With 440 chocolate bars and a month’s worth of podcasts, the
Australian crew will attempt a 5,000km voyage in record time
Like most crazy ideas, this one started in a pub. In high school, competitive rowers Sam Horsley and Rob Wells had come across video footage from the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge – an annual rowing race across the Atlantic, from La Gomera in the Canary Islands to Antigua in the Caribbean. Years later, over a few drinks, Horsley had a proposal for Wells and fellow school
Friends Louis Hugh-Jones and James Samuels: the group should enter the gruelling race.
At first, they thought he was joking. “And then a few weeks later he brought it up again,” recalls Wells. “At the pub, again. He said: ‘No, I’m serious, let’s look at this, let’s commit.’ After a few more weeks passed, we thought: ‘Let’s do it.’ What started out as some pub chat quickly became more serious.”