LIVING ON porridge, recycled water and Mars Bar treats, a Galwayman, two Scots and a Faroese have broken one of the longest-standing world records by rowing across the north Atlantic “unsupported” in just under 44 days.
Ray Carroll (33), from Salthill, Galway, was a member of the team which plied a 23ft boat west to east, arriving over the weekend on the Scilly Isles 30 miles off Lands End.
His skipper was Edinburgh man Leven Brown (37), with Glaswegian Don Lennox (41) and Faroese Livar Nysted (39).
Carroll now holds two world records for rowing the northern and southern Atlantic. He lost three and a half stone, was thrown overboard once and survived capsizing twice.
“It was like living in the back seat of a Ford Mondeo, being bounced around the place, and it could take you 20 minutes just to change your socks,” he told The Irish Times yesterday. He and his team-mates snatched a maximum 40-minute catnap every four hours.
The four left New York on June 17th after two false starts due to technical problems and illness. Their time of 43 days, 21 hours, 26 minutes and 48 seconds knocked 11 days off the 55-day record set 114 years ago by Norwegian fishermen George Harbo and Frank Samuelson in 1896 for a 3,246 mile/ 5,223km passage.
Three of the four set a world record in the other direction in 2007-8, but this was “much tougher”, Carroll said. “Currents change every six hours, and there’s little you can do when a storm is coming, and you are only moving at two to three miles an hour.”
He said his worst moment during the journey was when he was washed overboard, but his lifejacket was tethered to the vessel.
Carroll was greeted off the Scilly Isles by his mother Detta, bearing a tricolour. “I was crying when they left and crying when they came back,” Mrs Carroll said yesterday.
Among the welcoming party for the final landing in Falmouth, England, yesterday were his father Ambrose, sister Sinéad and girlfriend Clair O’Shea. His Burmese mountain dog Elvis has been “pining away at home”.
Carroll began rowing at the age of 11 in the “Jez” [Coláiste Iognáid] in Galway, and went on to represent Ireland at a number of levels.
He trained as a marine engineer and was in the merchant navy for 12 years before becoming a ship manager with Irish Ferries in Dublin.
During his last row in the opposite direction, Carroll raised over €90,000 for the depression charity Aware in memory of his brother Aiden.
His charity this time is the Galway-based Jigsaw initiative for young people.