Dubai resident finishes 4,800km rowboat journey across Atlantic

The journey took 65 days and brought the duo face to face with a hurricane, massive ships and waves up to 60 feet high.

Dubai resident Lee Felton, left, and his UK compatriot Sean Lannon, have finished an epic voyage, rowing 4,800km to cross the Atlantic. The two took more than 65 days to complete it, although Fenton aShow more

Four days and 250 kilometres into his quest to cross the Atlantic Ocean by rowing boat, Dubai resident Lee Felton had had enough.

Mr Felton, 30, and friend Sean Lannon, 31, who lives in the UK, spent months planning and preparing for the Talisker Atlantic Challenge, a 4,800-kilometre race they signed up for to raise money for an anti-trafficking charity.

“The reality of the grand vastness of the ocean and how much of a challenge this really was finally hit me,” said Mr Felton, a biology teacher.

He was worried about his safety, and that of his friend, and called for their support vessel.

But his family and race officials encouraged him to persevere, and on Saturday, after 65 days, 13 hours and 20 minutes, their team, Square One Atlantic, rowed across the finish line into Antigua’s English Harbour.

Their adventure began in December after setting off from the Canary Islands with 26 other teams.

While at sea in their “floating prison cell”, Mr Felton had to deal with missing his girlfriend and family, sleep deprivation, aches, pains, relentless Sun, constantly being wet, and close encounters with ships. Then there were the horrors the ocean is capable of producing.

“We experienced 50 to 60 foot waves on a regular basis,” he said. “It was like being on a roller coaster – or being taken up in a lift of water higher than an apartment, then just being dropped off the other side.”

He said the most frightening moment was when their rowing boat, which was about the size of a Range Rover, encountered a hurricane. The rowers were forced to batten down the hatches to ride out the storm, reportedly the first January hurricane since 1938.

“It was scary, knowing we were out of reach of being rescued and if something went wrong it could be up to five days before we could get help,” he said.

Burning about 12,000 calories a day all they had to eat was freeze-dried “ration-packed space food” – Mr Felton’s favourite being a boil-in-the-bag all-day breakfast.

It was not all hardships, though. Mr Felton and his partner in adventure, Mr Lannon, had incredible moments on their voyage.

One day, Mr Felton woke from a nap to see a pod of dolphins frolicking in the water beside their boat.

For a month, their boat was trailed by four-metre-long mahi mahi [dolphinfish], and they “befriended” two birds that they named Bomber-tron and Swoop.

Remarkable sunrises and sunsets delighted the voyagers as they made their way across the ocean.

Mr Felton’s first reaction on arriving in Antigua was disbelief – that he had crossed the Atlantic in a rowboat despite having only 48 hours of rowing experience before the adventure.

The two men had a goal of raising Dh600,000 for UK-based charity Sport for Freedom, which supports survivors of trafficking. The final tally will be known once they sell their boat and collect all the pledges.

While delighted to have completed the journey, the venture was far more of a mental challenge than Mr Felton had expected and he had these words of wisdom for anyone else considering carrying out “the world’s toughest row” – “make sure you really want to do it, and be prepared to have a really tough time”.