The Eddystone Challenge 2003

Earlier this year the Mayflower Offshore Rowing Club invited us to take part in the Eddystone Challenge. This is a Row from Plymouth out to the Eddystone Lighthouse and back - a distance of about 25 miles. A team of 6 men from our Club took up the Challenge and set about a rigorous training schedule.  Thanks to the West Somerset Community College Gym for the use of their facilities we trained 3 nights a week and rowed on the weekend. Pictured left to right are; Brendon Cleere, Paul Marsh, Dave Legg, Phil Sanderson and Gareth Jones. Ron Tyler was also in the team but was out running on this occasion.

During our weekend rows we gradually built up our distance finishing off with a couple of rows to Watchet and back - about 14 miles.

Having trained hard we were all up for the Challenge, we packed our Mars bars, Jelly babies, Lucozade, new lycra rowing shorts, gloves, Vaseline, and lots of beer money and set off for Plymouth. 

Planning not being our strong point we had six rowers and only 5 seats on the boat. So that night in the pub, in true pirate tradition we drew for the Black Spot. It was Gareth's bad luck and he would be either staying behind or trying to get a lift on the rescue boat. Our training had been based around a rolling Cox technique, e.g the Cox changes with a rower after every half hour. 

Other Clubs taking part were, MORC (Plymouth), Exmouth, Mumbles, Wimbelball, Dartmouth Naval College, a team representing the Welsh longboats, and us. 

We managed not to drink too much beer the night before and woke to wonderful weather. It was also nice to realise  that Wimbleballs planning was as good as ours, they only had 3 rowers - so to our delight Gareth was going to row with them.  

After a small delay the race started at about 11am, the trip out was wonderful - sunshine, slight offshore breeze, and we were neck and neck with Dartmouth Naval College in their Gig. We rounded the Lighthouse after about 2.5 hours.

From the lighthouse back to Plymouth was not so much fun, the wind picked up, the sea picked up, and it became just a long hard slog. However we stuck with it and were delighted to finish in 6th place (in front of Gareth) after 5 hours and 52 minutes of Rowing. Exhausted we quickly packed our kit away, got a beer, and sat on the harbour to give Gareth and his crew a big cheer when they arrived. We waited, and waited, and waited - I can't remember how many beers later it was when they came passed but needless to say if you ever set out on a long row always make sure the bung is in!

To their credit Gareth and the Wimbleball crew had rowed the course in a boat that was barely floating and had only three oars, the other gate had snapped clean off the boat - presumably due to the extra weight of water on board. They gallantly completed the course in 7.5 hours. 

Picture below of the Wimbleball crew arriving home after a very long row.

  

We even won a trophy for being the first wooden boat home. Many thanks to the Plymouth lads for putting on such a good event. We are already talking about teams for next year.

For more info please contact us at sanderson@member.v21.co.uk

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