. And then sure enough, we got it back. A couple of days passed. And I was like, no, it wasn't that bad, was it? I'll do the big one. Right, right. So let's get into this. Let's get into the big mission. Is there a name for it? Is there a name for the mission or are we just going to call it the big mission?

44:44So Team United We Conquer is what we called our team. Okay. And it was just a North Atlantic record row we were going for. Right, okay. So you set off from New York City. Yes. And the aim is to get to Southampton in what would have been the record? 43 days would have been the fastest ever crossing. That specific route would have. Yeah, that specific. It would have got us the entire North Atlantic record as well. Right. Is the record based on like a specific type of boat or is it just as long as it's road? Yeah, so rowing boat, but there's actually two classifications of rowing boat now. So it's an evolving sport.

45:18We were in a classic boat, but there's this new ones called Rannox, which catch the wind a lot more. So they're like half sailing boats, half rowing boats. So like you do get more wind advantage. Right. And yours is purely? Ours was just like barely any surface area, so just rowing. Can I search the model of this boat up so I can see it? Yeah, yeah. I think the best way would be via my Instagram. Yeah. Do you reckon? Yeah, I'm going to have a little look. So with the new type of boat that can catch the wind, wouldn't the record have counted if you'd used one of those? The separate record, yeah.

45:50Yeah. That's cheating, that one, isn't it? What was that? What did you ask? The newer rowing boat that they didn't use can catch the wind so they can go faster, and obviously that will help make things a little bit easier. That's why world records, when you're doing 100-meter sprint, a world record won't count if there's wind pushing well that no no in the olympic if there's like an official if there's enough wind they can't count it i didn't know that yeah because it's cheating in a way accidentally you're not meaning to because i was going to go out to try do a um 10k but try and find the route in norwich that was the most downhill that again that probably wouldn't count i'd imagine there'll be elevation rules right right so um yeah if you go on one of the reels it'll pan to a drone shot and you'll be able to see it i can't i need to log in on here but But are we allowed to use photos and stuff in this?

46:36Yeah, of course. Yeah, wicked. Right, so... I'll send you a Google Drive with loads of B-roll. Oh, perfect. Nice one. Okay, so what was the date you left? 19th of June we left. 19th, okay. And who are the four people? I know you briefly touched on it, but I want to picture this boat and who's on it. Yeah, so you've got Jack Jarvis, who spent 10 years in the Royal Engineers, David Bruce, who goes by Brucie, more than 10 years in the Royal Marines, and then Nutty, whose actual name is Sam Edwards. You wouldn't put that together. Who also, Brucey's best mate and spent also over 10 years in the Royal Marines.

47:10And they're all just getting out of the military now. And so that's why we're raising money for a veterans mental health charity called Head Up who like help both preventatively and like to give you the resources you need if you do reach rock bottom by building a retreat to welcome both veterans and serving military personnel able to understand the best ways to deal with their mental health that's amazing yeah yeah and you raised over 100 grand yeah yeah i thought it was 50 and we got oh congrats thank you very much um you you were talking about being at school being uh inadequate like feeling a bit shy i didn't say that word did you feel inadequate on the boat with free yeah good question yeah before we started before we started i was like i'm really the weak link they've got you know they're hard as nails yeah and they've all done like got ocean more ocean wearing experience than me um and so yeah i definitely had it helped though because i had that chip on my shoulder i was like yeah i'm not getting no sympathy if i complain like gotta just get on with it yeah and so that really helped with my mindset going into it so as soon as like we were a week in especially we'll talk about the capsize soon like we capsized after the first week as soon as we'd kind of overcome that i kind of got the nod of approval from everyone like this guy's up to it oh really yeah yeah it was nice yeah did you have to do training and stuff uh that bahamas row was like oh of course a good amount but then i did like a year on the concept two machine which is horrible yeah i know you mentioned your marathon on a treadmill yeah it's so much harder in one place because you just at least when you're running you get the change of scenery yeah when you're like rowing on running on a treadmill or rowing you're like am i going anywhere is that the row machine that was in the yeah the normal ones right gyms yeah so how long would you sit on there but at least an hour a day for the last month and a half yeah that's disgusting but like i know maybe Maybe like for the last three months, at least an hour a day, I'll touch it.

48:58Is that on the full power one? Yeah, I'd stick it on. I'd put it on eight rather than 10. And then, yeah, just go at it high wattage the whole time, pretty much. You know, I thought my treadmill stuff was boring. That'd be worse. Yeah, that'd be awful. Did you say the original owner of the boat didn't go? Correct. He came over to the Bahamas. Yeah. Did he not talk you out? Because he's given up after four days of something. And he had to leave the boat and helicopter. Are you not going, well, maybe we shouldn't be doing this? So the owner isn't the one that failed that mission. He chartered it.

49:26Oh, okay. But he also is sick of ocean rowing. He works in ocean rowing, but he did a Pacific row from Japan to California, I think. And that took him like half a year. And he was like, I'm not doing that again. Yeah, I bet. What supplies did you need to pack? So we know who's on the boat. What items are on there? So we didn't have to bring any fresh water. So we had a water maker, which costs a few grand. And what that does is it desalinates ocean water so that you like, it makes 20 liters per hour. So you like put it into a jerry can and it uses solar power to work. So that's how we like constantly got our fresh water.

49:59Well, and it takes all the toxic shit out. Yeah, it takes all the salt out. So cool. So you just had unlimited water, really? Yeah, pretty much. We'd run out of energy first before we'd run out of solar power first. Right. And really weird thing, I wasn't going to mention this, but it's just clocked that water has tasted salty to me ever since coming back. Has it? And I'm like, what's going on? And it's because that desalinated ocean water has zero minerals in it because it's just pure H2O. and now it's just clocked. Does that taste salty now? I can taste the potassium in here. It's really weird.

50:30Was the water on the boat like the best water you've ever had? It was like pure. Yeah, just like pure. I'm not sure it's the best for you because there's no minerals. Yeah. Yeah, it's like just pure water. Yeah. Can anyone get hold of these things then? Yeah, why? You fancy it? Yeah. I want to taste it. I want to see what it's like. Yeah. Because I have a thing. You'd definitely be able to do this but my cousin was shocked that I can taste the difference between bottled water and tap water. nice you can do that right probably if I trained it now yeah yeah he came up to me at Christmas and was like this is bollocks I was like no I definitely can and he gave me two in the same cup and I could smell the dip wow smell I promised you straight away I was like that's the smell the minerals there that's your Olympic sport I'm fucking shit I'm like he's out here rowing I'm going if you give me two cups I can tell you which one's tap water so you've got the you've got the filter on there what else have you got on there um so we put 1.3 million calories under the boat as well so we we thought we'd burn between eight and ten thousand a day yeah um and so we budgeted six thousand to eat so we'd like slowly lose weight was the plan you wanted to lose weight well we couldn't fit any more on the boat we filled every cabin filled the underside of the boat we like could barely sleep anywhere because we had so much food on it so that was kind of the most we could put on and what foods that um mainly freeze dry rations so like all the hydration is taken out the food and you boil with a jet boil boiling water and rehydrate it and then you can have it's quite normal stuff like spaghetti bolognese or chili con carne or all right so that was pretty palatable yeah um and then to increase the calories we had these nut butters which became a bit of a running joke on the boat because none of us could stomach them for the first two weeks because we're like these things are horrible and as soon as we got hungry we were like they're all right actually what are they they was like I have a cashew and almond like blend of just nuts.

