Cape to Rio row is no carnival
BRAAM Malherbe and his rowing partner Wayne Robertson’s voyage to Rio de Janeiro has put the two men through quite an arduous time. They have been on the open sea for nearly 60 days, and are more than halfway on their 6 700km trip from Cape Town on their boat, Mhondoro.
However, the pair have experienced some difficulty. On Day 33 they nearly had a cruise ship tip them over, and on day 55 they experienced what Malherbe called a “near-disaster”.
“After a strong north wind of 15 knots pushed us south some 45 miles, which is exactly where we don’t want to go, we deployed the parachute anchor. The sea is some 6km deep here, so the para anchor sinks to about 80m and holds Mhondoro into the wind, pretty much stationary.
“This, of course, entirely messes my head up! To know you are at the complete mercy of the elements and can make zero headway towards your goal is debilitating.”
Malherbe said for three days in a row they had to deploy the parachute anchor, and that during one of the days the retrieval line buoy, instead of being near the front of the boat, was behind it.
He was eventually able to rectify the issue and they were on the move again, heading west-north-west, albeit very slowly with hard rowing.
The two are aiming to be the first to row across the Atlantic Ocean, and are doing so to raise funds for the Do One Thing (Dot) challenge – a movement and app that aims to connect like-minded individuals who want to make our planet healthy, green and sustainable again.