Row 2 Recovery This is day 1: just a few days later this idyllic, calm water was to take a dramatic turn for the worse.


adventure as equally magnificent for four men half-way through the world’s toughest rowing race. Tough not just because of the


physical tortures that reduced seasoned athletes to forever-soaked wrecks – wet either through rainfall or sweat – hands lacerated and bodies bruised. Tough, too, for the boredom of an existence that featured only two constants – rowing in gruelling conditions, and sleeping in equally trying circumstances. But tough still for the despairing lack of variety in the landscape – heartbreaking hour after heartbreaking hour, one punishingly long and otherwise unremarkable day after another.


Under those conditions, days and


weeks after last seeing a clean-shaven face – or at least one without onerous


sacks under salt-stained eyes – the sight of a piece of foam, floating calmly over the mighty waves of the ocean within a short distance of your temporary home- come-workplace-come-transport, can become, in the mentally disorientating circumstances of a trans-Atlantic rowing race, a life’s highlight. At least it was for members of Atlantic Polo, the four- strong team whose mission to conquer the vast ocean saw them, and others, rejoice at even the slightest deviation from the relentless physical and mental challenge of the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge. The journey, physically, began on


4 December 2013. As all 16 teams comprising 43 rowers left the plush shores of La Gomera in the Canary Islands destined for the finish line


in Antigua, few would have fully appreciated the agony and ecstasy – magnified by tedium, sheer exhaustion and cabin fever – that awaited them. Some had spent months or years


preparing for the journey, raising the capital to compete, sourcing a seaworthy vessel, squaring the prospect of weeks at sea and away from loved ones. Others, like soldier Cayle Royce, agreed to the venture much later in the day. After waking from a coma as a double amputee – the result of stepping on an improvised explosive device while serving in Afghanistan in 2012 – months before the race was to begin, Trooper Royce, who served with the Light Dragoons, agreed to join the Row2Recovery team that included friend, colleague and persuader-in-chief,


ROW360 // Issue 001


101


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