52:20And then they make it chocolate flavor, but the chocolate was super artificial. Oh, right. And there was a time like they, they don't homogenize very well if you'd leave them for a while. So you have to like knead them and make sure they're all like, you know, consistent throughout. Yeah. We didn't know that at the start. So you kind of pick it up and squeeze it and you get just the oil in one go. Oh. It just makes you gag. And I threw up over the side of the boat. Yeah. It put me off for a few days. Did you, did you take any like luxuries? like a little like a little chocolate bar here and there and stuff like that yeah i've got a good story about yeah go on if you want yeah um there was a time where we're on parachute anchor where um if you if the wind and storm is so bad against you and you're getting blown in the wrong direction you put this parachute in the water where it catches drag in the water so you don't get blown so far in the wrong direction so instead of getting blown 100 miles back the way you came you get blown 20 miles um and you still get blown as much as that yeah in like 24 hours you still get blown like 20 miles or something if it's a ferocious hell yeah wow um and so there's two cabins yeah one of them fits is we call it the coffin cabin because it's literally a coffin you could like fit in it like that and you sleep and you just get given food and that's all you sounds amazing it's all me up it gets claustrophobic after a while hot as well yeah but it's all right if it's not too hot right and then the other cabin sleeps two at a push like normally just sleeps one yeah two at a push but in a storm you have to put three in there so there was this storm where we had a couple of storms but you like have to sleep where one person's like that with his legs on the other one and then his legs are on the other one and you like hash over each other and try and sleep and you just i would fucking hate it's grim that's probably the worst part of it yeah um and we had 36 hours once on parachute anchor and i luckily it was my off shift sleeping when the decision was made to go on parachute anchor so so they like left me in that cabin on my own i was like yeah so and i was pretty tired as well so i was just like catching up on sleep i was a bit lonely don't get me wrong it was a bit hot yeah but i was like uh it's better than being in there with those lads yeah um and we had these like rationed biscuits that we were gonna save for special occasions so like halfway um a thousand miles to go 500 miles to go 400 miles to go and so we had four packs of biscott and four five packs of pringles and we had barely touched them at this point and um the boys they only told me this once we reached land like three days ago they only told me this story that constantly throughout the journey i was like counting them i was like okay so if we can have a pack of pringles this day then wait two days have a pack of biscoff i was like buzzing off it as what i was living for yeah and as we get into the end there was only three packs of biscoff and jack was like no i swear i only bought i think i must have just only bought three like i'm not sure what's going on i'm you know i forgot it's been a long trip yeah i was like oh damn okay there's only three on board turns out when i was stuck in that cabin they all scoffed one of the backs of biscuits so i'm glad they told me when we got back yeah yeah and uh and yeah to be honest on balance i'd rather have been in there and not the biscuits than had just that sweat fest right three blokes so so away from food did you have any um any other luxuries or anything that we wouldn't we wouldn't imagine not really mate because you just don't get any time yeah right 12 hours of rowing you're trying to sleep for at least six hours yeah um obviously i was doing social media which took like an hour a day yeah um what are you filming and editing on the laptop i wasn't editing no just on my phone so i send it to someone on land and then they would do the b-roll and stuff and upload it but i still had to like plan the scripts film the videos and right obviously um and then yeah admin is like the the weakest part of the body or the thing that goes first is your bum because you're sat on it all the time yeah and you can't like exfoliate it so you just end up getting random sores like at various points and we all had problems at various points.

55:53Did you? Yeah. What kind of problems? So I, you're right if you get a spot like somewhere, somewhere on your ass, but if you get one like right on the bit where you have to sit, it's horrible. Yeah. I ended up getting like a cyst, like a boil, like right on the bit on my right bum cheek. Oh, fuck. And I was like, lads, like really hurts. And they're like, just get on with it. Just right on. I'm like, no, it really hurts. So I like showed them and they were like, yeah, fair play. That actually looks pretty bad. And it had like, had a bit of blood like on the surface and so i went over to jack in his big cabin at the time because i was in the small one and he put a needle in it and just instantly pressure was relieved oh then it started you know disinfected it and it was all right but see this is all the grim stuff you don't think about you just think about the the labor of it don't you not think we're at risk of getting those from sitting doing a podcast for hours on end yeah i'm covered in them got millions just don't complain about it's quite hard yeah it's weird to think of how much pre-planning had to go into it like you've you said like you planned to slowly lose weight over it who's doing all the maths behind everything before you go like because surely there is a chance that you've gone obviously they they stole the biscoff while you're asleep there's a chance like anything could have gone wrong and you've not got enough like are you all having to double check everything or yeah there's a lot of that like you know even working out how much wattage the starlink would use how long we could have it on per day how much energy the water maker uses um and then you know how many calories how much will burn there's a lot of guesswork and you try and build intolerance but there's only so much you can do and we're all kind of double checking each other did you do any of that planning wrong we just about we got through everything by the skin of our teeth so we had like three four 12 volt sockets at the start yeah like charging phones or appliances or power banks and because of like salt corrosion they were like not in good shape at the start but like halfway across we only had one socket left oh so we were like this is pretty screwed if we You can't do the Starlink and the rest of it.

57:42What was your biggest worry before setting off? People must have died doing this, right? Yeah, so the North Atlantic's 7 % death rate and 50 % failure rate. So we knew going into it, poor planning will cause us 50 % of people don't even get across. And you can get rescued, you can get helicopter rescued in the first five days or the last five days, or a cargo ship could help you if you're in the middle, unless you're in a huge storm, then you could be screwed. Well, so the helicopter can only help you in those bits because you're closest to the land. Exactly, yeah. Otherwise, you're just out there on your own.

