Route
The Challenge
To row the 3,000 miles across the Atlantic ocean alone and unaided.
This will involve 60 to 70 days at sea with only myself and the deep blue ocean for company as I endeavour to cross from La Gomera in the Canary Islands to Antigua in the Caribbean. Incredible as it might seem we have sent more people into space and back than we have across the Atlantic Ocean in a rowing boat.
The boat is heavy and has a large surface area for the wind to take hold of so it will be all but impossible to row it against prevailing wind and currents and the chosen route hopes to take advantage of the wind and currents and use them to my advantage. The systems on the boat are powered by solar panels so the equatorial route should provide sufficient solar energy to keep them running.
The Atlantic Currents
Water is a fickle thing and whether it be in a sink or in an ocean the Coriolis Effect means that water in the northern hemisphere will always be trying to deflect to its right, consequently this means that all of the water in the North Atlantic basin deflects into the centre and as a result this forms the North Atlantic Geostrophic Gyre, an eight meter high hill of water at the centre of the oceanic basin that is skirted by four major wind driven surface currents that run clockwise around the oceanic basin.
The Canary Current, and the one that I'll be piggy backing on, is on the eastern arm of the Gulf Stream and branches south from the North Atlantic Current, flowing south westerly at little more than 0.6mph toward the north African coast about as far as Senegal where it then turns west to become the North Atlantic Equatorial Current which is pushed westward along the equator and across towards the finish line in the Caribbean by the elusive Trade Winds.
