Intrepid 232 breaks world record
By Geraldine Fitzgerald
After 58 days, 12 hours and 30 minutes at sea, the boat Intrepid 232 finally made her triumphant arrival into harbour at Nelson’s Dockyard, Antigua.
Her exhausted yet jubilant crew had broken a world record, battling extreme weather to become the oldest female crew to row across any ocean, tackling the Atlantic one stroke at a time for a distance of 3,000 miles.
Rosemary Satchwell and team took part in the Talisker Whiskey race rowing from Tenerife to Antigua in a boat named for the combined age of the four women aboard – 232. The boat was sleek and new; the women aged 56-60 with a few injuries, including a broken back, between them – but their mental toughness was unparalleled.
Originally from Blarney, Rosemary went to boarding school in Crosshaven and although living in Jersey for many years, she came ashore in Antigua wrapped in the tricolour.
She said: “I love rowing and doing something mad like this had been at the back of my mind for about 10 years. My husband always encouraged me to get it out of my system, so when Covid happened, my friend and I began talking about it in earnest.”
She and her friend recruited two other women; sponsorship was obtained and so it was that Rosemary, Julie Brady, Helene Monpetit and Alison Smithurst went to Tenerife to wait for their weather window, which kept changing. They eventually set off on 13 December, with survival supplies, dehydrated food rations and snack packs.
She said: “We had to consume 4,400 calories a day to fuel the sheer physical demand on our bodies and although we had the fastest start in the race, massive waves broke our onboard jet boiler. That meant no hot water to rehydrate the food rations, so I ate lots of chocolate and crisps from my snack packs for the first ten days!” With a cabin fore and aft, the women took it in turns to row and rest.
Rosemary added: “Windows had to remain shut for safety, so it was sweltering in the cabins, and we had trouble sleeping on cue. But soon we would fall asleep literally in the middle of a storm.” The loo was a bucket, the use of which demanded great balance in massive swells. They wore seasickness patches to ward off nausea and developed sea legs very quickly.
“We had agreed in advance that honesty was the best policy on a nine metre boat– we got to know each other very well planning the journey, so I’m pleased to say we went as friends, and came back as even closer friends,” she said.
Things took a dangerous turn when the weather began to change. “We were supposed to make landfall on 2 February...but we had the slowest finish the race has ever seen because of the weather. The boat has a massive parachute, called a para anchor, that gets deployed to stop the craft from being blown backwards, and we had to deploy it repeatedly in those final few days, then haul in the 90 metre lines and pack it all away again and again.”
“We were wrecked and yes, we got to the point of thinking ‘Oh, we just cannot keep going’ but the thought of our families kept us focused on the goal. We fought the weather hard and finally on 9 February, we neared the harbour and were met by a media boat. We could hear the shouts and see everyone in boats, and people lined up on the dock, screaming for us. It was an indescribably amazing feeling.”
After hugging his flag-draped mum, Rosemary’s son Sean gave her a bottle of Lucozade, and the women were taken into a marquee for a feast of beer, burgers, and chips that they gobbled like gannets.
“We flew home last Thursday, and all our friends met us at the airport with cheers and banners. It was fantastic. I’m still on a high, and I suppose I have my life back. Now I have to go to work on Monday,” she concluded.