Four mums, one boat, one world record

We at Roman Blinds Direct have been keen to get involved with doing some local charity work of late. We believe that it’s time to do more in sharing the wealth in aid of some good causes that happen to cross our path.

Recently, we’ve just made a financial donation to the local brass band; we have donated a hefty amount of our roman blind fabric to a lot of charities, including Oxfam and the Red Cross, and we have also donated blinds to Wakefield Hospice.

Our philosophy is that charity begins at home, which is why we have sponsored members of our own staff to do various projects outside of work that are important to them, even helping to send one of our young staff members to Canada to take part in an international shooting tournament!

However, one project that we are particularly excited to be ‘on board’ with is the Yorkshire Rows’ attempt to set a world record, all in the name of two very worthy charities.

In December of this year, the Yorkshire Rows, comprising of four mothers in their 40’s, will be setting sail on a 3000 nautical mile row across the Atlantic ocean.

This is not some self-congratulatory expedition done purely for the prestige and glory, far from it. These women are on a mission: to raise as much money as they possibly can for their two chosen charities, the Yorkshire Air Ambulance and Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centre.

They will face extreme heat, salt rash, sharks, blisters and plenty of sleep deprivation – this really is one of the toughest challenges on earth, which would explain why more people have climbed Everest than rowed across the Atlantic.

Roman Blinds Direct is one of the companies that got on board with their mission, and donated towards the cause. In return, our logo has actually been featured on the boat itself, and we had the privilege of speaking to one of the valiant women who will be taking part in this death defying two-month-long challenge, Helen, last week about the expedition.

The first question that springs to mind, is just what was the inspiration for four seemingly normal mothers to team up for such a grueling, long race? “Frances, who’s one of the rowers, she read a book which was written by a lady who had done this challenge with her husband a few years ago, and as soon as the husband lost sight of land he had a huge panic attack and had to be rescued off the boat.”, begins Helen. “So she decided then to do the challenge on her own. It must have just planted a seed in Frances’ mind, and she actually thought could we do something like that.

“We all met at the local rowing club and we all got on really well, and so one evening, when we went to dinner, she basically popped the question and asked whether we’d be interested in doing it and we all said yes, straight away without thinking what we were doing!”

With these four women being such unlikely undertakers of a race as strenuous as this, there must be a rigorous training schedule in place to prepare them, both mentally and physically. “Luckily, we’ve had a lot of people contact us to offer loads and loads of help; so we’ve got a chiropractor, who normally does all the F1 racing drivers, he goes all around the world and does all their backs. Then we’ve got a personal trainer, who’s put together a plan for us – we’ve all got rowing machines at home and a programme, which is basically just a lot of rowing on the rowing machines. I’m doing about 10k every day, but I probably need to up that to 20.

“I would say that the most important training is mentally. You can be really fit, but if you’re not mentally fit, then it’s useless, really. We don’t really know how we’ll cope with that, really. When you’re in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean for two months you will think about all sorts of things, so I think that is the hardest thing and that’s what we need to prepare for the most. If we have a panic attack or struggle mentally, then that’s when we’ll say that we want to get off, which would be a disaster.”

Women of valour: the Yorkshire Rows have undertaken a strict training regime to prepare for their journey.

The Yorkshire Rows are going to be doing this as part of the Talisker Whiskey Atlantic Challenge. Despite there being a large group of other boats setting off at the same time, Helen says that this is little comfort – especially when there is only one support yacht for the whole race. “It’s a global race and there’ll be around 30 boats in our area.”, Helen explains. “So on the 15th December, 30 of our boats will all go off; there’ll be groups of four, there’ll be solo rowers, and there’ll be some in pairs. We’ll all go off together, but we’ll then disperse very quickly, and then the race has one support yacht that’s basically out there, but that’s to support everybody so that could actually be seven days away. If people do need to be rescued it’s normally a passing tanker that picks them up. Normally, it’s not the support yacht that comes, it’s normally a passing ship that will come and rescue people.”

The rowing quartet has already done quite an ambitious warm-up challenge to prepare themselves for what’s to come. “We rowed from Sussex over to Holland – that was probably the biggest row that we’ve done, we learned a lot on that. I was terribly seasick so I’ve learned that I’m seasick!”, she laughs.

Roman Blinds Direct will be checking in with the ladies again before their voyage across the Atlantic, but for now we wish them the very best of luck with their training. It was great to see our logo on the boat this weekend in Leeds, too!

‘Rose’, the boat the Yorkshire Rows will use to complete the race, on display in Leeds City Centre.