This weekend, three members of the team made the LONG journey to Essex to boat builders’ ‘Rannoch Adventures’ Open Day.   The experience was worth every mile, in terms of knowledge gained, stories shared and connections made.  We met some of the teams that we’re going to be racing with (against!) in 2025 and got the opportunity to jump aboard a beautiful new boat that was launched on Friday for the first time.  The ‘There She Rows’ crew were incredibly generous and let Denise and Liz have a nose before they pushed off for their overnight test row.

We were able to sample food from Ali at Resilient Nutrition, learn about the water maker from Jim, director of Mactra Marine, test out natural first aid creams for our poor bottoms made by Bea from DOC SPARTAN UK, find out about comms at sea from Range Global, dry run a life-raft (the only time we’ll be smiling in one of those!) with Seago and generally chat about all things Ocean Boats with Charlie and Mike from Rannoch Adventure. 

Oh, and we held a couple of Olympic Gold Medals won by Alex Gregory MBE in London 2012 and Rio 2016, whilst he was talking to everyone about his own inspirational ocean rowing adventures. 

Although we missed Helen (our fourth member) terribly, we did manage to bring her back some goodies to sample.  We’ll be back at Rannoch soon, no doubt!