OceanCats will begin the adventure of traveling 3000 nautical miles (5000 km) rowing, without stops or assistance, the distance between the island of La Gomera (Canary Islands) and the island of Antigua in the Caribbean, where they will finish the challenge. They will do it by participating in the hardest rowing test on the planet, the “TALISKER WHISKEY ATLANTIC CHALLENGE”, an annual regatta, which this year has 43 boats from all over the world. Departure is scheduled for 11 am. To face this challenge, the 4 members of the team (Joaquim Planells from Blanco, Martí Ramírez from Palamos, Sergi Franch from Escalano and Juanba Romero) have been preparing for 4 years, during which they have completed numerous oar crossings through the Mediterranean, as in August 2021 when they rowed Tossa de Mar and the island of Mallorca, or this past June 2022 when they left Gandia to row to the islands of Ibiza and Formentera.
The crossing of the Atlantic Ocean it will depend a lot on the weather conditionsthe forecast is usually to complete it in 35 – 40 days, the current record is 29 days and 14 hours, by the British team “The Four Oarsmen”, in 2017.
The boat has two solar panels, an automatic desalinizer and a manual one, and all the electronic instrumentation necessary to navigate at altitude. Food will be based on freeze-dried food, highly caloric and durable, on board they last more than a million calories.
As there is no sail or engine, the propulsion is only rowing, this means that the 4 rowers are divided into two groups of 2, one group will be rowing for 2 hours and the other resting, and so uninterrupted until the end of the challenge.
The challenge is part of the OCEANCATS project, which aims to convey to society the problems that our seas and oceans suffer from the excess of products of plastic origin. For the achievement of this informative objective, the team has given informative talks in schools and centers that work with intellectual disabilities, and “extreme” sports challenges, such as long-distance rowing crossings.
