Team Northern Atlantic 2011

This past weekend I (James Caple) flew out to Antigua for a weekend visit (Mike Altarace stayed back this trip). It was short and sweet, I did not miss work, nor did I have to take any vacation days to go down. The Atlantic Rowing Race ’09 is drawing to a close and I wanted to get down there (Antigua) to talk to Simon Chalk and any ocean rowers who might happen to still be lingering around; I also wanted to see some ocean rowing boats in person, as well as just simply experience the magic of English Harbor. Come to find out it was Sailing Week when I was down there, so there were tons of huge sailing yachts and lots of sailing folk from all over the world. My only regret is not being able to stay a couple of months longer…

I had a brutal layover at JFK Airport on my way home from Antigua to DC, so I checked in my carry-on and took the train in to Manhattan to walk around. I ended up in Time Square where there were plenty of lights at 1230 at night.

On my flight back I finished Tori Murden’s book, ‘A Pearl in the Storm’, about her solo ocean rowing attempt across the Northern Atlantic and then across the Tradewinds Route. I thought her book was excellent: I marked it up and dog-eared a number of the pages like it was a text book or something.

A few members of our Concept2 World Rowing Challenge Team got together early Sunday morning, from 0600 to 0900, to row as many meters as we could stand during that time period. Collectively, we almost put our team past the 4 million meter mark. Thanks to Alan Weatherley, Dave Wilson, John Street, Wanda Street, Joanne Goodwin, Bill Yeingst, and Sebastian Martinez for showing up on an early Sunday morning and doing work! Between the 30k meters I did Saturday and the 30k meters today, my backside is in some serious pain right now…

One of the rowers from Finland, who are rowing the Intracoastal Waterway from Miami to New York, checked-in today to let us know how they are doing. Here’s what he said:

“March 22th boat was at Georgetown (SC). Expedition (1 permanent member and 17 rotating crew members) was able to cross the Cape Fear River and advance up to Wrightsville in Wilmington (NC), which was the location at 27th of March. In generel, the expedition has been challenged with low temperatures during the over night rows and frequent (if not constant) head winds. At times it has been also challenging to manage with the tidal currents, which is fairly uncommon extra “spice” of rowing for the Finns. Approximated current location would be close to Cape Lookout (NC).”

He also forwarded me some pictures to share of their journey…