The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
Rower, 73, rests on oars with end of record voyage in sight
A 73-YEAR-OLD has broken his own record to become the oldest person to row across the Atlantic Ocean – despite falling asleep just before the finish.
Frank Rothwell, the chairman of Oldham Athletic, completed the 3,300-mile solo voyage unassisted from the Canary Islands to Antigua in 64 days, seven hours and 53 minutes on Thursday at 5.30pm.
On arriving, he held up a Union flag and raised his arms aloft before embracing his wife, Judith, who was waiting to greet him.
Mr Rothwell set off from the Canary Islands on Dec 12 in his boat, named For a Cure, to tackle “the World’s Toughest Row”.
He capsized twice during the journey as huge waves rocked his boat roughly 200 miles into the voyage.
Mr Rothwell had hoped to arrive in Antigua on Feb 14 to have a Valentine’s Day dinner with Judith. But he was delayed and his family feared the worst when they spotted his vessel drifting off course, before finding out that he had fallen asleep.
A message posted to his page on X, formerly known as Twitter, read: “Some of you may have noticed that Frank is sitting off course. His family had a very emotional morning trying to make contact with him, but his son has just been in contact to let us know that Frank is fine and was asleep”.
It marked the second time that Mr Rothwell had made the crossing to raise money for charity Alzheimer’s Research UK.
He has so far managed to pull in over £270,000, which is in addition to the £1.1million he raised on his record transatlantic row back in 2021, when he was 70.