Four tough adventurers face the Atlantic in a rowboat and one bucket
Take a former ASIO spy, a special services soldier medically discharged with PTSD after numerous tours to Afghanistan, a submariner and a Royal Australian Navy legal officer.
Put them together in a rowing boat with a bucket as lavatory and set them off on a journey of 3000 nautical miles across the wild Atlantic Ocean.
That’s what faces Alisdair Putt, a former ASIO agent who has also worked in tough areas of the world as a war crimes investigator and a prosecutor in Australian jurisdictions; Royal Australian Navy submariner Ade Richardson, Navy legal officer Stuart Moore and a retired Australian special forces soldier whose identity is protected for security reasons, but who is calling himself “Alastair Horton”.
The group’s ocean rowing boat, recently built in the UK at a cost of $140,000.
Their voyage, from the Canary Islands off Africa to Antigua in the Caribbean, is expected to take about six weeks to complete.
It will begin in December next year and continue into the early weeks of January 2024.
Though it is outside the hurricane season, the four adventurers’ psychological and physical capacities – plus their ability to get on with their companions in cramped and punishing conditions – will be tested to the outer limits.
Former ASIO agent Alisdair Putt at the oars in preparation for the big voyage.
Calling themselves the Aussie Old Salts, they are the only Australian crew taking part in the 2023 Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge, considered the toughest annual ocean rowing event in the world.
Their goal?
To raise funds to help Australian veterans make the transition from military to civilian life in the Rest and Restoration Centre in the West Australian bush, and for the Gawooleng Yawoodeng Aboriginal Corporation’s women’s and children’s shelter in Kununurra, in the east Kimberley.
It will be an ordeal that would test even the hard-pressed sailors aboard Christopher Columbus’s expedition of 1492, which took this same route on its voyage to the New World.
The four Australians will have no billowing sails to aid their progress, however: they will rely on nothing more than oars and their own strong backs.
Inside the specially built ocean rowing boat.
Their rowing schedule is two hours on, two hours off. For the entire six weeks. They can expect to dip their oars a total of more than 1.5 million times.
It means that in any two-hour period, two men will be rowing while the other two snatch their allotted two hours’ sleep in tiny watertight cabins fore and aft.
Exhaustion and blisters are guaranteed. Capsizing in high seas can’t be ruled out, which is why the boat has been designed to right itself.
The boat that will take the men across the Atlantic.
Oh, and the average age of the four men is 55.
The oldest of the crew, Alisdair Putt, expects to celebrate his 62nd birthday during the voyage.
He has experience sailing the Swan River and the ocean off Perth, but admits he’ll be relying on the fitness of his three slightly younger rowing companions to traverse the Atlantic.
“We haven’t been able to do much training together yet, but we think this challenge is an important one to help veterans like our mate [“Alastair Horton”], who has suffered PTSD like so many military personnel, and Indigenous women in the Kimberley,” Putt said.
And while the epic voyage may be an exciting prospect, it doesn’t come cheap.
Putt has already laid out $140,000 for the rowing boat to be built in England. Entry to the Talisker Whisky Challenge is 25,000 Euros ($38,000) and shipping the rowing boat from Britain to the Canary Islands and back from the Caribbean will cost up to 20,000 British pounds ($35,000).
Add travel arrangements for the four rowers and unsurprisingly, Putt and his companions are searching for a sponsor, and are approaching major corporations to help them meet costs.
They are also raising funds via a website under their Old Salts name for their two chosen causes, and have pledged that all money raised will go directly to the veterans’ transition centre and the women’s shelter, with no administration fees.
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