Or in our case, the sun! We've had a massively busy time recently, starting with a slightly stressful week in April, immersed in the whole new world of the Ocean Yachtmaster qualification.

At first it seemed easy. A bit of weather stuff (vaguely remember touching on that at school), some passage planning (can't be too tough can it?) and learning to use a sextant. Admittedly we weren't quite sure what a sextant was, or what it did. Our knowledge of such instruments being limited to films and books from days of yore. When the salty old sea dog cap’n took a noon site to figure out where the pirates were. Or something like that!

In reality, we had to know how to set a sextant up, check it for accuracy and then take readings from the sun. Or assorted handy moons, stars or planets. As it turned out, that was the easy bit. Next came a blether of numbers – even Lin got confused on that one (Accountant…yawn!!), so there was little hope for me really!

But we worked really well as a team and my history of travel and living abroad came into it’s own when I found a certain (slightly weird?) skill in working out time zones! Probably due to the weekly call home at 8pm Chicago time – 2am for Mum!

And we have to admit that a fair quantity of medicinal alcohol was consumed that week, but only once we’d finished our homework and were trying to sleep without strings of numbers running through our minds! The course was mighty intense and I can’t start to tell you how relieved we were to pass – not least because we were the only 2 women there, in a ‘non-forces’ minority and not everyone passed.

This was followed by the Sea First Aid – relatively light hearted after the Yachtmaster course, but did raise the reality that you are pretty much alone out there and there are no nice paramedics to hand over to if there is a problem. It did bring home the responsibility that we have to each other to stay safe.

Next came our first weekend of mental preparation. This is something we’ve spent a lot of time on over the years, mostly for the Dragon Boat racing – and we know just how important it is and just how easy it is to underestimate this aspect of preparation. Former rowers have claimed that it’s even more important than the physical side of things, so we’re taking it really seriously.

So we descended on the long-suffering Skelton family home, to work with Ned Skelton who runs the Clean Coaching Company. We’ve both worked with Ned and other coaches, in our sporting and business lives, for a number of years now and he’s kindly offered to help us with this challenge.

Over the 2 days, we worked on a variety of things from motivation to values, ‘fear’ states and the start of conquering Lin’s fear of water (or being under it!). It was a fascinating time and we’ve got lots to think about. If nothing else, we are now confident that we share motivation and want very similar things from the whole experience, something that could make or break the whole project. I know I’ve really skipped over this part, but there will be more to follow!

 But it’s not all work and no play. On our courses, we met some of the entrants in the North Atlantic race that starts next week. An invite to the Team Sevenoaks farewell party (on a boat on the Thames) later, and we combined it with a visit to pay up the curry I’d promised Sally Kettle when she was halfway across the Atlantic with the Rowgirls earlier this year. Both outings gave us a great chance to meet other rowers and pick up plenty of information and advice. Check out these websites if you’re interested in hearing more:

www.sevenoaksatlanticrow.com

www.sallykettle.squarespace.com

So what’s next? Well, we’ve got a weekend event at Salop Caravans new showroom in Shrewsbury followed by the first of several events with Accelerate, our first gold sponsor. On 8 June we’ll be in Birmingham at the Autolinks event as the adopted, 10th birthday charity of Accelerate.

All in all, things are going well although we still seem to have a huge way to go. There are a few things in the pipeline and we’re just pushing on in our normal fashion – focused on our ultimate target!

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