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|THE JOURNEY||THE ROWERS||THE BOAT|
LOG 1: 17 May
LOG 2: 22 May
LOG 3: 5 June
LOG 4: 26 June
LOG 5: 10 July
LOG 6: 25 July
LOG 7: 16 August
LOG 8: 18 September
Log 2: Tuesday 22 May
Tim Welford and Dom Mee have made it through the storms and are now trying to make some real headway across the Pacific. Dom Mee managed to spare a few minutes to tell BBC News Online how they were both getting on. He also answers some of your questions below.
"The weather is coming in from the south east which isn’t too good for us at the moment.
The skies have generally been overcast and we’ve had storms for about 80% of the time we’ve been out here, so the weather hasn’t been brilliant, to be honest.
Basically we’ve had two reasonably big storms and one big one. Generally what we’ve done is lash down everything on deck and myself and Tim just get in the back and batten down the hatches and get out the way. We can spend up to three days in there.
It’s not good. Because it all builds up with condensation as well, you’ve got to try and open the hatches all the time to try and get some air in. On one particular occasion we got a huge wave through that flooded the cabin. It wasn’t particularly pleasant, to be honest.
We have to clean the bottom of the boat all the time to make sure that no marine life grows on it because it will slow us down. Tim went over to inspect the hull after the storm and he was under about five minutes when he came face to face with a shark.
He came straight back on deck really quickly! I normally keep a watch on deck, with a high powered rocket flare and if there was a shark that looked like it was going to attack then we’d use it, as a last resort.
Tim had a look of shock on his face when he got on board. But the only thing we tried to do was get a photograph of it. It was obviously a friendly one though, and just came for a look and then went away.
Up till now we’ve mainly seen sharks both big and small and today we’ve had dolphins around the barrel for this morning and this evening, and we saw a whale earlier as well. We’ve also got albatrosses that follow us since we left Choshi.
The main thing we are trying to do at the moment is get about 20 miles south because the winds have taken us up quite far north we’ve got to try and get south because there is a good current that flows east.
Then we’ll just see from then. We are at the mercy of the elements in this boat and we just take every day as it comes.
We are out here for the duration and we are going to get this cracked."
Q: Lucian Wischik from the UK asks do you look forward more to time off in the cabin, or time ‘on’ rowing?
A: A bit of both really. When you are rowing 12 hours a day it’s pretty hard going - at the same time, when there is a storm and you are locked in the back cabin for two or three days you want to be rowing. I think you bounce from one to the other to be honest.
Q: Michele Prins says what kept our crew in form when crossing the Atlantic under sail was good food - what do you have as a treat?
Q: Steve Wilson of the UK want to know if, considering the scale of this challenge, how you think you could better it?
Q: Simon Adams in San Francisco asks will you be able to inform the Us coastguard of your position prior to entering the golden gate to enable sailors in San Francisco to motor out to welcome you?
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