GOOD morning from Antigua.
Yes I know, I didn’t expect to be here either.
But one thing leads to another.
After last week’s blog about the intrepid adventures of Yorkshire lawyers David Knaggs and Richard Larking who set out to row across the Atlantic in December, I did a speculative internet search to find out how much it would cost to fly out to Antigua to see them arrive in the historic Nelson’s Dockyard.
British Airways had a return trip to the Caribbean island priced at less than I could buy a Jet2 flight to Crete in the summer.
So I booked it.
And here I am, having left Storm Chandra in the UK on Wednesday to arrive into the bright sunshine, lush villa-strewn hills and super yacht-filled harbours of Antigua.
The downside is that I leave on Sunday and I’m likely to be pretty jet-lagged by the time I arrive at Gatwick Airport on Monday at 5am.
But the upside makes it all worth it.
And quite frankly my tiny travel obstacles are nothing compared to the 46 days at sea in a seven metre boat that David and Richard have just experienced.
Seeing their tiny boat peep around the headland, bobbing and glinting in the sunlight was the first of many uplifting experiences I – and their many family and supporters – went through yesterday morning.
As Vinnie Jones once said: “It’s been emotional.”
Their family and friends lined the fortifications on the headland above the historic Nelson’s Dockyard, all wearing T-shirts bearing the boys’ Greens 2 Blue team logo (organised by David’s wife Jackie), honking horns, cheering, clapping, unfurling banners and even a Sheffield Wednesday flag brought by Richard’s son Oliver.
As the boat skittered towards us we could see David was rowing (plenty would have lost bets on that) and Richard steering while a launch with members of The World’s Toughest Row team got close enough to brief them on what was to be the final few hundred yards of their 3,000-mile journey.
Bobbing around in the middle of the harbour, the pair set off flares and waved them in the air to celebrate their achievement and it was greeted with another cacophony of cheers and whoops by their family and friends.
Given they had not seen their families – or land – for a month and a half, it must have been a strange sight to have all of those things coming into view all at once.
I know I and all the other supporters watching them felt emotionally overwhelmed, so how the bloody hell did they feel?
They rowed into the dock, bare-chested, deeply tanned and with greying beards giving them a look of salty sea dogs.
Which in Richard’s case is easy to imagine given he joined the Royal Navy as a teenager, travelling across the world before training to be a lawyer.
But for David, well known as a smooth-chinned and even smoother talker, with a mane of well cut brown hair and liking for the finer things in life?
For many of us it was a shock to see him looking more like Grizzly Adams than Cary Grant.
After posing with a banner and then Union Jacks, the boys were helped onto dry land for the first time in weeks – and it showed.
They staggered like punch drunk boxers, trying to steady themselves on solid ground, having only clambered the three metres from their cabins to the oars every two hours for the duration of their epic journey.
They were interviewed by the race organisers, who were brilliantly set up to capture the moment with video, photography and CEO and race director Carsten Heron Olsen interviewing David and Richard.
What struck me was how both were so positive despite the many challenges they have faced.
I RECOUNTED last week the story of the capsize that saw David thrown overboard in the pitch dark and Richard spun around in his cabin like he was in a washing machine.
Once they landed they revealed that they had twice capsized.
David was secured to the boat by a safety harness and Richard had to call out to find him in the dark.
When he pulled David back on board, his phone and several other pieces of equipment had been lost at sea.
“I really thought he was a goner,” Richard admitted to us, now they had finished the race.
“David said to me, ‘We have lost the seat’…I told him it was attached to his leg.”
Richard said that the whole experience was the most frightening thing he has ever endured.
And for a man who has served in the Royal Navy – and supported Sheffield Wednesday home and away – he has had his share of shocking occurrences already.
For the hours after the capsize he admitted he couldn’t go back into the cabin, he just gathered his possessions around him and sat on deck, initially planning to stay there for the final 10 days of their voyage.
But with the courage and fortitude that has been a feature of this whole challenge, he did go back in the cabin and both redoubled their efforts in the final few hundred miles to their destination in Antigua, eventually carving over 24 hours off their projected finish time.
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I HAVE been equally impressed by the support of the pair’s families, not just during their 46 days at sea, but in the two-and-a-half year build up to the race from the moment David and Richard – who met as fellow members of Alwoodley Golf Club in Leeds – decided to undertake this epic challenge together.
The preparation they put in was not just detailed, it was meticulous.
And their families supported them every step and oar stroke of the way.
You could see the nerves and excitement in Richard’s children, Oliver and Mimi, as their father neared the finish.