58:14Yeah. So if it's on day six, you want to fuck it off. You've got to, you look like a pussy because then if you want to fuck it off and the rest of them don't, you're like, well, that's not very good. Yeah, right. And then you have to call a Mayday in and get the international maritime law is that if you're a ship in distress, another ship will come and help you. So there was these huge cargo vessels that we would see like every day or every other day. um so you're normally about 24 12 to 24 hours away from one and so you can divert one to you and then try and board that like a somali pirate to get to get out basically well and this could be any boat any boat in the area that's just the law that they have to help yeah if you're in distress yeah did you have to plan your route around other ships and stuff because like is there not a chance of collision yeah so in the capsize on day seven the system that we use is called ais that you use to detect other ships there's like a radar and so it show it will start beeping and tell you if other ships are in the area that broke so for the rest of the crossing for the remaining like 2 700 miles or whatever 600 miles we didn't have that so every within for every 10 minutes after that the person in the back seat would have to like look over both shoulders and be like no impending doom on the horizon lads that will be all right wow because there was one point where it was brucey and myself um brucey was in the back seat supposed to be looking and uh it was like there was a huge huge ship like 300 meters away like almost in the same line as us and i turn around i'm like bruce there's a huge ship there he goes oh yeah i saw that ages ago i just didn't want to say anything what no you didn't so these boats can crash into yeah like because we're so small and also stupidly i did the color scheme for the boat and it was blue and white which in hindsight might have been the and they yeah so and our system was broken so they couldn't see us on the system so yeah we could have got run over a lot but we didn't want to say that during because our families were watching so yeah don't worry him too much i wonder what these other massive boats thought when they saw you because that can't be every day they see a boat like that yeah often they'd radio us and they'll be like do you need help one time one of the lads was like now we're called you need help we'll come over if they didn't find that funny you could have asked for food yeah so where are we so that so what would tell us about the first um few days just before we get to the capsize what what how were you feeling were you more excited were you personally even if you didn't say it to the other boys were you kind of like regretting what you'd done uh i think you guys will know this as well when you're in like a stressful situation something really bad happens in your life or you're doing something difficult you just go into this fight or flight mode where you're like you know it's my responsibility to just get the job done now and i can't worry about how i feel yeah and so it was very much that kind of mindset uh but don't get me wrong like as you row out of new york and you see new jersey and manhattan and you're like the bridge is disappearing and you're in like choppy conditions already you're like okay like this is so real now yeah but these guys said to me the hardest part of an ocean row is the first five days and so because you're settling into it and you're like getting used to living on the water yeah so in my head i was thinking okay just get through the first five days then it'll all get easier yeah the problem was i got through the first five days and then i was like ah we've got so long to go i hadn't even considered yeah another month and a half you'd built up that first five days yeah exactly not not realizing that it's just going to be another five days and another five days right and by the end of it i know you didn't ask about that but like by the end of it five days goes like that and you're like what's going on that's literally what i was then going to ask about time time and and the conception is that the right word yeah your conception of time perception of time yeah how how did how did that feel um did those first five days did they feel like five days the first three felt long right and then after that it was just like you blink and obviously you're in pain and you don't want to row for three hours and the three hours feels long but then all of a sudden it's weird your perception in the moment is like this is taking a while and then you'll be like oh my god we changed cabins five days ago we've got to change cabins again like it's yeah it all goes it all goes so quick what do you did you what do you mean by change cabins so we moved house every five days so um because there was the coffin cabin in the main cabin ah right to make it fair the people in the main cabin made all the food and did all the water and all and did the washing and the one in the coffin cap the ones in the coffin cabin would literally just lie there and eat and row right so to make it fair you just swapped that's the one you wanted the coffin cabin was it you want it depends what you want you sleep better in there because you've got more time you don't have to do any jobs um but it is cramped yeah did it do any of you snore um Not too much.

1:02:48We got away with that. Was that the least of your problems? Yeah, it was. Because also, you think, how do you sleep on a rowing boat? It's loud when the waves are crashing and you're all over the place. You're just so exhausted. And you don't really get any privacy on there, do you? No, I quickly get to know. There was lots of cocks and balls flying around the whole time. Is it still loud at night as well? Are you always sleeping at night? You try and sleep a bit in the days as well. but yeah generally you sleep as much at night as possible. Is it quite quiet at night or is it just waves constantly?

1:03:20It depends on the conditions. Like if it's choppy you get smacked in the side sometimes and you don't like sleep as well but generally it's like a normal whoosh so it's not so bad. Right. Yeah I think that would help me sleep. Yeah you sleep with sound on anyway. Yeah like rain noise and stuff like that. But you feel it as well. I imagine rain noise but it's upon you. I could do that. What was the seasickness like? That must have been an issue. Yeah, grim for me at the start. Were you throwing up a lot? No, I didn't throw up, but you get that nauseous feeling where you're going to. I had a bit of experience from diving and stuff of how to not be seasick.

1:03:54So I was taking the tablets, and what I'd do is if I had to do anything in the cabin, I'd just shut my eyes while I did it. Because that helps. Because seasickness comes from your eyes thinking that you're on solid ground and your balance system in your ears doing that. So if you shut your eyes, then it just thinks you're moving because it doesn't have a reference point. Oh, okay. So if I needed to grab something, like shut my eyes look at it and then shut my eyes again yeah that helped me get through it did any of the guys throw up at any point they're all all right because two of the marine marines so they had like good good experience so uh yeah we all we got away quite lightly with that which was a worry at the start for sure i bet you don't want to be that guy that's too sick to row and no let's everyone down yeah would be me um you you've mentioned how hot it was in those cabins at times when you're out and you're rowing and you're just like the elements are there yeah how was it super hot was it super cold what unfortunately it was all of it like we had 30 touching 40 degrees celsius days on some days and like you don't have enough sun cream obviously on board for that so you had to we had to put like t-shirts over our legs and hats on um and if there was a bit of a breeze it was all right but if there was no breeze in the cabin like within five minutes you're just dripping with sweat and you can't escape it right um and then some nights we went over the wreck of the titanic which was pretty cool did you yeah like we were within like two miles of exactly where it was i pinned it on my phone before oh wow um and that around the area was like the coldest right big iceberg isn't it yeah luckily global warming and the time of year we got away with the iceberg but when my mum found out that there was like we were on that route she was like no you're gonna die by iceberg hopefully not but i didn't really know i just told her that it was fine and it was yeah so were you um that was cold up there were you having to like just what wrap up blankets did Do you have a lot?

1:05:36We had like a thermal sleeping bag. So you'd get, you might be shivering by the time you've done your three hours rowing if it was raining and cold. But then you get in the thermal sleeping bag and you warm up quick. But the worst thing is one of the worst things. You wake up at 2.30 for your shift, for example, in the middle of the night, like in this warm sleeping bag, you can hear these guys suffering outside. It's raining. The waves are crashing in constantly. And you've got to put in your salty wet underwear and waterproof trousers and waterproof jacket that are cold and salty. you have to get out your warm dry sleeping bag put them on and like yeah I'm ready let's swap and then and knowing that you've got three hours to go so you have three hours on six off is that right three on three off oh really oh because there's two of you rowing isn't there two of us yeah so two rowing at all times so four team members were you always in the same pairs for rowing throughout the whole we did a bit staggered so my cabin mate was nutty and we never rowed together and Jack's cabin mate was Brucey and they never rowed together but we'd row with both the guys in the other cabin what was the thought process were they were they just two stronger rowers were they or they are both actually exceptional rowers those two but um it was mainly you keep your cabin partner so you just get used to working with one person yeah um and you just want a fresh person on the oars every hour and a half just to keep a fresh pair of eyes fresh set of muscles just to right so you're not doing like three hours starting well and then stagnating that's the reason you do the three hour shift is because if you sleep less than much less than two and a half you don't get a rem cycle and then if you so you're not getting good recovery for like you know if you're two months it's a long time yeah and if you row for much more than three you just start to like row like shit yeah there's so it sounds dumb because you're always going to do it this way but there's a pure science to it isn't there that's why you're there's not nothing's done by you're not just picking three hours out of the air it's all planned meticulously yeah stevie and i we recently spent three days there's nothing on your scale but three days um just driving across europe um for a stupid video that we've done um is that out yet no it's not out um and uh it was fucking boring just that and we were playing all sorts of games and shit like this to try and get the time to go quicker 56 days without no real internet what are you talking what are you talking about it was tough because you do run out of stuff to talk about and the FIFA the Club World Cup was on right and so as a bit of a Chelsea fan I would message I'd message my mate just after the internet went off I was like oh I forgot to ask when like what happened in the Club World Cup yeah so it takes 24 hours for me to send that message he didn't reply while I was on the internet so then it took another 24 hours for him to reply and then we didn't turn it on the day after that so to get a message like who won the Club World Cup took us four days so you really are limited at least you won yeah exactly are you able to talk much whilst you're rowing or are you very much It's just in the zone.

