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LIA DITTON’S EPIC ATLANTIC CHALLENGE CONTINUES TO FRUSTRATE

67 days in and with just 250 nautical miles between Dream Maker and landfall, the weather continues to defy the forecasts. Frustrations and concerns are building on-board as the end date repeatedly recedes.
Families wait expectantly at the finish line whilst supplies on board are dwindling.
These things weigh heavily on Lia and Mick’s minds as they do whatever is in their power to battle towards Antigua against the ever powerful elemental forces.
In their daily writings, Lia and Mick provide a very personal insight into just what an immensely grueling challenge this has become.

You can keep up to date with the crew’s news and send them messages of encouragement on their website www.oarsomechallenge.co.uk

Below is a ‘mid 10th week’ summary of Lia’s blogs.

Monday 8^th March
Mood colour of the day – Cobalt blue, seas 6-8ft.

THE HOLDING PATTERN
The conditions which lead up to para-anchor time, always seem to path the way to a NEED for para-anchor time. Is it no wonder, since 12 hours of exercise over 62 days is 744 hours of exercise, which if you do an hour of exercise per day, is two years worth of exercise crammed into 2 months?
Right now, I am tired, with that sense of fatigue you feel when you’ve been ill and spent all day in bed – heavy and lethargic. There is a general all-over ache and stiffness.
I think after we arrive that I am going to sleep and sleep and sleep, somewhere cool and soft. But there are miles to go before I sleep, miles to go before I sleep.

Tuesday 9^th March
Mood colour of the day – Chablis pale yellow, seas 6-8ft.

NO CHANGE
The breeze is stronger today than yesterday, gusting well above 20 knots. Our much awaited break in the night never came and so the seas have stacked up higher into wild and unruly breaking waves, streaked with rampant white horses. Like a smashed mirror, the water is so disturbed that more than half of its surface blazes with fragments of brilliant yellowy white, reflecting the heat of the sun. We continue to sit on anchor.
Last night, while it was Mick’s turn for the cabin, I lay on deck in my scupper bed and looked at the stars. For the first time in 48 hours, I didn’t feel sleepy and so was thumbing through my Ipod looking for unheard music. I stumbled upon an album by ‘Depeche Mode’ and another by the ‘Eagles.’ Rocked like a baby in a crib, I fell asleep during each album in turn, but it was still nice to set aside that moment, to soak up some cosmos.
At least our ‘Forward-Moving Para-Technique’ (which sounds too wordy, so I’m going to re-name it ‘The Para-anchor Sailing’ technique), has us tracking south where we want to go. We are even managing to recoup our lost ground to the west!

Wednesday 10^th March
Mood colour of the day – Auburn, seas 3-4ft.

FOUR IMPORTANT THINGS
(Update on MIND, BODY, FISH & PHARMACEUTICALS!)

MIND
The daily movements and activities of Mick’s wife and children are so well charted onboard, that occasionally I have to remember that I am not part of the Birchall family and that I have a life of my own waiting for me. My feelings of separation are obviously less acute, but they are still there. My friends scatter the globe, but I am looking forward to my own small reunions.
Like the African poet, her name momentarily escaping me, ‘home is where I hang my knickers!’
We continue to push on a WSW course, knifing into the wind and it is the toughest rowing I have done during the entire crossing. Rowing into wind, even into a slight wind is so physically hard. Grr.

BODY
When I started to develop sores on my ‘derriere’ I became alarmed at its fat-less-ness. What was I going to sit on now?! It takes a lot of not eating to get a model bottom this slim! I am supposed to be modelling in New York on April 4th, but at this rate I’ll be more petite than the Victoria Secret lingerie models!
From being ripped with muscles from my finger-tips to my calves to being stripped of fat, so that the ‘ripped’ part is now no longer visible! And having only sat (to row) or lain down (to sleep) for 66 days, I have no calf muscles and thus pencil legs. I estimate having lost at least 6 kilos (66 > 60 or less) and one dress size, (from 10 to 8.)

FISH
As if to welcome us back and on our way, the next few hours were filled with the spectacle of Yellow Fin after Yellow Fin, hurling itself out of the water. It was positively raining fish! These weren’t little fish jumping. These were our 3-4-5 ft grand-Daddies, each one launching itself skyward and then the weight of its head dropping down curling the body as the fish fell side-on back into the water with a ‘ker-dum-splosh!’

PHARMACEUTICALS
It’s going to be interesting to see which one we run out of first and how we deal with it:
Toothpaste
Scottex (tissues used as toilet paper)
Antibacterial water-free hand gel
Suncream

Thursday 11^th March
Mood colour of the day – Lead grey, seas 4-6ft.
Food fantasy of the day – F R I E D C H I C K E N (again, sorry)

FANTASY FORECASTS
When I’m on the oars, my stomach rumbles. I am still strong on the oars, but any clock watching now has nothing to do with wanting to stop rowing, but waiting until I can eat again! I am hungry. I have reached a point of low BMI, where I have nibbled away all my expendable body fat. So when we threw out the para-anchor this morning and faced another period of no-progress, it was me who took to the deck with pen and paper and counted out our supplies! I simply can’t afford to skimp right now, or I’ll waste away.
We were making great progress. It was such a shame to abort mission at 11am GMT this morning. After an hour and a half with the GPS handheld in sight, I observed first that our west to north ratio was 2:1 – two miles gained to the finish cost us one mile to the north. Finally, the ratio increased to 1:1 and then <1:1 and so it was time to pull the plug.
I promptly emailed my friend and weather guru, Bill Biewenga to ask. ‘What was the bigger picture?’ As the weather data at my disposal onboard read like a fantasy forecast – NE going E, ESE. Over the last week, the forecasts had become a joke.
What happened next was that around 19.30 GMT (while Mick was in the cabin!), the heavens opened. While on certain passages through the tropics, I might have dashed on deck brandishing a bar of soap, but this little cloud burst was accompanied by a rather chilly 25-30kts. I sat in the corner of the cockpit hunched into my foul weather jacket watching the waves streak with white foam. The sky above was English monotone grey, padded to an indistinguishable depth with cloud. This was no squall. She was here to stay. After a couple of hours, the drenching eased and I lay my bones down in the cabin and slumbered through the early evening, dead to the world.
And so it is Mick’s turn for the wet stuff! He is currently decked-out at the oars in full gear, as we try and capitalize on the current NW’lies to truck back south, nearer to the latitude (17 degrees) of Antigua .

By Billy Swinton-Clark of Bristol Published in: Categories: News. Tags: ocean rowing.