Life was a bitch these troubled days on the ocean; a couple of days ago tiller arm number two (autopilot) stopped working. Bad news since this was nr 2 of three autopilots while not even being halfway. Well, we still had one left.... but it was kind of strange that they all had the same failure while nothing appeared wrong with it. The information and feedback of rowers from the rowing society on the internet, though useful, brought no solution.Niall was still freaking out from the pain in his ass so now he was rowing on an inflatable pillow and a folded fleece sweater in his boxer shorts.
To relieve Nialls' cushion ( as Colin almost flattened it with his feet while rowing) Colin was rowing in the back seat now, at least he was trying... resulting in an oar overboard! The "man overboard training" came in handy as a well oiled machine and we flew back with a rigid division of labor against waves and windforce 5 again, to store our precious oar after about 20 minutes. Fortunately it happened just before sunset otherwise we would have lost it!In the night Clement and I are ready to begin a two-hour rowing shift at 01:00. Colin disconnected his ankle, staggers on the deck and fell down. He flipped over the lifeline railing, holding on to a line with his head dangling over the water and two legs in the air. In this crazy position, he shouts at us: "get the fuck over here and get my legs!" We grab his legs and pull him back on deck. The new rowing shift can begin!It's Wednesday the 29th. Around 9 am we reach the point that we are halfway through the ocean. On both sides from start to finish the distance is 1650 nautical miles. My fastest half ocean crossing so far. We get to this point after 22 days and 23 hours: in other words our ETA is decreased by 10 hours resulting in an estimated arrival time of 45 days and 22 hours. Not bad with the slowdown of the past few days and still 4.5 days for the world record!


~Ralph