1:08:24Yeah, it's not intense cardio. It's like walking, basically, in terms of the cardio. So you're able to talk, and we play the categories game, so to name the most random things you'd find in a supermarket or countries in Africa, and then either you just get sick of each other or sick of the game and stop or whatever. Yeah, but there'd be lots of moments of silence on there, would there? Yeah, and sometimes it's weird. You'd have a conversation, because you're rowing with each one for an hour and a half. You'd have a conversation for maybe 20 minutes. Then it would just die, the conversation. And then like 10 minutes later, the geezer would just pick it up again.

1:08:55Or like maybe 40 minutes later, they'd pick it up again and just talk again. So sometimes it's really weird. You're just comfortable in silence and then you talk again. Yeah. Do you have a particular conversation or a particular moment you remember that stands out as like an unusual time? Not unusual, but... I think it's the same as when you have like a sofa conversation and there's no phones in the room and you just like, some things are super philosophical. You have a lot of time to talk about, for myself, what I learned. how you want your life to look so when you've your daily routines just stripped away entirely you think you know what do i actually want from life you realize that you know money's just a lever to get a good a good day-to-day experience right like that's all it's worth otherwise it's just extra stress which might not be what you want in your life so you're thinking about you know how do i want to spend my mornings how important loved ones are um you know those types of things right and it allows you to like really decompress because we're constantly i've also not scrolled a single reel since coming back which i'm very proud of you know five days yeah and i'm gonna plan to never like not touch short form content really yeah see how long i can go for for what reason just to keep get your attention span back yeah because you i constantly feel like especially during the road you have so much time when you've got nothing coming into your brain and you just have time to process and produce um when you're constantly scrolling like even when you you know i was waiting before this podcast i wasn't on my phone i'm not unless i'm responding something specific or try and just like lower that dopamine as much as possible so what were you doing down there when i was waiting just looking at one of the lobby books oh really yeah yeah so do you think that had a massive this row had a massive benefit on those parts of your brain and stuff yeah it's hard to say obviously it's such short term but it definitely had a benefit in the way i view like i view life and day-to-day because we all feel so like even though none of us are in a rat race because we're working for ourselves yeah you do have this element of i need to do this need to do this need to do this and like you know are you actually enjoying yourself in a year's time will you be happy with the way the year went or not right like yeah so day nine that was when you capsized yeah we briefly touched on how did it happen and and what what happened so it was our first storm we were on parachute anchor i was one of the three in the cabin um with legs hashed over each other right and genuine at night time uh overnight yes we put the anchor in at like 11 p.m or something and then tried to sleep through the night i tried to be in the key word there because it was so hot we were in the gulf stream yeah and um well so it's even hot at night time hot at night yeah and in because you can't open the cabin door for fresh oxygen because the waves coming in so like if you do you open it quickly and then shut it again you can't just have any vents well there's water on the boat is there no but like a big wave would just like if you have the door open and a big wave could just come in oh okay so did you know the storm was coming like but what's happening just before you're having to put the parachute anchor yeah we have a weather router on the owner of the boat was our weather router so he was on land saying you know this day you've got this went with weather coming then you got this weather coming then you got this weather coming so we can preempt what was what was going to happen right and so we knew a storm was coming we rode into it as much as we could and then we were like well we're not getting anywhere we're literally just like spinning on the spot in these waves we're like we have to put the anchor in yeah put the anchor in at 11 and we are this would genuinely be considered by united nations as torture because it was just such unacceptable conditions it was so hot we were like crossing over each other in like stress positions none of us could move i probably slept like one hour out of six of trying to sleep uh and i was just in my underwear about um as soon as day broke at like five six a.m i was i just need to get out and cool down and jack did the same he then put his waterproof gear on for whatever reason he wasn't as hot as me we both get out get clipped onto the boat because you have to you've got to stay clipped on because if you get swept off yeah it's like we're not going to be able to go and get them yeah right so we're both clipped on i'm in mind where he's in his waterproof full waterproof gear he goes and checks on the parachute anchor make sure it's still holding us testing the line and stuff and i'm looking at the deck seeing if anything's gone missing and we're um out there for maybe a couple of minutes he's like yeah that sound i'm like yeah that sound and there's these two safety lines one on each side of the boat that you can like hold on to for stability i'm facing him he's facing me and there's these rolling waves of like two foot waves so like yeah they'd crash a little bit but generally the decks ain't dry and everything's fine but you get this thing called a rogue wave which is it can be like double or two and a half times the size of the normal swell and it was a really surreal moment i so vivid in my mind still i'm kind of looking at him then i look left at the swell because you could sense something was about to change yeah then all of a sudden the next wave coming was like two and a half times the size it was about 12 foot from the front fuck and you also get a sense of when a wave's gonna break like when the you know the white foamy stuff's gonna like come on like just the full energy is gonna turn uh turbulent and then like obviously crash wherever it crashes yeah so i'm looking at it obviously it feels like an eternity but it must have only been like a matter of a couple of seconds yeah i'm like that's definitely gonna break on us looking at him like it can't be can it we're both thinking the same thing like we're so fucked here like but you just don't believe it you're like it looks so big and ominous yeah like surely not but sure enough it breaks and like the sheer white water just whips us both off the boat while we're holding on so we like like get flipped upside down and the boat flips on top of us and then the boat does a 360 we do a 360 and i've done how's the boat done a 360 then so the boat's like the waves coming from this way yeah wave crashes onto us and we like topple over that way and the boat flips like that we're under it in the water and then the boat like it's a self-righting boat because it's bottom heavy oh that's what i was gonna yeah i couldn't work out why the boat would just do that but it's built like that yeah so it gets flipped and then because it's self-writing instead of flipping back the other way just because of the wave it gets flipped and then does a full rotation oh wow and we're like underneath it grabbing on in the water you're in the water yeah in the water are the other two just in bed still yes they're in the cabins i have no idea what's no they were like so confused yeah um especially because we still had i told you we had so much food on the boat there were bags flying everywhere we went upside down and then like zero gravity and then back again.

