By Jonathan;
The community of rowers past and present are always willing to share their thoughts and theories on best practices.
Here is one of the more notable strategies we have heard so far, no doubt more to come.
Cyril Derreumaux was part of the team named Uniting Nations who (I believe) hold the current world record crossing time from Monterrey, CA to Waikiki, HI, completed in 2016. Probably one of my favorite tidbits of strategy that he and his team deployed on their Pacific row was they had a new pair of underwear for each day on the water. One of the greatest challenges living aboard a small ocean rowing boat is maintaining good hygiene. Everything will get wet, and the cabin will be deathly humid throughout a crossing, and keeping your body as dry as possible during off shifts is imperative to not physically breaking down mid-crossing. As such, the theory with this strategy was to keep a new, clean, dry pair for each day to help keep essentials from getting rather unpleasant given limited washing/drying capabilities. But another important aspect of this strategy is it saves time. Timing on an ocean row is key to a fast crossing, something any ocean rower will desire. The ideal is to maximize time on the oars, and, coinciding with this, maximizing opportunities to sleep. If one is spending even as little as 15 minutes one shift a day (most teams row 2hrs on, 2hrs off, 24/7) washing and drying underwear, these are 15mins x 40days (a respectable Atlantic crossing time, 45 is the avg.) = 600 minutes/10 hours not spent sleeping, or eating, or making water, which will serve to prolong your race. Cyril emphasized the extreme importance of timing on the boat, even getting 0.1 miles more per shift over a competitor is 40 miles (0.1*12*40), or ~1.3% of the race distance advantage - when considering avg ocean rowing speeds are only around 1.5-2 knots, or around 2mph/48 miles per day, that is around a 20 hour advantage over your competitor who are left hanging out to dry, so to speak.
Bonus: another one from Cyril included eating all meals cold to avoid taking the time to jetboil water and the added weight of the stove and gas - something we will be considering as we hope to have our boat in Seattle in March and start experimenting with eating arrangements.
