The Daily Routine of an Ocean Rower

This is the 5th and final part of a 5 part mini-series about my experiences of building a project that allows us to row across the Pacific Ocean. We are Team HODL , a 3-person crew attempting to row across the Pacific Ocean to raise donations for The Ocean Cleanup , while setting a World Record. Check out our Instagram and GoFundMe to donate

This is the final part of the mini-series. We cover the daily aspects of everything before the actual row. Further, there's some extra nuggets I've added that might be useful for anyone who is thinking about starting to row an ocean.

Daily life

By the time we set off (12th June 2023), this will have been an 18-month project. At the beginning of the project, I was working full-time, self-employed contracting. Of course, I won’t pretend that it was easy. Balancing between setting up the project and working was challenging in itself. I was in a more fortunate situation in that I was able to justify my own working hours and therefore, had certain flexibility. However, at the start of 2023, I decided to focus my energy on HODL . Of course, this came with a loss of earnings, however, the project required my full attention and due to all the commitments that came with the project, I could no longer do it part-time. I mention this to many people I speak to as the project of rowing an ocean is like building a startup; fundraising from companies, putting together the right team and supporters, building a fully marketable campaign and balancing all the stakeholders expectations. There may be some people who have rowed an ocean who till they set off could balance their full-time work and the project, however, I felt like if I was going to do this, I wanted to put all my blood, sweat and tears into it.

Therefore, the past couple of months, the focus of my work has changed. I do still apply my exact daily routine that I had before; getting up at the same time, working out in the morning, eating the same breakfast and then heading to my private office space and completing the day’s work there. The difference is simply the context of the work. Before, my work involved 9 hours behind a computer screen a day. Now, with a lot of the time I’m spending out of the office doing repairs to the boat, speaking at events, purchasing equipment, planning the teams calendar etc. It’s actually been a refresh from being inside all day, to now being on my feet and operating on the move more often.

Something I have found that may be relatable to many, is that in the past few years I have been fortunate to start working in more management-based roles. This has meant much of my time as been managing people and projects. One personal drawback I have experienced for myself is that over time, I moved away from much of the operational nitty-gritty/ hands-on work. By drawback, I mean that I really enjoy getting my hands dirty. In the industry I work in, tech, I like to think we are the 21st century builders. I generally believe if I was born 50 years ago, I would be engineering something in hardware rather than software. The point here, setting up a project like rowing an ocean, means that you can’t delegate tasks or even manage too many people (due to the size of the team). It’s about just doing every task yourself. Unscrewing the boat to find out what nuts and bolts are required for spares, testing out various tupperware containers to find the best size for storing 4 daily meals, moving storage bags around the boat to find the best weight distribution for speed, putting together spreadsheets that calculate the exact amount of food and calories required each day. These are all little tasks that no one considers when first starting a project like this. And I’m sure, every early-stage entrepreneur can relate to this as well.?

Sleeping

I remember when I was 15, my parents decided to move back to their home country of Switzerland, and I was fortunate enough to stay in the UK and finish my education at a boarding school. At this age, it was the first time I took responsibility for how I lived my life. Of course, the school had its own rules but if you wanted to make the most of your days, you had to start making your own habits. During my time there, for some reason I always felt sleep is so vital to my day. The maths was obvious to me; one third of the day is spent sleeping. Further, I noticed early on that the better I had slept, the better I felt during the day and vice versa. So I started testing out certain sleeping patterns and now, 10 years later, I still have the same sleeping schedule and pattern nearly every day. I have become a very good sleeper. This sounds strange to say but as soon as my head hits the pillow, I am out like a light. I’ve also found the exact laying position of my body and how my neck lies best on the pillow. Further, the kind of room temperature and even, the positioning of my hands next to me. Sleep for me has become a science and an art. I mentioned this with pride because I know so many people who struggle with their sleep and it’s something I have worked hard to get right.

However, there is a downside. The days I don’t get the right sleep are days I struggle. It’s become an obsession. As many might know, throughout the two months rowing expedition, our pattern roughly will be 3 hours rowing and 90 minutes rest. In reality, that's around 60 minutes of sleep time per shift. This equates to 4-5 hours of sleep per day - not much.?

Ironically, the physical training is easy for me, but this new sleeping pattern is one of my greatest challenges. Nonetheless, my approach was the same to all the other parts of the row, make a strategy and then execute. I am currently spending a few days a week, testing out various sleeping patterns throughout a 24-hour period. For example, sleeping 2 hours and then waking up and working for 2 hours. Doing this continuously for 24-hours.

Fundraising

So each team who has rowed an ocean will approach this slightly differently and under various circumstances. Some are fully-funded at the beginning but most have to fundraise throughout the campaign. This was the case for us and in our crew, as I’ve done fundraising before, I naturally took the lead for this. With hindsight, some could say that raising ￡180,000 in 18 months is even a great challenge for startups, yet alone for a non-profit project. I think with many things I do, my naivety and excitement overshadows the harsh reality. I personally wanted to do this row so much, that I just assumed I would be able to get the funds.?

However, the fundraiser wasn’t a smooth journey. We didn’t raise one large lump of money from a sponsor like some teams do, we decided to work with many organisations. Our thinking was that by involving more organisations in the project, we would have greater reach to raise donations for the Ocean Cleanup charity. Thus, we put together four main packages; Lead, Gold, Silver and Bronze. Each had a variety of offerings and mainly, boat branding locations. We knew the most iconic and photographed part of this project will be the boat. Naturally, this means selling advertising space on the boat would bring the most eyeballs to our sponsors. This also included our kit and oars.

From previous experiences, I found that fundraising is not about convincing potential partners about the value of money for them by investing in us, but portraying the future vision of the project and how they can become part of the journey. In reality, the sponsorship prices we were asking for, are a very small proportion of their overall business outgoings. I found it was less about showing them a ROI but rather creating a FOMO. Alongside this, what does the specific organisation actually want to be associated with? For our project there were a few angles; 1. Support our efforts with the Ocean Cleanup Charity 2. Be part of the performance element of attempting to set a World Record or, 3. Get involved with a local project. Once I understood these incentives, I was able to tailor my approach to the conversations much better.

At this stage, I must mention not everything was plain sailing. Of course, with any fundraising, you knock on a thousand doors, 90% won’t open, from those 10% that open, 5% will shut the door quickly. So you’re left with the 5% that are willing to listen. Means for every 100 cold emails, LinkedIn messages or phone calls, 5 organisations will give me time to explain the value proposition. This comes with an incredible amount of work and a lot of rejections.?

"You never stop fundraising”

Even now, we are still having conversations about potential partnerships. Further, not like a waterfall where the flow of water is consistent, we’ve had months where we had ￡200 left in the bank and in a week’s time, we’ve got to pay a ￡2,500 bill. One piece of advice to anyone who would like to take on an expedition like this; make sure you do have someone in your corner who is strong at fundraising. In some teams, that isn’t actually one of the rowers. Sometimes, that could be a friend or a group of people who are keen to help. The truth is, without the cash, you won’t make it to the start line.

This is the 5th part of a 5 part mini-series about my experiences of building a project that allows us to row across the Pacific Ocean. We are Team HODL, a 3-person crew attempting to row across the Pacific Ocean to raise donations for The Ocean Cleanup , while setting a World Record. Check out our Instagram and Website to donate

This was the 5th and final part of the series. Check out the previous part 4, "Training to Become an Ocean Rower"