Kiwi helps to smash trans-Atlantic crossing record
Tuesday, 22 February 2022
Arriving in Antigua in a seven-metre row boat after more than a month at sea, Southlander Abby Johnston was exhausted, but satisfied.
Alongside fellow UK-based athletes Kathryn Cordiner and Charlotte Irving she had spent 42 days enduring sleep-deprived hallucinations, searing weather and the large swells of the Atlantic Ocean.
The trio – who dubbed themselves the ExtraOARdinaries – had just completed the Talisker Whiskey Atlantic Challenge, and now hold the female trio world-record for the trans-Atlantic crossing from the Canary Islands to Antigue.
The 4828-kilometre journey had taken them 42 days, 7 hours and 17 minutes - smashing the previous world-record by more than a week.
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“This was a two year campaign for us… so the fact that it is now over, and that we broke a world record, is totally unbelievable,” Johnston said.
.The previous record was 49 days, 14 hours and 49 minutes.
Johnston, who left Invercargill for the United Kingdom in 1994, has always been a passionate rower, representing Great Britain at the Junior World Rowing Championships in both 2006 and 2007.
Johnston lived in Invercargill until she was five then shifted to the UK with her family. She moved back to coach in Hamilton before heading once more back to the UK.
In 2017, she met her crew-mate Kathryn Cordiner at the Clipper Round The World Race – a 40,000 nautical mile biennial yacht race divided into eight legs and involving six ocean crossings.
“We both sailed across the Pacific which was an amazing experience, but when we both got to Seattle we though ‘what next?’ and I mentioned the Talisker Whiskey Atlantic Challenge, and so the idea was born.”
In February 2020, Johnston recruited her former classmate Charlotte Irving for the challenge, and the trio began a stressful training and fundraising campaign.
The stress melted away briefly when they reached the starting line in La Gomera in December 2021, but was soon replaced with exhaustion.
“As a trio we got half the amount of rest as the fours [four-man-quad’s] during the day because we were rowing two hours on, one hour off, so we were all continuously exhausted and at some points were hallucinating due to lack of sleep,” Johnston said.
Although averaging only three and a half hours of sleep a night, the women found solace in the wildlife that surrounded them – turtles, birds, dolphins, flying fish and even a pod of minke whales.
“We think there was somewhere between 50 and 100 whales, and it took the whole pod about 45 minutes to swim past us … they were so close and were so interested in us, and one actually stopped about a metre away from the end of the oars just to check us out,” she said.
They crossed the finish line on January 23 to crowds of family and friends – bar Johnson's parents who are currently located in Nelson.
Speaking of the journey a month later, Johnston described the record-breaking moment as a surreal experience.
She had been promoted to Head of Rowing at Lady Eleanor Holles School, in London, just 36 hours before setting off to the Canary Islands, and after a few weeks break in Antigua was looking forward to getting stuck into the role.
She will also finally have time to “crack on” and organise her September wedding, after Covid-19 postponed previous attempts.
In terms of upcoming challenges, Johnston did not rule out another record-breaking attempt.
“I think I have ticked the ocean rowing box, but when you do something like this I guess it always leaves you wanting to do something else, so who knows?”
*An earlier version of this story said the row boat was seven foot. It is seven metres. (Amended February 23, 2020, 4.48pm).