1:14:53He was like, what was that? You know, it'd be like that scene from Matilda. That's so funny that they had no idea that that had happened. Are you shitting yourself then when you're in the water? So it was quite quick. It was probably five seconds in the water, something like that. And I don't know if you've surfed before or anything where you just have to like hold your breath, stay calm and wait. Don't try and do anything, just try and stick arm. As soon as it settles, you kind of come up for air. Why do you need to wait, sorry? Well, if you try, like if you say as you're flipping, you don't know which way's up which way's down or oh right if it's any good like trying to get anywhere you kind of wait for that wave to pass right just like calm yourself down don't stress wait a couple of seconds and then then try and surface right wait for the boat to settle so we did that i looked at jack and he's obviously in his full waterproof so it's now like fully wet inside his waterproof so i found quite funny yeah yeah not ideal and you're in your pants i'm in my pants yeah i was so i was so grateful to be cold again it was so hot yeah genuinely yeah um and then so we both get on the boat like you're right mate yeah all good um frazzled but it was a really nice combination of like like exciting and dangerous yeah like now this is cool yeah and then like a couple of minutes passing like okay that's actually terrifying we still have two and a half thousand miles to go some stuff's broken in the boat one of the lads banged his head and uh and we didn't think that that was going to happen like when we're in a storm like yeah it was a bit funny but like yeah it's actually quite a serious situation yeah it's good to look back on as a story you know when you're living it it must be nightmarish but so i just want to talk a bit about the terminology you use for like the waves breaking yeah just dumb that down for me i'm trying to visualize it so when the wave comes up like that are you saying that it's going to crash down on top of the boat is that what that means at you so yeah you know in a wave you get like like a wave that doesn't have the white bit on top yeah it's just a rolling wave yeah or you can have a wave that like literally goes like you see in the film exactly and then it has that white crest and that's got the most power and the most energy in it right so this one like we're on the boat like this and the waves coming and most of them have just been like rolling yeah this one's double the size so it's got more energy it was a huge like combination of just bad luck that it managed to crash exactly where we didn't want it to so as it's coming we could see the white bit forming we're like okay it's literally going to crash on us and then it's like sweeps us across like that rather than down on us like at us oh wow yeah and did it i can't remember if we touch on it but did it break anything on the on the boat so uh we lost a couple of bits the two lads that are in their cabin lost both both of them lost their left shoe so they had only a right shoe remaining so they couldn't even pair it pair it so they were shoeless for the rest of the thing it's quite funny what this that just went in the sea yeah we don't know how yeah just it wasn't there when we the boat was the right way around right um and then yeah just a couple of other miscellaneous bits but nothing important we tied everything down oh nice luckily yeah did you ever encounter like any waves even bigger than that that didn't that didn't hit you yeah so if it's really big storms consistently you can't fight it so you have to row just in the direction of where the storm's coming from okay so there was a day where we wanted to go east but the big waves were coming from the south so we just had to go north which wasn't the end of the world because we were going kind of northeast overall yeah like if you imagine from where we were we from new york up to the uk it's kind of like a northeasterly bearing okay so we just had to go north for a day and on that day even if it's off the route you're just well yeah because otherwise if you're going perpendicular to these big waves yeah they're just going to capsize you constantly okay nothing you can do about it right so yeah you really are at the mercy of the element sometimes wow um so yeah instead of going like northeast we just went north and then spent the next two days just going east okay yeah um and you have you seen interstellar yeah and they go to that first planet and they're like hold on that's not a mountain that's a wave yeah it's kind of like that obviously nowhere near as big right but like you just see this rolling sheer mass of water and it's like a wall and the wall just kind of picks you up and then like throws you back down and then picks you up but it's it's quite gentle but it's scary like you can see the pure power of the ocean are you going proper high then yeah the swell is like like three or four meters so um they're not that steep waves but it looks certainly looks deep it looks like a you know two-story building yeah you kind of just get picked up by it and then drop down by it like nice and smoothly but it's you're saying it like it's fun it's fun when yeah it's not fun it's not fun you have to tell yourself it's fun when you're doing it yeah yeah this is probably gonna be the most stupid question i ask did you encounter any pirates um no we didn't right but that's a real is that a real threat or not out there no it depends on the risk the atlantic's pretty sound for it it's more off the horn of africa like somalia that kind of area is pretty bad right um and then there's other areas like around the world with like more rogue shipping lanes but that was nothing you have to know you have to worry about fortunately um day 26 and 27 you you you text me and you said was basically spent in solitary confinement yeah how come that was the biscoff occasion so i was that was when i was i was 36 hours on my own right um and that was a really hot one yeah it was like chinese water torture like the because you got condensation in the cabin you can't open the door you're just getting dripped on from in a new place every time so you think you've you've sorted out the condensation then all of a sudden you're trying to sleep it just like lands on your forehead that is literally like you said that is a that is a form of torture isn't it fuck well couldn't you could you not then wipe it down yeah so you would and then you'd like lie down and then it would get you on your thigh and you're like well i can't do anything about this yeah that would irritate the fuck out of me i think i'd rather the boat capsize and me land in the water i'll be less scared than the than the dripping yeah because i have to i'm such a little melt i have to be comfortable to go to sleep yeah that's fucking crazy so where do we go from there so day 26 and 27 uh talk to us about the wildlife that you you saw you must have seen some mad stuff yeah any turtles we've got so lucky one turtle oh yeah yeah i don't know why only one but it was also in the middle of the atlantic we were like what are you doing here because we did we thought it was too cold for them but apparently i haven't had time to look up but apparently they do migrate like across the atlantic right um and it was really interested in us so i had like barnacles on its back and like actually swam over to the boat and then jack pulled off the barnacles and it seemed pretty happy about that you got the what you got in the water he didn't pick it up oh i was gonna say wow so like it came over to the boat i don't know why yeah it seemed to like jack taking the barnacles off so he did um and then it just kind of went on its way was it hard for you to because the moments like that are so rare and so far and few between you have a mission to do and yeah and you owe that to the rest of the boys as well yeah but obviously as a content creator you want to film that yeah did was it hard for you to balance those moments if you're if you're like working and capturing that yeah really tough like i was not rowing at the time when we had the turtle encounter so if you're not rowing it's fine because you can just film or whatever but there's times where i film that yeah yeah um there's times where you're rowing and you're you know the my reel that got the best engagement i got like 30 mil plus on one reel and it was like while i'm rowing because that looks the best like you know you're stressed out you're in big big waves or whatever um but obviously i'm not going to be rowing that well while i'm filming the video yeah pick it up again so you've got to be a bit tactful about not taking the piss yeah with the content yeah equally jack is also an online coach so he did some videos as well so he he got it and then the other two marines were like they knew that they knew what they were getting into and that i was going to be documenting it yeah and also we wouldn't have raised we would have struggled to raise 40 grand if i hadn't done the social media yeah you need that reach yeah they really appreciate that element of it as well that's cool so you've you saw a turtle what else did you see what other wildlife um biggest whale second biggest animal on the planet is a fin whale and we saw loads of them they're like bigger than humpbacks and like just enormous um google this yeah check them out they look a bit like humpbacks and you can hear them breathing like through the blowholes which is pretty awesome wow from hundreds of meters away so what's the first sign you see one like you see normally you see the spurt of air first and then you're like oh definitely a whale over there and then you look out for it and if it's a calmish day you can you see them if they dive you see the big tail come up or if they're just like hovering you see the the slender back just like curving over that must have been unreal yeah really really special and also they're pretty curious sometimes they'd come up like one time they came within like 50 meters of the boat which was amazing amazing i'd love that and what about dolphins as well they were they're so curious the atlantic there's i think three species common atlantic and bottlenose that we saw and the atlantic ones are proper cheeky so i haven't taken off my gopro yet but they loved coming over to the boat so i like stuck the gopro down it was like they were posing for the camera they're like come over like swim next to it like do leaps out the water yeah they must not deal with small boats no exactly yeah would any of the animals attack the boat though or not orcas could we and luckily we didn't see any we were kind of i said to one of the lads like yeah i'd quite like to see an orca and he was like not worth the risk like we're so close yeah because off the coast on the eastern atlantic there's been some ships like had chunks taken out of them by orcas so yeah could get you could get unlucky with that what if you were thank god you didn't if you were to die on the mission yeah what would be the biggest cause of that um not being clipped on in a storm right so if you didn't have your harness on and you were swept overboard that would probably be the biggest risk because you can't in strong currents you can't row back it quickly enough to save whoever yeah over um getting run over by a cargo ship as well was like pretty much instant death because the ship would just get crushed and then you'd get sucked under it into the propellers or something that's something that always fascinated me because like i listened to a podcast about the titanic crashing and how they saw it miles off, but you can't avoid it.

