SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – Four California women on Monday broke the world record for rowing from San Francisco to Hawaii, shattering the previous mark which stood for almost a year.
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The four women departed San Francisco on June 21 in a boat just big enough for them to rotate sleeping shifts and returned to Waikiki Yacht Club on July 25.
The crew consisted of two Olympic rowing hopefuls from Santa Barbara named Brooke Downes and Sophia Denison-Johnston, a UCLA rower from Berkeley named Libby Costello, and a Yoga instructor, also from Santa Barbara, named Adrienne Smith, who told KCBS Radio she had two questions before joining the team.
"What are my chances of dying and does it matter that I don't row?" she said. The answer to the second question was "no" and she said there weren't any moments where the team worried about dying.
"We didn't have any crazy storms," she said.
Mortality aside, the four women did accomplish the unthinkable, at least for most people, by setting out in the Pacific Ocean in a boat powered only by their own strength.
The boat never stopped moving. The team stuck to a strict regimen on the water: two people rowing in two-hour shifts, day and night. Meals, sleep and bathroom breaks were all carefully choreographed to maximize speed.
"What we would do is there are two people that shared the bow cabin, which is the front of the boat, two people that shared the stern cabin, which is the back of the boat and where all the navigation is and we would just trade off," she explained.
"Some of our meals were pre-dried meals that we cooked with a jet boil and then the rest of our fueling came from snacks."
Smith said much of the crew's success came from months of preparing with a support team of trainers, planners and coaches. When they finally got onto the water, the team relied on their training and the power of positive thinking.
"One of the most important values that we had that was written on a little decal on the boat was joy," she said.
The team broke the nautical mile record by more than a day, finishing the over 2,400 mile long journey in 34 days and 14 hours.
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