So much for the Grateful Dead lyric, “That’s right, the women are…smarter.”
The World’s Toughest Row – Pacific, which embarked in June with teams participating from around the world, has way more women entries than men this year. The annual edition of this race saw teams start from the historic harbor of Monterey, California, to row across the mid-Pacific Ocean. The finish line: 2,800 miles later on Hanalei Bay on the Hawaiian island of Kaua’i.
The World’s Toughest Row allows for teams of two, three, or four people. This year’s event saw just three teams of pairs, two trios, and four teams of four. Most of the teams are women, with just two male teams participating, both in the four-person category. In fact, this year marks the largest turnout of women competitors in the event’s history.
Two women in particular are looking to dominate this year’s race. For Charlotte Harris and Jessica Oliver, the idea of joining this grueling, 2,800-mile race sounded like a fun challenge.The pair, best friends from the U.K., first decided to row 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean in the challenge in 2021, with no rowing experience. In a shocking upset, they ended up winning (they won), beating out 35 other teams, arriving in Antigua five days earlier than the next closest team. They even smashed five days off the previous world record for women, making the trip in 45 days, 7 hours, and 25 minutes.
The two women, Team Wild Waves, face steep odds again against some of the best rowers in the world, while, with the others, they’ll battle sleep deprivation, hallucinations, blisters, sores, tears, and more. The other two-person teams also include serious contenders for winning and even setting a new record. Liz Wardley tops that list. In January, the Australian and self-described “adrenaline junkie” set a new women’s world record in a solo crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. She managed the trip in 44 days, slashing a whopping 15 days off the previous record and coming in 24 hours faster than Oliver and Harris in 2022. This time around, Wardley will make the attempt with young French teammate Lena Kurbiel.
Team United Row rounds out the competition with British rower Anna McLean and her American partner Jenny D’Anthony. Another pair of adventurous best friends, McLean and D’Anthony also met in college and dreamed of crossing an ocean together.
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The Sadistic Facts:
- The Pacific Ocean is the World’s deepest ocean.
- Before the ‘World’s Toughest Row – Pacific’, just 82 people in 33 boats have successfully rowed to one of the Hawaiian islands from mainland USA.
- The word Pacific means ‘peaceful’.
- The first person to row the Pacific was Patrick Quesnel in 1976.
- The Pacific ocean shrinks by 2cm each year due to the movement of tectonic plates. This means that the Atlantic ocean increases by 2cm each year!
- Of the 33 crews to have completed the voyage, 11 were all female, 18 all male and just 4 mixed gender.
- 75% of the World’s volcanos are situated in the Pacific ocean basin which is called ‘The Ring of Fire’.
- The longest anyone has taken to row this route was Peter Bird who took 147 days.
- The fastest female team to row this route was Latitude 35 who completed the row in 34 days, 14 hours, 20 minutes.
- The average crossing time for all crew sizes is 62 days.