During the fourth week at sea we noticed that we were starting to get a constant visitor. A little black and white fish seemed to be following us and on Day 28 we christened him ‘Lenny’. Ever since, Lenny has remained with us and we always see him excitedly swimming around underneath Heritage every time we swim or clean the hull. He is completely unafraid and often approaches us with amusing curiosity, coming right up to our hands whenever we lean over the side to wash spoons and food sachets. He has recently acquired himself a couple of mates, of the same species, and we’re extremely pleased for him. We hope that he’ll remain with us for the rest of the trip.

Aside from keeping ourselves amused with Lenny, we have recently been paying particular attention to ‘Boat Records’. Although with the current windless conditions it is probably not the best time to be hoping to set distance and speed records for our day time 1 hr sessions, and night time 2 hr sessions, we have been going for it anyway. At present Will holds the 1 hr record of 3.31nm and Tom the 2 hr record with 6.23nm. We both claim the speed record and have been unable to confirm who has it; although we do know we’ve both had her above 9 knots coming down waves. The record attempts are a lot of fun as they provide both something to focus on while rowing, making the time pass quicker, and they also provide some good banter between us.

 Day 48 is worth mentioning as it went from one of the worst days of the journey so far, to one of the best. It began with no wind and extremely hot conditions, making rowing pretty unbearable. We found that the runner on the footplate was broken, preventing us from being able to use the foot steering. Most ocean rowing boats are steered using a system which can be controlled with one of the rowers feet; a side-to-side movement pivoting at the heal pulls on lines which in turn operate the rudder. Will did what he does best, which is fixing things, and spent 3 hours putting it right with some spares parts we were fortunate enough to have brought with us. This was an immense relief and the reversed mood on board was complimented with our best sighting yet of some whales. We think they were ‘Fin Whales’, about 3 or 4 of them each 40-50 feet long and they surfaced near to us repeatedly for around 45 minutes.

We have now hit the triple figure mark with around 950nm to go at the time of writing this. There is over 900nm of water in every direction, with the nearest land being South America. With the current weather conditions being so slow; there is very little consistent wind to help us along, we are struggling to average above 40nm per day. If this continues, which it is likely to do so (we have begun to wonder whether the trade winds actually exist!), then we are unlikely to reach Antigua before 20th March, making the total journey around 75 days. We’ll just have to see what happens.

We are now over half way through the race and to celebrate, on 14^th February (day 41), we had Christmas day. The day began at 7am when we both got into the cabin for 6 hours sleep. We woke at 1pm for our Christmas meal; Will had classic beef curry and tom had beef stroganoff, both seasoned with Patak’s chilli pickle. We then opened various presents and cards from friends and family and we now have puzzles and trivia quizzes to entertain ourselves with. The afternoon was spent watching Michael McIntyre’s DVD: Hello Wembley and eating our celebratory bars of Lindt chocolate. We then went for a Christmas evening swim before returning to the night shift at 7pm. As the only way we could tell that we were half way was by several digits on our GPS screen, we felt that we should make the effort to take time out and appreciate where we are, and also to have something to remember it by. As you might be aware we aren’t having the best of luck weather wise this year. The lead pair’s boat from the 2007 race would have been finishing within a week from now (around 50 days). As it is, we are looking at four more weeks until we reach land, as long as we get some more consistent weather.

Four days ago saw the hottest weather of the trip so far – a low pressure system passing to the north of us removed all wind and as a result any swell. We were left with clear blue skies and a sea so flat and motionless it could have been mistaken for a pond. As a result the heat was unbearable and combined with a current which left us in the same place after every rowing shift, it was very demoralising. It got so hot that all we could do was swim in the water to keep cool. The top foot of the water had literally been heated to a hot swimming pool temperature. Luckily these conditions only lasted for three days and we will now be much more appreciative of a cool breeze (in the right direction!)

Yesterday, during admin hour, we were greeted by a 250 metre tanker passing just a mile south of our position. Tom decided to call them up on the VHF radio in the hope of a general chat. A Spanish captain answered in English, he said he was heading to the gulf and aimed to be there in 10 days. The chat came to an abrupt end after we asked him if he could give us a tow!

