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Ocean rowing regatta - Mother and Daughter team still out there
19:14 p.m. EST Apr 1, 2004
The Ghostrowers made it weeks ago, the young gun and the old wollf arrived next, and now all the Ocean rowers have packed up and gone home, right? Wrong! "Hey, wait for us, we are still out here!" calls the mother and daughter team Sally and Sarah Kettle.
They have gone 947 miles (1525 km) in 72 days and have 2052 miles (3303 km) left to Barbados. Yesterday they averaged 13 miles/22 km. Yeah, that's right - around 150 days left to harbor!
So what's this all about? Well, it's kind of a long story:
Explains the daughter, Sally:
"In July 2002 my boyfriend, Marcus Thompson (Tommo) and I decided we would row the Atlantic. After a sleepless night and a day researching the internet, we were ready. Tommo and I raised money to highlight the need for research into a cure for epilepsy and as Tommo suffers from the condition. Unfortunately the row did not go as planned. After a year of training and raising over £200,000, we had to retire from the race after 6 days. We both knew we would suffer from sea sickness but we did not know that Tommo would be so sick for so long. In fact the sickness brought on his first seizure in over 2 years.
Despondent we left the boat in La Gomera and returned to England. My hope was to ask my Mum to take Tommo’s place."
Mother Sarah comments:
"When Sally first phoned me from the boat asking if I could take Marcus’s place I couldn’t believe my luck!
I packed some baked beans and some rice cakes and caught the ferry from Tenerife to La Gomera the next morning.
I organized my home and my husband Steve. He has already employed a friend’s daughter to do the ironing and feed our pets and he’s even considering a Tai lady for the evening shift! The ladies I work for as a gardener have been really fantastic and they’ve given me permission to have the time off."
Sally says:
"This is where we are now. Tommo is back in Brighton readjusting to a life without ocean rowing and my Mum and I will be the first Mother and Daughter team and only the second all female team. We don’t intend to win; in fact we know the only record within our reach would be the longest time spent crossing the Atlantic, which currently stands at 111 days!"
And mom:
"My confidence has grown since attending the Ocean rowing Society meeting where we met some of our fellow rowers. They were just ordinary people, no huge muscle men, just normal blokes and we are the only women."
Ocean Rowing Society Atlantic Rowing Regatta ORSARR 2004 takes place to celebrate the 35th anniversaries of the first East-West solo ocean row by John Fairfax and first West-East solo ocean row by Tom McClean; and 33rd anniversary of the first Atlantic East-West double row by Geoff and Don Allum.
Sally and Sarah are team yellow, Calderdale - The Yorkshire Challenger.
Image of Sally, Sarah and a rowing boat courtesy of Oceanrowing.com
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