1:24:29But the ignorance in me and someone who knows nothing about sea life, I just assumed they'd go, well, fuck, go round it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's mad, isn't it? Because I guess if a cargo ship, was it coming for you, you could see it and there's nothing you could do about it, was there? Yeah, it depends. What you would do is you'd go perpendicular to it and just row like hell to try and get out of the way. But it depends how late you see it. It depends if they've seen you. There is an element of course correction, especially since the days of the titanic like it's more advanced yeah but if you see it late like and they don't see you then you yeah it's dangerous were there any mad birds you saw or was it all just sea creatures so many i had no idea i don't know if you know this but there are seabirds in the middle of the atlantic that don't like they just live in the middle of the atlantic they don't go on land so how do they i don't know but they live on the water they live so they like sit on the water when they're not flying and they there's hundreds of them and they i think they eat they like eat stuff off the surface of the water and they just chill on the water.

1:25:27I think when they reproduce, they must go to land. But they spend days and weeks like just chilling in the middle of the Atlantic. Yeah. They must be at risk from getting eaten if they're just laying on top of the water as well. I was thinking that too, but yeah. That's interesting. You love a bird. I love birds, yeah. You do love birds. That sounded laddy. Clip that one. So with these birds, would they look different to normal birds or would they just look like seagulls? A lot like seagulls, yeah. A few different species. Right. um but yeah yeah mad so we've spoken about wildlife what did what did the sky look like when you when you were looking up at like night time would it be sometimes just pitch black yeah so it depends a lot on the moon yeah it was weird like just having nothing better to do than like looking at the phase of the moon because you'd be like oh it's getting bigger and like you see it every single day getting slightly bigger or slightly smaller yeah and when it was huge you would see be able to see the horizon the entire time because the the light from the moon but then on the contrary to that if it was like there was no moon or very low moon and it was foggy and it was like cloudy it would just be pitch black all around you and there's nothing you could see could you see the stars and stuff if no cloud yeah but if there was no moon and no cloud the night sky was insane just like amazing amazing stars probably thousands you could see like zero light pollution and I didn't even know this was a thing but we saw a green comet about three weeks in which it was just like like equivalent of a shooting star, like a comet that like went across the sky for maybe three seconds was so bright that the entire sky went green, lit up the sky from black to green.

1:26:59Wow. And we were like, was that real? Like, yeah, I saw it too. Don't worry. It was real. Wow. That's so cool. Yeah. The whole sky just green. Yeah. Yeah. Not like, yeah, like green, not like the studio room or whatever, like that bold, but yeah, just like lit it, lit it up with like a green, like a green flare. And then just, that must've been amazing. Yeah. Really amazing. When you think back to the mission, 56 days at sea, is there a specific moment that, I know completing it was probably the best bit, but is there a specific moment where your brain goes that was special for you for any reason?

1:27:35Two moments. One of them is more like deeper and the other one's more just like ecstatic because we got the world record for the furthest distance ever rode in 24 hours. So we rode, when we were in the Gulf Stream, we had a nice clean patch on a clear day and the record was 116 nautical miles and we knew we needed to do at least five knots average in order to get that yeah so we're like let's not get excited let's just see what we can do yeah on the in these really nice conditions and so we did like five and a half knots for about six hours straight and we all kind of looked at each other and winked and we're like we could go for this now so then we made sure like you know instead of being allowed 10 minutes to poo you only allowed five yeah super quick changeovers and rowing quite hard and then we broke the record.

1:28:16I can't remember what we got initially because we then broke it the next day as well, broke our own record. Oh, wow. Stayed nice conditions. So it was 116. I think we did like 125. Yeah. And then we did 140 the day after that. Oh, wow. So we really knocked out of the park. So that was, because you think things like that don't happen to people like me. Yeah. You're like, oh, I'm not going to get a world record. Like something's going to go wrong. Yeah. And it happens. You're like, oh my God, like this is real. And it really took, because this was after the capsize. So it really settled our nerves a lot and we were all like, it brought us together as a team for sure.

1:28:47Yeah. Like a mental hurdle that overcome for sure. Definitely. Yeah. Sorry. Was that something you considered before going out? I know you wanted to do the main record, but before going out, were you like, Oh, also we should give this a go. Once you did it on the first day. Yeah. Why did you then go, let's beat it again? Why are you not like shattered from that? You've just beat a world record. Chill. Yeah. A bit, but we were like, we're still going so quick. Let's just keep going. Like we were so excited by it. Yeah. And we knew the conditions look good for the next day as well. So yeah, we just kept going and and obviously got more efficient as we as we went along what's the difference between a mile and a nautical mile good question um so that a nautical mile takes into account the curvature of the earth so it's slightly uh so 3 500 miles is 3 000 nautical miles so a nautical mile is 3 500 miles is 3 000 nautical nautical okay so a nautical is bigger uh slightly bigger oh is it yeah right um so when we told people i'll follow your own we're like yeah 3 ,500 miles but it's actually 3 ,000 nautical miles yeah i say the bigger number obviously you mentioned only having five minutes to poo instead of 10 minutes yeah how what what was that like is that is the process how we'd imagine it to be or probably worse yeah one of the best things about getting back on land was actually a porcelain toilet yeah um in calm conditions it's okay so you get this we've got this bucket like um a paint mixing bucket and you gotta make sure to put water in it first so you don't skid mark the hell out of it yeah obviously um so you and you get it central and the other guy's still rowing and you're sitting like on this sharp rim of the bucket with we probably could have planned this better but it's what we were left with yeah um and yeah you do your business you get rid of it and and that's that but what happens is you know those days where i told you about the really big waves or the storm yeah you still need the toilet so like when i was stuck on parachute anchor for example it was like proper rolling waves um or even were slightly better conditions than that where you still have to row so there There was one day where Jack was rowing in front of me and I needed the toilet, but it was really bad condition.

