The Under-40 Men and the Sea

(Chronicle photo)

Their one-month journey to Hawaii puts to shame complaints about my own trip:

On Wednesday [June 30] afternoon, a four-man crew of rowers pulled their 30-foot boat into Waikiki, setting foot on land for the first time in a month and setting a new world speed record for crossing the Pacific Ocean between San Francisco and Hawaii.

By completing the journey in 30 days, [Jason] Caldwell’s team smashed the previous race record by nine days and clutched a world record for the fastest all-male crew of four to row the mid-Pacific route east to west in an open class rowboat...

Caldwell, the only American, has crossed the Atlantic twice. His three teammates, all Brits, are a mixed bag of experience levels.

Angus Collins is one of a handful of people to have rowed the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans. Duncan Roy had taken down the Atlantic as well. But the fourth crew member, a tattooed mountain of a man named Jordan Shuttleworth who owns a CrossFit gym in the United Kingdom, had no ocean-crossing experience and was added to the team earlier this year.

Despite the record speed, the men endured punishing challenges at sea. To make time, they paired up and rowed in two-hour shifts.

The first two weeks, the men battled headwinds through cold and rain, and nearly capsized pushing through massive swells. Shuttleworth suffered debilitating seasickness that kept him all but out of commission for the first week.

During the back half of the trip, the water flattened out, but subtropical heat kept the men from gaining much-needed rest.

Comments:

1) A pace of 80 miles a day two rowers at a time: their conditioning and BMI are in a different universe from mine.

2) Journalistic quibble: " a world record for the fastest all-male crew of four to row the mid-Pacific route east to west in an open class rowboat." Why the qualifier "all-male"? This is not a gender issue--are there faster times by mixed crews, all female crews, etc.? If it's the fastest time regardless, leave off the "all male." If it's not, how about a sentence explaining who has the record?

3) Hawaii requires all Mainland visitors to have in hand a negative COVID-19 test taken within 72 hours of departure. Wonder if that requirement was imposed on these gentlemen. Side note: Governor Ige will lift the testing requirements, effective July 8th, if visitors have a vaccination card. Assuming the crew was vaccinated, they should have slowed down to avoid the quarantine (kidding).