We are very proud to be supporting the extraordinary world record attempt of Project Empower. The record to beat is 120 years old, and it is for the time taken for an unsupported pair of rowers to make it across the Atlantic. In this case, the planned trip, which is going on as we write, is all the way from New York City to Galway. To put this challenge in context, a two-person unsupported row across the Atlantic has only ever been attempted 11 times in all of human history. Only 6 times since the record was set has an unsupported pair even crossed the Atlantic successfully. To give you a sense of the unbelievable drive of the two brave men who are taking on this colossal challenge, one of them was told only in 2018 that he would only have a 5% chance of ever walking again.
About the rowers
The two people tackling the Atlantic together and with no other support are Damien Browne, a former professional rugby player, and Fergus Farrell, another fellow former pro rugby player who has been a lifelong friend of Damien’s through the sport. Damien, since retiring from professional rugby, has sought increasingly more difficult high-performance challenges to fulfill his need to push himself to physical and mental limits. These challenges have included the 6 day, 251 km Marathon des Sables, and the solo unsupported row of the Atlantic in 63 days. To beat the current record, the two of the rowers will have to get across in under 55 days.
Fergus has also pursued a life of extreme physical challenges after his sporting career. In 2018 Fergus suffered a grade A spinal cord injury. He was given a 5% chance of getting any movement back into his legs. Despite the odds, Fergus was determined and fought to work his way towards walking again and then onto other physical challenges. From being initially completely paralysed from the waist down in 2018, only one year later Fergus was walking 206km across Ireland for charity.
The previous record
The current record holders of this mammoth 5000km two-person row across the Atlantic were in fact the first-ever pair to attempt the crossing. The current record is held by Norwegians George Harboe and Frank Samuelsen, who set off from New York in 1896 and touched dry land in the Scilly Isles some 55 days and 13 hours later. After stopping for a short break, then set off again, rowing for another 5 days to make it to Le Harve in France.
Challenges along the way
To smash the record, Damien and Fergus plan to row for about 15 hours per day, working in three-hour cycles in their rowing time. During these cycles, they will row for two hours and then pause for an hour. While for the purposes of the world record attempt it is key that they keep their progress ticking over, it is critical for their safety that they do not burn out and completely run out of energy. In the ocean, you are always a few small weather changes away from having to go into survival mode, and so it is always important to be able to have that energy reserve to dig deep into when you need to fight for your safety.
The amount of rowing needed to get near the record per day will burn the same amount of calories as would typically add up to two Tour de France stages. On top of that, they might expect to experience rowing through storms, as well as points where it becomes impossible to row, and they will have to take shelter in the small cabin area of their boat. During bad storms, you can expect waves of up to 90-100 feet tall and 100 metres in wave length; these are storms that can last up to 5 days if you are unlucky. They will likely have periods where, due to such conditions, they won’t be able to sleep properly. It is because of the sheer fatigue that many people attempting to row the Atlantic have even experienced hallucinations.
How we are supporting this effort
Although the two people who very much deserve all the focus are Damien and Fergus, there is of course also a team of people behind this project. Expertise has gone into every part of this journey, from the engineering skills to get the rowing boat just right, to the nutritionist’s expertise to provide bespoke and portable sustenance for such an extreme challenge. Another part of the puzzle is making sure that the two of them are kitted out in the right clothing.
We wish them fair weather but of course, given the nature of the Atlantic, you must prepare for all eventualities. The team will of course experience sunny patches, where they won’t need to be layered up. But they will also travel through near-freezing water and potentially 90mph winds. This means that they will need to have with them a range of reliable technical clothing options which will help them to keep on going in all different weather. This is why we are happy, along with Helly Hansen, to be one of the select high-level partners of this project who helped to provide much of the technical clothing that the team will be using on their record attempt. We can’t wait to welcome the boys to dry land later in the summer and congratulate them on a monumental effort.
How to keep in the loop
The two adventurers set off on 13th June, and they are currently making their way across open ocean. If you want to track their progress live, then head over to www.projectempower.ie. This site not only has a live tracker, but it also offers more details on the wider aims of the project, as well as featuring clips of a documentary which has been made about them called ‘Waves of Change‘.
The above link is also where you can donate to the cause should you wish to. The two rowers are taking on this challenge to prove to themselves and show others that anything is possible with hard work and determination. But they are also doing it so that they can raise money for a collection of charities. These are Ability West (a charity supporting children and adults with intellectual disabilities and autism), Galway Simon Community (a charity that looks at ensuring people’s rights to wellbeing in their own home), MADRA (a charity rehabilitating and caring for neglected, abused and abandoned dogs) and NRH Foundation (a charity supporting adults and children through their journeys of rehabilitation).