1:30:43So we're in our full waterproofs and waves were coming in every maybe 60 seconds, roughly 60 seconds to three minutes. So I'm like, right, please, can I be lucky with this one? And you can also change the way you're facing to try and make a wave not come in. So I get the bucket ready, pull my waterproof trousers down. Just as I'm about to start, just water pours into my underwear, like my fresh, clean underwear. Oh, no. My waterproof trousers. so now it's all salty, wet, cold and I have to row for three hours and I still need a shit. On top as well. And I remember I swore, I was like, this is just the worst.

1:31:18Get me off this boat. What about washing? How do you wash? So clothes you do with, you have like washing sheets every maybe five days or as soon as things started to really stink or get salty, you'd put them in a waterproof bag, shake them up and let them sit and rinse them and then let them sun dry on the top of the cabin. Right. And then wash your bodies mainly with wet wipes. So we use wet wipes on your bum and your armpits and face and whatever after every shift. And then every four or five days, depending on how sweaty or hot it was, sometimes it was like nine days between freshwater washes, you'd fill up like a 500 mil squeezy bottle, lather yourself in soap and then just freshwater squeeze it off.

1:32:00And that's once every five days. Yeah, it's not often. I bet it felt amazing though. It felt so good. Yeah. Honestly, a lot of them were better than the first shower on land. Yeah, you really need it sometimes. What's the smell like on the boat? Weird thing about smell is you get numb to it. I don't know if you've noticed this. Some people that you have to encounter clearly can't smell themselves. You know that's a phenomenon that exists. But the same thing applies on the boat. As soon as we got off on land, we were like, do we smell? And the guy was like, there's certainly an aroma in the area.

1:32:32but I thought it would be so bad that we'd smell ourselves and it would be unbearable but either it wasn't that bad or we just couldn't smell it so yeah we got away with it yeah day 49 you describe as the worst day of the entire mission yeah why is that um there are a couple of days in that vicinity one of them we like was uh yeah that was a couple of days later the the worst day was when the swell was so big and aggressive and if you like lost the bearing i.e. were like pointed like 10 15 degrees in the wrong direction the boat would just start to turn and then you'd just get wet and like it crashed into and like almost capsized and it was a constant like 18 hour period where you're like on a knife point with the steering you steer with your feet if anyone doesn't know i guess they wouldn't so like you point your foot slightly that way to go that way and that way to go that way right and so it's quite rudimentary but you um it's quite a bit of a fine art and as soon as the boat starts to turn you kind of try and turn it the wrong way but if and that's turning a rudder at the back and yeah just we kept it was such strong conditions that we kept losing it and just kept getting wet and it was just cold and wet we were shivering and yeah it was good that we were so close to the end but you and that moment we just had a nice calm week of weather we were just ready for it to end yeah right struck by that was just the worst did you ever have any times where you hadn't slept at all yeah that night actually oh really things broke the footplate broke and the seat broke and i both of them broke while i was meant to be sleeping so like i had an hour of sleep or whatever i got my head down then knock on the door adam get a hammer out okay fine so then have to go and like fetch a hammer and give it and then yeah other things but it felt like being in a bit of a prison at some points didn't it yeah definitely yeah i just noticed as well your hands oh you've seen them yeah yeah extremely calloused yeah that i could do with some more moisturizer but if you touch uh touch that there oh fucking hell yeah that's that's rock hard isn't it oh my words so i've been trying to moisturize them but still there yeah how do you fight through that whilst you're rowing it's not like a foot blister where they're painful really painful foot blisters like when you're rowing if you get a blister there you kind of use the other finger or hide a finger or whatever so you kind of things get some fingers get worse while the other ones heal and you just have to keep going you know did they did they cut pretty quickly then um so they're turning they were pretty painful at various points like this bit was the most painful for most of it um and then the body just adapts and you get used to it and the blister starts to go down and heals yeah wow can you show the camera yeah yeah yeah and that's five days after yeah five days after yeah fucking hell wow when you um look back what's the worst is it the lack of sleep is it the cold is it the heat or is it the wet i'd probably say the the heat really i didn't think i'd say yeah that's that's at glastonbury yeah similar experience yeah i imagine it probably isn't far because i'm when i'm on normal like civilian land and you're like just being a normal person you're uncomfortable like on the tube or whatever you're like this is unbearable yeah i can't deal with it like so i know like there's you put yourself in a survival situation your tolerance goes up but you know being uncomfortable is being uncomfortable wherever you are have you noticed for the last five days since you've been back that you're not getting annoyed at little things as much now like if you are like on a hot tube or whatever you just go you know what this really isn't that bad yeah definitely like i hope this high tolerance for adversity stays with me but who knows how long it'll last the worst thing is though like when people moan about things that are so trivial yeah and you're like it doesn't matter that's pretty easy yeah don't know what i've just done i've got an awkward question for you okay you might want to cut this out 56 days at sea oh yeah I know what the question's going to be no ladies if you need a moment to yourself what are you doing so I won't speak on behalf of the other boys I'll just speak on behalf of myself because they might not like me if I you don't have to answer that does tell me that he knows on behalf of the other boys he has the answer we'll see I'll think about it after so yeah there were moments where if you need to need to get the job done you can yeah but something really strange happened to me which thankfully is just passed well maybe not that strange libido zero right so because you're not looking you're not seeing any women you're not looking at any pictures or anything you're just like in the zone in a survival situation and you've got broken sleep i imagine my testosterone was like through the floor right and you and you're so busy like actually zero urge.

1:37:08Oh really? So yeah. Oh wow. I didn't start, I didn't start levitating after 50 days like the internet might make you believe. But yeah, real life social experiment. Yeah. And now since coming back the first three, four days on land, I was like, zero libido still. I was like, is it going to come back? And then like today I've been like, yeah, okay. Right. You're horny now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've still got it. He can tell we've lost weight. so so when when you're um when you're nearing the end of the mission so good when you're nearing the end of the mission at what point that does the real excitement kick in one day from the end two days from the end so we were in a real race against the clock at the end so we couldn't we were so nervous about how it was going to finish because we had the five worst days of weather that we'd seen at all coming in just as we were supposed to finish so to confirm our crossing we wanted to get to the silly isles which is just off the coast of cornwall literally a few miles off the coast of cornwall and we just it looked like we just had enough time before five days straight of easterly winds were going to come in which we couldn't have rode in which meant five days on parachute anchor and we'd run out of food so we just had porridge left that we'd rationed so we spent the last two days just on porridge and knew that we were racing against the clock to beat this wind so we couldn't really relax and enjoy the fact we were going to get there until maybe 12 18 hours to go we were like okay it looks like we're going to do it by about six hours so like it's all going to be very real very quickly yeah and then in that moment you think oh i'm gonna i might miss it like it's suddenly all over yeah um yeah it's weird because like again i can only compare it to like shitty stuff i've done but like i've been on some holidays before where i was like i've not really enjoyed it that much and i'm like But then when the last day comes, you do kind of feel like, oh, so used to that, that I'm going to miss it.

1:39:01Isn't there that thing? There's that syndrome or something. Stockholm, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So did you think that then? Yeah. Have you missed it at all? Like I have. Like I missed the simplicity of just having one objective. And the main thing I missed was just being with the lads. Yeah. So when we got back on land again, we were all together for the finishing party. And then we went for a roast the day after. but like in between the finish part, I went and slept somewhere else. And then in that morning I was like, I want the boys back. So it was nice to then go and have that roast together. You have to kind of slowly separate again because it's weird waking up and, you know, seeing everyone, all of everyone for, you know, 56 days and then all of a sudden not see them at all.

