Four men row the Tasman Sea

Skipper Nigel Cherrie described this period as a mental battle. “It was nine days of going either nowhere or backwards. The days went really slowly making it a mental challenge. At one stage we discussed whether to go back to Australia or if we needed a tow. We decided that we had nothing to lose despite our weatherman saying that he couldn’t see us reaching New Zealand. That was tough.”

The crew of Cherrie, Andrew McCowan, Martin Berka and Peter Blake did finally make it to New Zealand – after 59 days at sea. Cherrie is less than a week back on dry land and he is taking his dog for a run. He is rested but still yawns frequently as his body readapts to a ‘normal’ sleep schedule rather than the 90 minutes maximum of rest time afforded by the 90 minutes on/90 minutes off rowing shift schedule.

The crossing was five years in the making for Cherrie. He had taken up rowing at his local club and had read New Zealander Rob Hamill’s book The Naked Rower about rowing the Atlantic Ocean. Cherrie has a background in sailing and had sailed the Atlantic so originally planned to do the Atlantic Rowing Challenge. But it turned out to be too expensive, especially coming from New Zealand. “So we thought: why not do the Tasman as it’s right on our door step.”

Ironically a bicycle accident also spurred Cherrie on. “I got run over when I was working as a cycle courier. The doctor said I’d never row again and I thought ‘stuff you’ and went and did a marathon on the indoor rower.” Cherrie realised that he liked doing the distance pieces, preferring longer rows to 2000m races.

The remainder of the crew was found in a mixture of ways. McCowan, a former junior national team representative for New Zealand was recommended for his rowing ability. Berka, also a rower, was the stand-out applicant from an advertisement and Cherrie read about Blake. Blake is the son of the late Sir Peter Blake, New Zealand’s most famous sailor,. Blake had also rowed.

The start from Sydney Harbour Bridge was delayed for several days while the crew waited for favourable winds and weather. They took enough food for 40 days and expected it would take them 30 days to complete rowing west to east with the prevailing wind to the top of New Zealand around the most northern point, Cape Reinga, and down the coast to Auckland harbour.

But good rowing weather was not on the crew’s side. Progress started off slow and at 30 days they were stuck under sea anchor essentially going around in circles in the middle of the Tasman. Rowing was pointless. “We played hangman. I wrote a kids book about rowing the Tasman for my five-year-old boy to explain why I did this. We watched for ships and made calls on the SAT phone,” describes Cherrie. “I still enjoyed the experience.”

Despite the lengthened time at sea and an amount of food lost to contamination, the crew did not run out of food. “But we did run out of gas,” says Cherrie. “We had to eat the freeze-dried food cold or we’d try to heat it up under our armpits.” Cherrie says that while they were under sea anchor they weren’t eating as much which helped save on food consumption.

For the majority of the trip two of the crew rowed at a time while the other two rested. Rowing technique was not sacrificed. “Andrew and Martin policed that,” says Cherrie. “We tried to make sure ever stroke was efficient. One time I was being lazy and my catch was out. Andrew told me to ‘sort it out’!”

Cherrie is sure this won’t be his last adventure. “I need time to get over this one, but I wouldn’t say ‘never’. If I could do it again I would, but I’d try to have more time to train next time.”

The team also used the Trans-Tasman row to highlight the Coral Garden Project. This project aims to build the world’s largest artificial reef off the northern coast of Borneo. Here is the link.