Eastney to Needles - Endurance Row Friday 5th October 2018

The sun rose to welcome us to the start of the endurance training row from Eastney to the Needles IOW.

We set off at 08:10 from Eastney made our way along the Eastney and Southsea shoreline turned out to see to avoid the submarine underwater defence, then began our transit across the Portsmouth Shipping Lane where we were approached by the water police who informed us that a Navy vessel was entering the harbour, as we were halfway across the IOW suddenly disappeared under a shroud of fog. The decision was made to turn north and head towards the mainland shoreline for safety reasons. We headed along the north channel staying close to the Stokes bay and Lee-on-Solent shoreline as the solent had all but disappeared in the fog we reached the Southampton Shipping Channel in approx 2 hours. We waited by a north channel buoy for a while because we heard ships fog horns then out of the mist appeared the Red Funnel ferry heading up Southampton water into Southampton, then a decision was made to sprint the 800/1000m width channel and hopefully find the Calshot North Cardinal buoy and safety, we almost bumped in to it! As we reached the buoy the fog began to lift and there on the other side of the Solent was Cowes and the IOW, the sun shone and everywhere was visible. We headed towards the IOW so we could find the strongest tidal flow heading West/Southwest and on to the needles.

We reached 23 miles (the distance of the channel crossing, I am training for) in 4 hours, we continued on and arrived at 26 miles in 4 hours 30 minutes. As we approached the Needles they suddenly disappeared in fog and all we had to direct us was the Needles lighthouse fog horn.

We reached the Needles in 5 hours 30 minutes which considering the delays due to the fog and that I've had only 21 hours 30 minutes on-water training it was a decent row. I would like to thank my on-water coach Mike Gilbert, my Safety Officer Chris Partridge and my technical coach Emma Gueterbock and my sponsors for your support and a special thanks for all you kind people out there who have been behind me all the way.

The hard work is not over, we still need to find a main sponsor and someone to sponsor the rest of my training. A lot was learned from this row which we will work on over the coming months.