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ATLANTIC ROWING RECORDS
Julie and Colin rowed 9,836 km across the Atlantic Ocean in 145 days from Lisbon, Portugal to Limon, Costa Rica from September 22, 2005 to February 24, 2006.
First from the European to North American Mainlands
This is the first rowboat crossing of the Atlantic Ocean from mainland Europe to mainland North America.
The Atlantic was first crossed in 1897, by 2 Norwegian immigrants who left their home in New York and rowed 3,250 miles to France in 55 days. Several others have followed in the footsteps of these pioneers, joining the 2 continents by rowing eastwards, however until now no one has made the reverse journey from continental Europe to mainland North America.
The closest voyage was made by Sidney Genders in 1970 in his historic row from Britain to Miami in 3 legs. There are a handful of other westward rows that either started or ended on one of the two continents, but never voyaged the full distance between them. Stein Hoff rowed from Europe to South America (Portugal to Guyana, 1970) and two teams rowed from Europe to the Caribbean Islands (Derek King & Peter Bird, Gibraltar to St. Lucia, 1974; Leven Sinclair, Spain to Trinidad, 2006). As for reaching continental North America, John Fairfax is the only other one to do this when he rowed from the Canary Islands to Florida in 1969.
First Woman
Julie is the first Canadian woman to row across any ocean and the first woman in the world to row across the Atlantic from mainland to mainland.
Maud Fontenoy came closest to this when she rowed 6,497 km from the island of St. Pierre et Miguelon (off Newfoundland) to Spain in 2003. Two other woman also did rows that began on the mainland and ended on an island or at a predetermined point in the ocean (Kathleen Saville, 4,505 km from Morocco to Caribbean in 1981; Anne Quemere, 6,540 km from Cape Cod to Lizard meridian in 2004).
At 9,836 km, Julie’s row is also the longest Atlantic row by a woman. When it was completed, it outdistanced the next longest by over three thousand km. And having taken 145 days to complete, it was also the longest in duration.
Statistics have been compiled from those listed by the Ocean Rowing Society.
