BENGALURU: Every December, rowers from across the world gather at San Sebastián de La Gomera, in the Canary Islands to participate in the World’s Toughest Row, a non-stop 3,000-mile (4828 kms) journey across the Atlantic Ocean to Nelson Dockyard, Antigua, in a row boat to raise money for charities of their choice.
Taking anywhere between 30 days for teams of four, to 60 days for solo rowers, the journey is a physical and mental challenge with participants having to brave temperatures as low as 10 degrees Celsius, and ocean waves reaching 20 feet in height. If she completes the journey, Bengaluru-born rower Ananya Prasad will be the first woman of colour to do it. “It’s a bit like climbing Everest, you can prepare as much as you can, but you only go that high when you climb it,” she says.
Prasad has been training off the UK coast, a terrain with rough waves like the ones she will face when she sets off on December 12. “I’ve done two-three-day stints of rowing alone as well as rowing with a trainer. With the ocean in the coastal UK, you don’t have to go out too far to experience big waves and rough weather. But this will be the longest journey that I would have done,” she says. She will be raising money for two charities through the journey – one for a London-based mental health foundation, and second, for a trust in Chamarajanagar.
Most people who embark on the row complete it, but the journey to get to the starting point is difficult, shares Prasad. She says, “Before they even let you set off, there’s quite a high criteria to meet. In order to prepare for this, you have to have a certain number of hours of training on your boat, learn navigation, and radio safety training, and know how everything works. You have to show you can fix the boat when things go wrong.”
Despite participating in adventure sports like trekking, hiking and kayaking all her life, Prasad became interested in rowing only three years ago, when she heard about the World’s Toughest Row. “I’ve always been into outdoor things and enjoyed trying new activities. When I heard about the ocean rowing race, it was a new challenge and something completely different from what I’d done before. For me, it’s about being out in the environment, experiencing the wildlife there, the night sky, the journey, and what you learn about yourself from the struggle of doing it, and how you cope with that,” she says.
Her rowing boat, a seven-metre-long R25 made of fibreglass and named ‘Odyssey’, is equipped with everything needed to get her through the journey. “There’s no motor or sails but it does have solar panels to power electronics like the radio, a satellite phone, GPS, and a water-making machine. It has a lot of storage because we have to eat 4,000 to 5,000 calories each day and take all of our food – dehydrated ration packs meant to last over 60 days – with us.”
Apart from the physical strain of rowing through unpredictable waves and extreme temperatures, she explains that the mental challenge that comes with doing it solo cannot be ignored. Sharing how she keeps herself motivated, she says, “You will have good days and days when you struggle and want to quit. One way of getting through that is having reasons outside of yourself for doing this. For me, it’s about encouraging people of colour to do more outdoor things, do something a little bit different that they feel they can’t do or are too scared to try.”