Trango are a ‘Global Safety Services’ company based in Hampshire. They provide disaster management when required for individuals and companies located all around the world. They put in place contingency plans and provide safe travel systems for those who need their support. They have an operations room which wouldn’t look out of place in a James Bond film! We are fortunate enough to have them as one of our ‘Gold’ sponsors.

Each day at 1150 UTC we call Trango using our satellite telephone, which they provided us with as part of the sponsorship. They take our position and we confirm to them that we have no problems. If there was to be a problem of any kind they would liaise with the race organisers, Woodvale, to help resolve the issue as quickly as possible. They basically provide us with an invaluable safety net, for which we’re extremely grateful. They do, at least, provide fewer sleepless nights for our families!

After this call, we then stop rowing for an hour and do all our admin. This includes, washing ourselves (usually in the sea), washing clothes, brushing teeth, taking vitamins, completing our log, tidying and cleaning the boat and generally checking that everything is in order and as it should be. We have set aside this hour each day to ensure that we maintain the boat, ourselves and stop our bodies deteriorating more quickly than they otherwise would do. We have chosen this hour off from rowing to be between 1200-1300 as this is during the heat of the day and when we would be rowing least effectively. Although our attitude is as relaxed as we feel it can be under the circumstances, this hour does ensure that we stay disciplined. Discipline with this admin hour and our routine is obviously crucial to our success.

Either side of admin hour we each boil water for our freeze dried meals. We have four freeze dried meals each a day, a snack bag and occasionally a wet ration pack as well if we’re particularly hungry. Favourites of these freeze dried meals include Roast Chicken, Mexican Chicken, Strawberry Ice-Cream Dessert, Chicken Tikka and Beef Stroganoff. The ones we hate and are greeted with much hostility are Pad Thai, Porridge Supreme and Jamaican Chicken! The snack bag consists of pork scratchings, pepperami, electrolyte powder to add to our water, three or four chocolate bars and hot chocolate or soup which rarely gets drunk. The wet meals are mostly really good, but we have less of them as they are heavier. We boil the water using our jet boil and add some immediately to the meals, with some stored in a Thermos for later.

We are very much looking forward to reaching half-way, for which we have big celebration plans. The things we have been missing the most are fresh food, solid ground and being able to sleep for more than 90 minutes at a time. It has just become about normal to see nothing but waves and sky and with the nearest land at over 700nm away we feel like we’re having a proper adventure! Everything is good and we remain very positive, despite a few moans from Will about missing his little Jack Russell, Tia!

We are now off the para anchor at last! We pulled it in on the afternoon of the 1st of February – much to our relief. We started rowing with the wind south and within 24hrs we were back on a due west course, we put the experience down to one of those things that happens when you row an ocean and we hope that it won’t be repeated too soon!

A question that people often ask us is “Where do you get your drinking water from?” The answer is that we produce it as we row, and do not carry it like most vessels due to the fact that we don’t have enough space to keep that much water on board, and if we did then it would massively weigh the boat down. Instead we have a watermaker on board. There are various models to choose from, each varying in size, power consumption, water output and price. We have a Katadyn 40e, this is the most compact, robust and cheapest in the range and also draws the least amount of power. The compromise is that it has a lower water output and is slightly less efficient than rival products.

We typically run the watermaker for four hours a day which gives us 20 litres to drink and also rehydrate our meals with. The watermaker is powered by the two 12 volt batteries we carry on board, which are in turn recharged by the solar panels located on the cabin roof. The watermaker is our priority power wise along with other essentials such as the radar which provides an anti collision system and our GPS unit for navigation.

We have now covered over a thousand nautical miles, and to celebrate we are each allowed to indulge in the luxury of…………….a chicken and mushroom pot noodle! This habit stems from school days, it brings back some good memories and provides a great topic to talk about as we eat them. As you can imagine conversation can become fairly limited after a month at sea in permanent confinement with one other person. We have some good talks about the project, what we plan to do afterwards, gap years, careers etc.  but conversation usually breaks down at some point over the day to banter about how bad one of us is at rowing, or how fat they are! This does however bring some amusement.

Many thanks for the continued messages of support which ensure that morale is kept up.