2 Mar 2006

100 days: Commando Joe’s final countdown

Commando Joe, the military trans-Atlantic rowing team, today moves into their final stages of preparation – just 100 days remain before the four-man crew rows past New York’s Statue of Liberty on an epic 3,318 mile journey across the Atlantic Ocean to Falmouth, with a 110-year old record in their sights.

Almost three years of fundraising, planning and sheer hard work come to a head on June 10, 2006, when Commando Joe – rowing under the name of Team Hesco – stake their claim in the Shepherds Ocean Fours Rowing Race. It’s the second in a series of three ‘extreme’ challenges – they’ve already raced to the North Pole in a record-breaking time – to raise more than £100,000 for the Stroud-based Meningitis Trust.

“Three years ago in May, I lost my sixteen-year old son Gareth to meningitis,” says Commando Joe’s Capt Pete Rowlands, of Long Riston, Yorkshire. “He was away at boarding school and because the disease developed so quickly, the first we knew of it was the call every parent dreads: Gareth’s headmaster phoning us with the news that Gareth had died.

“Although a family can never entirely recover from the loss of a child, the support and counselling provided by the Trust to me, my wife Helen and daughter Sian helped us to cope with the situation in a way that we would otherwise have found very difficult,” Captain Rowlands says.

“Rowing the Atlantic is the least I can do to show my gratitude to the Trust, and to ensure that they can continue their work of raising disease awareness and helping disease victims and their families.”

Joining Capt Rowlands in Mount Spirit, the 29ft long, 6ft wide boat, will be Cirencester ‘action man’ LCpl Charlie Martell, and fellow Royal Engineers Capt Mark Waterson, also from Yorkshire, and Staff Sgt Ben Fouracre, from Wiltshire. The crossing is expected to take them up to two months, but they’ll need to reach Falmouth less than 55 days after leaving New York if they’re to beat the existing record, set in 1896. It will also make them the first team in history to row from mainland USA to mainland UK.

“I hope we’ll get a better reception than the two Norwegians who made that first crossing,” LCpl Martell jokes. “When they touched land in the Scilly Isles, no-one believed that they had arrived from New York – so they got back in the boat again and rowed on to France, where they arrived – and were believed – five days later!”

Mount Spirit is bristling with a variety of equipment to make the crossing easier and safer, including a water maker to generate fresh water; GPS navigational equipment, and satellite phones. “We’ve also wired in an iPod to a music system on-deck,” LCpl Martell says, “to alleviate some of the monotony of the voyage. If the iPod is completely full, we’ve worked out that if we beat the record, we shouldn’t have to listen to the same song twice!

“Joking apart, it’s still going to be tough – four men spending two months in a confined space; eating similar food day-in, day-out; getting a maximum of just two hours’ sleep in every four – and feeling completely exhausted every day.

“But the satisfaction we’ll get from having completed this challenge, and raised thousands of pounds for the Trust, will make it all worthwhile,” he concludes.

Mount Spirit will be formally launched on April 6, 2006, at St Katherine’s Dock, London, in the presence of Falklands veteran and charity campaigner Simon Weston, before the team heads to Weymouth for a final week of training and testing the boat. Then it will be shipped to New York for the start of the race on June 10. The team’s race progress, managed by their Gloucestershire campaign HQ, will be tracked by GPS on their website at www.teamhesco.com, where messages can also be left for the crew.

-ends-

2nd March 2006

Notes to editors:

o Commando Joe is raising money for the Meningitis Trust by undertaking three ‘extreme challenges’ over a period of three years. The fundraising target is £100,000

o The first challenge involved three members of the team skiing to the Magnetic North Pole in April 2005. The 320-mile journey was completed in a record-breaking nine days, 17 hours and 39 minutes

o The third challenge will involve a race through one of the world’s great deserts

o Rowing boats have made only nine successful crossings of the North Atlantic Ocean from New York. There has not yet been a successful crossing from New York to the United Kingdom mainland; previous crossings have reached only the Scilly Isles

o George Harboe and Gabriel Samuelsen, two Norwegian immigrants, hold the current record for the quickest crossing. They arrived in the Scilly Isles on August 1, 1896, having spent 55 days at sea

o The most famous crossing of the Atlantic Ocean was that made by Chay Blyth and John Ridgway in English Rose III, from Cape Cod to Ireland in 1966

For further information, photography, or to arrange interviews or photo shoots, please contact Commando Joe’s campaign manager, Adrian Bell:

+44 (0)7976 866808 or adrian@commando-joe.co.uk

or refer to the team’s website at www.commando-joe.co.uk

High-resolution images can also be downloaded from the press resources area