The search for a crew member.

This is our first blog…

something that has been a long time coming, but better late than never! As a crew, we are going to be spending between 65 and 85 days together on a very small boat. It is very important that the crew are able to get along together. We will often be exhausted, under pressure, homesick, in pain, and never more than 2 metres away from the next person. And of course, we have to poo in a bucket in front of each other too.

For all these reasons and more, we have invested a lot of time recently into finding our final crew member. We want to enjoy this challenge, not endure it, and if there is an unhappy atmosphere on the boat due to personality clashes, 65 days may well seem like 65 months.

The Great Pacific Race

When Barry and Billy took part in the Great Pacific race, they only met each other the night before flying out to America. In fact, out of the 4 crew that made up team Battleborn, only Barry and Phil had spent any time together at all. The 3 weeks that all 4 spent together getting their boat ready in California was as much about team bonding as it was ensuring the boat wouldn’t sink, and luckily they worked together as a team. This enabled them to not only take 2nd place in the race, but to also have an amazing experience as they did so.

This did not happen to all of the crews that took part, and there are many stories about crews that were made up of lifelong friends when they started, who only went on to annoy each other so much during the crossing that they never spoke to each other again after reaching their goal. It would be a great pity to not be able to talk about the experience of a lifetime with the very people you shared that experience with…

Selecting A Crew Member

Selecting a crew member is not as easy as listing criteria that need to be met, sending out a questionnaire and then seeing who ticks the most boxes. The most important aspect has to be that you all get on together. The crew will be relying on each other in situations you would rarely encounter in everyday life. When was the last time a friend of yours dropped their trousers and asked you to lance a boil in a very intimate area because they couldn’t get to a doctor? Or you had to give a saline enema to because of dehydration? Not often, I’ll bet.

So, we put out an advert explaining the basics of the challenge, and have tried to get back to everyone that expressed an interest. If we got on over the phone, we have then gone on to meet them face to face, where you can get a much better feel for their personality. This is the most important part. However, it is also the most difficult part. How do you know how someone is going to react to another person after just one hour?

Everyone, and I do mean everyone, is going to have a personality trait that others find annoying at some point. Now, this may be something really small, something that doesn’t even register when you see each other on a daily basis. You may tut, or occasionally roll your eyes when this trait surfaces, but that’s as far as it goes. However, you put that trait into an environment where you are living, eating and breathing (and pooing) together, and it’s a completely different story. That “smallest thing” can grow to be a huge problem, something that drives you crazy. You have so much time out on the water it is all too easy to dwell upon it, spend hours turning it into something much bigger than it actually is, and you eventually end up wanting to kill the person. Needless to say, this would probably be frowned upon by the charity.

What you are trying to work out in that very short hour of first meeting someone is not “is this a person who will never get on my nerves”, as you will never find that person. What you are trying to work out is how that person will deal with the situation when it arises. Are they going to be able to talk it out and resolve the issue, or will they sit on it until they are just so pissed off that they explode, taking you and the boat with them. This is not easy.

We have met with nearly a dozen people, all of whom have been great, and have had various skillsets that would be really good to have in a crewmate, and we have another 4 or 5 to meet before next weekend, when we will be making a decision… let’s just hope it’s a good one.

Don’t give up

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of those who have applied and made the effort to meet up, sometimes travelling quite a distance to do so. It’s a shame we only have one space, as there are a few of you who I am sure would make great Ocean rowers. I hope those of you who are disappointed will try again with other future expeditions. Please don’t give up on the idea, it’s an amazing experience!!