The Naked Rower

“We had crossed 2757 miles of lonely and often dangerous ocean. We had rowed, virtually non-stop, for 41 days and nights, averaging 2.8 knots for each hour at sea …After 101 years, a two-man crew had finally rowed the Atlantic faster than the legendary Norwegians, Habro and Samuelson. And now is didn’t want the journey to end.”

The Naked Rower is the story of one man and his dream. The man was New Zealander Rob Hamill and the dream was to win the world’s first trans-Atlantic rowing race. It was, they told him, the impossible dream. He had no money, no rowing partner, no knowledge of boat building and – while he was a world class sculler – he had never rowed at sea. Worse still, when he finally did try blue-water rowing, he became chronically seasick.

The Naked Rower is the tale of how he overcame these barriers and of ho he an his fearless partner Phil Stubbs in KIWI CHALLENGE finally lined up at the start line in Tenerife. The dream, however, was about to become a nightmare.

In the 1997 trans-Atlantic Challenge 30 boats and 60 rowers set out to row a vast stretch of water that had previously been attempted only by a handful of oarsmen, six of whom had died in the attempt. The sea gods barely treated the 1997 racers any more kindly. They were pummeled by storms, capsized, pitched into the sea, lain low by seasickness and food poisoning, suffered awful physical injuries and driven beyond the point of insanity.

The Naked Rower is a swashbuckling story of high adventure, friendship placed under unbearable strain, terrible tragedy, and the ultimate triumph of the human spirit.