Flares lit to mark crossing
Team Excelsioar complete ‘magical’ Atlantic row
Three Windsor women crossed the finish line of the World’s Toughest Row on Sunday.
Caroline Hague, Rachel Smillie and Nicki Kelly onboard their boat ‘Dolly Parton’ were the 29th team to cross the finish line on Sunday, February 11 at 6.15pm.
The Eton Excelsior rowing club members crossed the 3,000-mile Atlantic Ocean in a time of 60 days, 13 hours and 32 minutes.
Flares were held up high by the team and a celebratory roar sounded from Fort Berkeley to mark the perfect finish in Antigua.
The ladies trained together on the water between Maidenhead and Windsor for three years where they pushed themselves to the limit on many occasions.
Organisers said ‘Those limits were pushed even further during this crossing’ as the team struggled to ‘push south’ early in the race and got stuck up north which created frustration onboard.
When asked what they had learned about the Atlantic, Caroline said: “There were so many different states it could be in.
“It can be calm; it can be wavy.
“The changes are subtle, and I didn’t even realise it had changed.”
The trio departed from
San Sebastian in La Gomera in the Canary Islands on December 12 and aimed to cross the Atlantic Ocean in 50 days.
A social media update on February 3 said the team had encountered ‘unfavourable conditions’ with the ‘wind against them’ making progress difficult in recent days, and on February 5, the team had 250 nautical miles left on the marker.
The team rowed in threehour shifts on and off for up to 16 hours a day for nearly two months.
Race organisers said, ‘there was no giving up on this boat’ as the only option was ‘to get to Antigua’.
Rachel said: “I was surprised how quickly [the ocean] can change. We could be in flat calm water, like a glassy lake at 8am and by 9am we would be looking up at waves that we couldn’t understand the physics of how we were still on top of them.”
Nicky added: “You look out to infinity and you think how amazing is that? We’ve got all this for ourselves! It’s just magical!”
Team Excelsioar raised funds for Thames Hospice and the DASH charity and have generated more than £40,000 so far.
Support their fundraiser at: tinyurl.com/yc272eea and follow their journey on Instagram @teamexcelsioar.