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His mum Pat was very emotional, which I’m sure was because of her son’s arrival and not because the laid-back Caribbean approach to service meant her pre-arrival breakfast of fried eggs on toast at a dockyard cafe took an hour to arrive.
His partner, Caroline Pullich, well known from her time in banking with NatWest and Barclays in Leeds – one half, with Karen Swainston making up the other, of the Cagney and Lacey of regional banking in Yorkshire – has been a huge supporter and has kept a phalanx of friends updated with regular messages.
Caroline, who has recently moved from NFU Mutual to set up a private client arm for highly respected family-owned Yorkshire-based but national insurance firm TL Dallas, is recognised as one of the best connected people in Yorkshire business and even used her unmatched networking skills to make sure the pair were interviewed during their row by the BBC’s Look North.
In fact, the regional TV news programme is planning to interview Richard and David today and it should be broadcast in this evening’s Look North show at 6.30pm.
They won’t be short of things to talk about.
I asked David’s wife Jackie how she had found the last six weeks without him.
She said her friends and her daughters, Grace and Mary, had been a huge support during that time.
I wondered to Jackie what Christmas had been like without having the family patriarch there to open the wine, carve the turkey and generally pontificate about everything?
She said they had missed him dreadfully but had been a huge support to each other.
“There was only one occasion on Christmas Day, when emotions ran high for Grace and Mary,” Jackie admitted.
‘Was that brought on because the ache of David’s absence was emotionally overwhelming them?’ I asked Jackie, gently.
“No it was over how to cook the roast potatoes for Christmas dinner,” she replied.
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RICHARD and David have been raising money for two incredible charities during their Greens 2 Blue challenge.
What I loved was that at the back of their boat, Brizo, sponsored by many businesses including lead sponsor Begbies Traynor, they had the logos of both charities as well as photographs of David’s late parents and Richard’s late father.
Speed bonny boat, as they say.
The first charity they are supporting is Maggie’s Yorkshire, the uplifting centre at St James’s Hospital in Leeds that provides support to people with cancer and their families.
And secondly The Friends of Alfie Martin, which raises vital funds to purchase much needed state-of-the-art life-altering and life-saving medical equipment for the Leeds Centre for Newborn Care, which cares for the sickest newborn babies from across Yorkshire.
It was founded by Fiona and Roger Martin in memory of their son Alfie and the charity is entirely run by volunteers so every penny goes to its vital work.
It is no surprise that Fiona was awarded an MBE in the King’s Birthday Honours last year, which she recently received from the Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle.
Both charities have some significant supporters, but I know they have been blown away by the Greens 2 Blue charity campaign which has now raised £220,000 with an anonymous donation of £20,000 made last week.
I’d like to think it was in response to my blog, but I have no evidence to prove it.
Mind you, when has that ever stopped me?
If you would like to donate you can do here: https://www.givewheel.com/fundraising/6345/worlds-toughest-row-atlantic-2025/
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“HELLO mate!”
I turned to see a large, bearded gent wearing a cap and shirt which clearly defined him as an official member of the World’s Toughest Row team.
After a brief pause, it dawned on me that this was Fraser Mowlem, a member of the Row 4 Victory team from Yorkshire who successfully completed the race in 2019.
Fraser and his friends Duncan Roy, Glyn Sadler and Will Quarmby were introduced to me by Sir Gary Verity of Welcome to Yorkshire at the Great Yorkshire Show.
Gary and his team backed the Yorkshire-based armed forces crew who were raising money for charities including Help For Heroes and the Royal British Legion and I introduced them to one of their sponsors, Nik Marshall of Hull-based business ResQ and got them to speak at a couple of events for members of the management team at broadcaster Sky.
Fraser told me that the row had changed all of their lives in different ways.
He was then a chief technician in the RAF and now he is working for the World’s Toughest Row team, former Royal Engineer Duncan is a professional ocean rowing coach, Glynn, who is an ex-Royal Marine is running spear-fishing trips up the Norwegian Fjords and Will, the only “civilian” in their crew has left his role working on the grounds of five-star Yorkshire hotel Grantley Hall to work running a holiday business in Yorkshire.
I know you won’t believe me, but that photo was taken before 10am and I’d been wearing factor 30 and a cap all morning.
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AFTER such a busy week my thoughts now turn to other matters.
Like can I find a beach bar showing Derby County’s match at Bristol City this evening?
And how many of the bars and restaurants recommended by regular Antigua visitors Jeremy and Donna Fenn I can visit before I fly back on Sunday?
If you do bump into my wife, I’m at a conference in Knutsford.
Have a great weekend.