Atlantic oarsman settles back into the daily grind

By Darragh McDonagh

It was business as usual for a city resident yesterday, as he faced back into the daily grind after spending two gruelling months rowing across the Atlantic Ocean.

Peter Williams was part of a crew of five men and one woman which finally rowed ashore in Barbados a fortnight ago after traversing the 3,500-mile international shipping route from Morocco in 57 days. He made the anti-climactic transition back to work yesterday following his amazing voyage.

“The walk into work this morning was kind of depressing,” laughed Peter. “I’m back in Galway a day or two, but yesterday was my first day back at work. I’m physically broken up still.”

He lost almost two stone over the course of the journey since he set out from Agadir in Morocco on January 12, but has regained some of this weight as he returns to a normal diet.

“I’ve put back on a lot of that weight in the space of 10 days since I started eating and drinking normally again,” he said. “We were eating army-style ration packs on the boat that you just add water to – things like chicken korma and chilli-con-carne – which are high in calories and high in fat.”

There are easier ways to lose weight, however, according to Peter, who described the exhausting regime to which the crew adhered during the incredible adventure.

“We had a shift pattern whereby three people were rowing at any one time, and everyone rowed for two hours and then rested for two hours,” he explained. “It was like a conveyor belt going 24 hours a day.

“Sleeping wasn’t a problem because we didn’t have much time to sleep, so when we did, we were out like a light. Usually, you would get around seven hours sleep within a 24 hour period, which isn’t bad.”

A sense of cabin fever, accentuated by hunger and exhaustion, presented the crew with mental as well as physical challenges within the tiny confines of the boat. But Peter said that there was never any real threat of Mutiny on the Bounty.

“It’s tough living in such close quarters with five other people but I don’t think we had any major bust-ups,” he said. “There were one or two arguments over small things though, like when people were late for their shifts.” 

For more on this feature, see Page 26 of the Galway City Tribune.