Storms slow rowers racing toward Oahu

Three crews in a Pacific Ocean rowboat race that were affected by Tropical Storm Darby last week continued to press on Saturday, inching closer to the finish line in Waikiki.

The crews were still about 300 miles east of Honolulu on Saturday evening after 48 days at sea.

“They’re exhausted and they’re very ready to touch land,” said Chris Martin, race director for the Great Pacific Race. The race, which covers about 2,500 miles between California and Hawaii, is held every two years. The first race was in 2014.

On Saturday, Darby brought 20 to 25 mph winds and 12-foot swells to the boaters, who row for about 12 hours a day in two-hour shifts and cover about 60 miles a day, Martin said.

Earlier in the week, the three crews were asked to stop rowing to avoid Darby’s path.

They used a parachute anchor to hold their position in the water while Darby moved westward, and continued rowing Thursday.

The effects of Darby began reaching them on Friday, but on Saturday the stormy conditions were already subsiding as Darby moved farther west.

It wasn’t the first storm the rowers had to contend with since launching from Monterey Bay on June 4. A week ago, the remnants of Hurricane Celia ran them over, bringing 48-mph winds and 25-foot waves.

Martin said by email that ocean rowboats are specially designed, “ruggedly built and have withstood hurricane strength winds in the past,” adding, “Each boat is also put through its paces in an inversion test at the start to make sure that they self-right if tipped upside down by a wave. However even that is not a guarantee of safety, as one of our teams found out earlier in the race when Erin Hammer from Team Endurance Limits USA broke her wrist when her boat capsized.

“We have been tracking all storms this season and paying special attention to Celia and Darby,” Martin added.

The three remaining teams are Fight the Kraken, Row Aloha and Sons of the Pacific. They were expected to arrive in Waikiki by midweek.

Todd Bliss, the only Hawaii resident in the race, is rowing on the two-man crew of Row Aloha.

Sue Bliss, his wife, said her husband called her by satellite phone on Saturday and told her it was sunny.

“He just called me, and he said it’s beautiful out there,” she said. “They’re enjoying the weather.”

She said a wave had hit her husband’s boat on the side on Friday and they lost a paddle, but other than that Darby hasn’t been too harsh on the crew.

Bliss, 54, bought the boat he is rowing from one of the crews that finished the first Great Pacific Race and fixed it up in his backyard in Pupukea, stripping the boat down to the wood, reinforcing it, repainting it, and then installed new electronics and equipment.

Sue Bliss said her husband, the chief port engineer for Matson, has maritime experience and knows what to do in a storm at sea, easing her worries.

On Saturday, he told her he wasn’t ready for the experience to be over, adding, “He’s actually enjoying it.”

Eight boats started the race, but two dropped out. Team Uniting Nations was the first to finish, coming in July 14 and setting a Guinness World Record, subject to confirmation, for the fastest boat to row the Mid-Pacific route from east to west in 39 days, nine hours, and 56 minutes.

A support yacht, the Galen Diana, is following the remaining fleet in case they need assistance.

Martin said the race offers unique experiences for the participants, such as enduring the harsh weather, witnessing calm moonlit nights on the ocean, and having birds landing on rowers. It’s “a real involvement in nature in a way that you’d never get in any other sort of vessel,” he said.

For 24-year-old United Kingdom resident Louis Bird, the race is about connecting with his father, Peter Bird, who set several records and spent 938 days at sea in a rowboat, more than any other boater, according to the Ocean Rowing Society website. The Ocean Rowing Society is the official adjudicator for ocean rowing records for Guinness World Records, its website says.

The elder Bird was lost at sea during a voyage in the Pacific in 1996, when Louis was 4. The younger Bird, now 24, is participating in his first ocean-row race to “understand something about his father,” his bio on the crew website says.

His partner on the team Sons of the Pacific, Erden Eruc, is coming close to surpassing the elder Bird’s record for days spent in a rowboat.

At the beginning of the race, Eruc had spent 876 days in a rowboat at sea, 62 days short of Bird’s father, Martin said. Eruc will finish about 10 days shy of the elder Bird’s record.

While in Hawaii, Bird may also have a chance to meet Evelyn, wife of the late Honolulu resident, Foo Lim, who built the elder Bird’s boat Hele-on-Britannia, in which Bird rowed from San Francisco to the Great Barrier Reef off Australia in 294 days in 1983.

Martin said only a few people have rowed from the West Coast to Hawaii.

“This is a race and there is a competitive element to it, but it is far more about the journey,” Martin said. “For the vast majority, it is just about being able to say, ‘I’m one of less than 70 people who have rowed the Pacific.’”