Southern quad conquer Cook Strait
Treacherous dunks, a 10-hour slog and an average age of 57 couldn’t hold back a team of Southland rowers from conquering Cook Strait.
The Invercargill Rowing Club masters were on the road at 4.45am yesterday, towing their quadruple sculls skiff to the water’s edge in Picton for an 8.40am launch. Then Ian Hamilton, 60, Alister Murray, 61, Eoin Harding, 58, and Robin Wilks, 49, could only pray the conditions would favour them to complete the 92-kilometre crossing from Tory Channel.
Two years’ training, and bananas and lemon drink passed over in long nets from their support boat, fuelled the men to make it to Wellington Harbour’s lagoon by about 6 o’clock last night.
They bore huge smiles, but their stifflegged dismounts told another story.
The men drew laughter from their crowd of dozens of supporters as they struggled to raise four pairs of tired arms in celebration as they stepped onto dry land.
There was one special face missing from the crowd welcoming the men ashore. Hamilton had made a special deal with his niece Jess Wright that he would complete the crossing. Jess was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in October 2014, and underwent 15 months of chemotherapy and also received a stem cell transplant.
Jess met British singer Ed Sheeran while she was in Auckland Hospital on her 20th birthday. She died on January 15 this year.
Hamilton led the row to raise funds for cancer charity CanTeen, which had supported Jess during her illness.
More than $3200 had been donated to Jess’s page on CanTeen’s Everyday Hero fundraising page by the time Hamilton and crew made it ashore.
Jess’s parents were among the supporters waiting to welcome Hamilton ashore in their arms.
‘‘Jess was going to organise it and be on the support boat,’’ her dad, Kerry Wright, recalled.
‘‘It’s very special for these guys to have done this,’’ mum Karen Wright said.
The team had previously rowed across the 37km Foveaux Strait in 2010 – which was a challenge, Hamilton said.
But he reckoned being dunked repeatedly and struggling through a notorious rough patch made Cook Strait worse.
‘‘It’s not quite as bad as that Karori Rip. Man alive, I thought that could have had us.’’