Dubai rowers pull together on their long haul to make a point about plastic waste
A year of gruelling preparation came to fruition as the four-man transatlantic rowing team from Dubai set off from Senegal in their pursuit of four world records.
Led by Dutchman Patrick Bol, the DP World sponsored team launched their 4,250 kilometre bid on Friday in the hope of drawing attention to the threat posed by plastic to the oceans.
Bol has been joined in his ambitious adventure by three Britons – Andrew Ruinoff, Matt Wilds and Lewis Knollman.
They hope to become the fastest team to cross the Atlantic when they arrive in South America less than four weeks after setting off from West Africa.
Other records in their sights are the most consecutive number of days where more than 100 nautical miles are rowed, the first team to row a multi-hull boat from Senegal to a northern port on South America, and the first to cross the Atlantic in less than 27 days.
Bol and his teammates were happy to get their challenge under way in their trimaran, Year of Zayed, after more than 12 months of hard work.
“This is the result of over one year of preparation so we are as ready as we can be,” he said at the launch. “The conditions at the start were almost perfect.
“We have designed and built a very revolutionary, eco-friendly boat. We want to go fast and break records, but we want to do something even better than that for future generations.
“We want to give attention to the huge problem of plastic in our ocean. It is something we can all do something about.”
Apart from the hours spent in the gym and on the water to prepare for rowing for 14 hours a day every day, attracting sponsorship for the trimaran to sustain four men for a month has not been easy.
At a cost of $500,000 (Dh1.8 million), and built from the same high-tech materials used in Formula One racing, it has been an expensive process. The launch from Senegal is the end of the planning stage.
The Row4Ocean team is hoping to make a difference to ocean pollution by supporting a recycling scheme in Karachi and a clean-up operation of the Indus River, one of the most polluted waterways in the world.
Updates on the team’s progress can be followed at facebook.com/row4ocean.