00:00Hello I'm Alan and I'm Mary and we are Stormy and Stay. We're currently on a
00:06journey on our seven meter rowing boat to circumnavigate the UK. We're on day
00:1271 and we're aiming to achieve this as an unsupported row, which means we can't
00:19go ashore, we can't get any assistance from anybody, even a passing boat or
00:23somebody coming out to us throwing a sweet at us as seen as support. So, so far
00:29so good and we hope to achieve success in this. The reason we're doing this row
00:36is to raise money for charity. Our chosen charities are the Royal National Lifeboat
00:40Institute, the RNI and Scotland's charity Air Ambulance. We set our
00:45fundraising target at £30,000. We're currently sitting at £27,000
00:50on online donations and it would be amazing if we could hit that £30,000
00:55before we return home. We're really grateful if you could find it, find it in
01:01your hearts to dig deep in your pockets and make a contribution, it would be
01:05thoroughly appreciated by our charities and through us. Thank you. Thank you.
01:11Hello, welcome aboard Bordersia. We'll give you a quick guided tour and
01:16describe life on board. We're now day 71, so things are a little bit grubby, but
01:25hopefully not too much longer. So behind me is a storage pod, we've got lots of
01:29kit stored up there. Below me is the toilet, doesn't always live there. We've
01:35got our using oars, these are the ones that we use when we're rowing. We've also got a
01:40spare pair just in case breakage or we lose one overboard. This bag here
01:46doesn't normally sit there, that's anchor rope and chain. We've got an
01:51anchor, well actually two anchors out at the moment. We have drinking water
01:55storage right down the side of the boat. We produce fresh water on board using a
02:02desalination unit, which is located in this locker here. Our rowing seats, they
02:08slide back and forth while we're rowing and you'll notice I'm clipped onto the
02:15boat just now, so safety is very important to us. Anytime we're out of the
02:19cabin we clip on using a belt and we've got a personal locator beacon fitted to
02:25the belt should we go overboard. Underneath my feet right now we've got
02:30storage for a life raft, we've got a life raft in there. We've got another blue
02:37bucket here, this one's for cleaning, currently doing some washing, well have
02:41been for the last few days, we've just not had weather to finish that ordeal.
02:45And this is our all-important cooking facilities. So on board Bodicea,
02:51cooking consists of boiling water, boiling fresh water and rehydrating
02:56freeze-dried meals, even I can manage that. Okay so this is us in the inside
03:04part of Bodicea now. As you can see she's pretty small and compact, so this is
03:08where we take our rest periods and get a bit of sleep. There's not an awful lot of
03:13space for two people and it's not the most comfortable of beds. So from in
03:19here we have a number of things that help us with our journey. We've got our
03:23all-important radio which means we can contact other boats and the Coast Guard
03:28or anyone with a VHF radio. We've got our chart, so it's charts that we use for
03:35navigation. Here we've got our bank of switches for all our electronics. Our
03:40electronics are powered by two solar panels on the aft of the
03:47boat and the bow of the boat. Now we can see how much charge each battery is
03:51taking from these screens here. That's pretty much it for the inside of Bodicea.
03:57Right, so life on board Bodicea for the last 71 days. It's been a bit of a
04:07mixed bag really in terms of how we tackle the rowing. Sometimes we've been
04:11tackling tides and then anchoring and resting for the next tide. So for those
04:18periods we'll generally row two up for six or seven hours and other
04:25times we've been able to do longer passages where there's less tide
04:29effect or we have to just keep going. We've rowed one up generally two
04:35hours on, two hours off, that sort of rota. There have been times where it's been
04:41different to that and we've had no option but to keep rowing. I think the
04:45most we did was about 12 hours we rowed non-stop, which is quite
04:51exhausting. So that's the rowing. What else? Food wise, so most of our
04:59food comes from dehydrated rations that we just have to add some boiling water
05:03to. We also have some snack packs which are full of energy bars and the
05:10all-important chocolate. The good stuff. And we have some high-protein snacks
05:15like billetongue in there as well, which was supplied by Up North Billetongue.
05:22Our water, we make it using a desalinator unit, which is great when the sun shines
05:26because the batteries are powered by solar and also great when we don't have
05:31sunshine, which has been an issue a couple of times on this journey, with
05:35slow charging batteries. Other high spots of the trip, we've seen some utterly
05:44amazing things. We've seen whales, we've seen dolphins. Dolphins that have been so
05:49close you could literally put your hand over the side of the boat and touch
05:52them. Port places, sunfish, loads of birds. What else? The people we've
06:03met. We've met some absolutely amazing people. Everyone's interested in what
06:06we're doing and a lot of people have dropped by to say hello and ask a few
06:10questions, which is great because it helps us raise money for our charities,
06:13which is what this is all about. Yeah, and the positivity that we've received,
06:19that's one of the things that keeps us going. Messages, comments, people
06:24coming and speaking to us, it's all positive. And you know, when you're
06:29battling weather, tides, things that aren't in your favour, these are the
06:34things that keep you going. So thank you to everybody for supporting us.
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