1:39:43I bet, I bet. Well, talk us through that moment then when you've reached land. Again, a question that so many people ask is about land legs. And that was, so the first time we reached land was at 2.46am in the Silly Isles. On Friday, was it? On Friday, that was, yeah. Was there anyone? What are we now on Wednesday? Yeah, it's not long at all, is it? Yeah. Was there anyone waiting for you? Because it was so early in the morning where there's still people like... Yeah, fortunately not much happens on the Silly Isles, so they were quite excited. The harbour master and his mate and then a couple of families were waiting for us, which was nice because it was a small crowd that we didn't have to...

1:40:17We were very tired. And we get in and we were on this like small rocky pontoon that uh like didn't have a barrier and so instantly we step off the boat and you're standing up straight and your body just goes like that and you start to fall to the side like you're paralytic but fully conscious really bizarre so you had to like grab onto the railing and your body just wants to keep falling one way or the other you're so used to the motion of it yeah you just expect your brain's just expecting a sideways motion and there isn't so you just you can't it's really weird to describe it yeah so you can walk properly then no and the next morning we went for obviously a full english yeah and uh we're four abreast walking down the road and we'd like bump into each other like and just fall into each other and sometimes fall into a stranger wow on the street and we just have to be like i'm so sorry yeah the stranger wouldn't know why but you would have just looked drunk yeah exactly so how long did it take until you can just walk straight and upright and normal again i think like two yesterday i had a little wobble at one point but generally like now i i did a horrendously slow run yesterday as well but generally it's after about 24 48 hours is pretty much normal when you got to bed an actual bed the first time after getting off when you lay down could you could you feel like you were feeling the ocean you'd think it would be like a if you go to a theme park you feel the roller coaster don't you the day after but i think i was just so tired it didn't feel like it at all no really yeah i thought i would but no what was the first sort of everyday sort of luxuries that you did straight away was it was it the sleep you're waiting for was it the taste of sugar and it was yeah food and sleep definitely yeah so the when we got there the harbour master was like i imagine you want to sleep on your boat for this last night right please no anywhere so you let sleep on the floor of their office that was the best sleep i'd had in ages really yeah just hard office floor just like laid on with my backpack as my pillow just laid like that and got like three hours and felt amazing it's mad how like before you did the trip that would have been a rough night's sleep exactly yeah now that's like a luxury yeah yeah i feel like i'm i'm gonna be able to sleep anywhere now yeah all the other things maybe will perish like the taste of food and enjoying a full night's sleep but i feel like yeah hopefully that one stays with me the ability to just have to sleep i'm sure it will and you mentioned the saltiness you can taste the saltiness in the water yeah what about the saltiness in food it must taste like the saltiest saltiest things ever it just not it's not so much the salt just the the flavor is just insane yeah everything still just tastes amazing unreal what would it have taken for you to have thrown the towel in on that trip good question um i think it would have to be like a lifelong injury so like if i broke a leg and was in serious pain and like you know i needed surgery or something um then would have would have thrown the towel in and been like lads you're gonna have to finish this alone i think that's pretty much but i think we're all in the same mindset there of if if you're on strong painkillers and you still can't get through it then you gotta gotta can it yeah but we will really were of the mindset of we we're all in this so when the electronics started breaking we said we all have this conversation of you know if everything breaks we're just going to set a bearing for like 80 degrees which is roughly the bearing to east western europe and we're just going to rota we hit land or run out of food amazing and what's the public reception been like insane yeah i've loved mainly the best thing about the instagram reception and people following it is similar to when russ we spoke about russ before as well yeah when he was running in africa i was just like doing my general running and training i had no excuse to be lazy i was like he's literally running a marathon ultra marathon so i can just go to the gym or um or run or whatever and to be that guy and for us four to be those guys for for a million like you know millions of people had like 150 million engagements on instagram in the last 30 days and so many comments like thousands of comments saying and and dm saying we um you know i don't didn't want to go to the gym today or you know going through a bad time in my life like a breakup or whatever and and they're like you've given us the motivation we know that you're rowing anytime i wake up go to sleep we know you're rowing yeah and that just gives us the strength to go and do it yeah and that is so heartwarming like it genuinely makes all the difference because yeah it's so amazing to know that you've actually had that tangent the numbers mean nothing when you have that tangible impact on people's life and they tell you their story it feels so good what an answer i know you've only been back for five days but i get a feeling that you already have another kind of mission planned Do you know what you're wanting to do next?

1:44:38Not exactly, but I've got some cracking ideas. Something in the States, something maybe in Brazil, and something in the Middle East. So we'll see which one might come first. Is it always going to be a push to the limit with you, like mentally or physically? Would you ever, could you now ever enjoy, for example, driving Route 66, something that's fairly easy? Could you enjoy that? Yeah, I definitely do. Yeah, I think I've got a pretty good hold on that. It's that chip on the shoulder thing, isn't it? Some people can't stop. yeah i've and the reason i feel confident in that is with bodybuilding i was the same like i got my body to a certain point and i was like okay i don't feel like i need to take steroids to get bigger like i'm happy with that and uh hopefully financially i'll feel the same as well i'll make a certain amount of money and be like you know i don't need to become a multi-multi-millionaire and the same with these challenges especially like i said this was a seven percent death percentage like you know you don't want to take those risks constantly especially when you've got kids or whatever yeah yeah i think i'll dabble in extreme for the next few years um but generally i did a road trip in arizona actually um last year and like in a mustang oh so enjoyable yeah you could you don't need to push yourself to have amazing fun sometimes you know yeah well congrats again mate i mean it's a hell of a mission and a hell of a story and if people want to check you out and and discover what you're all about where can they find you yeah thank you very much so Adam Radcliffe is my name Adam Radcliffe on Instagram thought that would be funny because I lift weights three years later it's less funny I thought because you was an explorer it was like they're Radcliffe's I'm seeing like actual cliffs maybe it's that now let's do that and then Adam Radcliffe on YouTube as well where we're making a documentary of The Row so all of the GoPro footage that we filmed, the behind the scenes and stuff and a bit more of the psyche of all the lads that have done it, you'll be able to find that on there soon.

1:46:33Unreal. We'll put all the relevant links in the descriptions and all that good stuff. Adam, it's been a pleasure, mate. Can people still donate? Yes. Because we're so fresh off the back of it, we'll keep the Just Giving page open for a couple of weeks. So yeah, yeah, it can donate. So I'll give you that link as well. I'm going to go and donate after this and so should you guys listen. Mate, this has been an absolute pleasure. Thanks so much for coming in. Jack Makes Happy Hour podcast with Adam to my right and Stevie to my left. Adam we finish on the same question every time what's the meaning of life oh wow this will be a quick answer um is this a serious question yeah yeah you can say what you want ask them about animals it can beat up um to find fulfillment in your day-to-day and have a positive influence on the people around you perfect there we go mate thank you very much and congrats again thank you so much for coming in that was great mate thank you really enjoyed that

1:47:36Jackmates happy hour