A Record Breaking Row Across the Pacific - Seas The Day 2025

Rich (00:07)
Hello and welcome to Shipwrecks and Sea Dogs, Tales of Mishaps, Misfortune and Misadventure. I'm your host Rich Napolitano. Today I have a very special episode. I'm honored to have with me Miriam Payne and Jess Rowe, the record-breaking two-woman team from Seas the Day Ocean Rowing Team. I'm gonna let them tell you all about their astonishing journey, ⁓ but first, welcome Miriam and Jess. Thank you so much for joining me.

Miriam Payne (00:35)
Thank you for having us.

Jess (00:35)
Thanks so much.

Rich (00:38)
Now I can't wait to get into the details of what you were able to accomplish. But for starters, could you explain just exactly what you have done over six months at sea?

Miriam Payne (00:53)
Yeah, so we set off from Peru on the 8th of May and some quite considerable time later finished in Cairns, Australia after rowing 8,230 nautical miles over 165 days to become the first women's team to row the Pacific non-stop and unsupported.

Rich (01:14)
That's just amazing. can't even imagine what that entailed, but we're going to find out.

Jess (01:18)
Mm-hmm.

Rich (01:21)
One of the goals of your adventure was to support a very worthy cause,

Could you explain more about that?

Jess (01:28)
Yeah, so we were raising money for the Outward Bound Trust. They're a UK based charity and they've got residential centres in various locations and basically offer adventurous week long courses of sailing, climbing, camping ⁓ to children who may come from disadvantaged backgrounds or who may live in cities. And they get to learn those important life skills that you gain through adventure.

like team building, resilience, independence and so on. And we've always loved being outdoors and always been really into sports. And we went to go and see a couple of the centres before we set off. we had originally had a target of £50,000 and we managed to raise over £120,000 and the number is still increasing.

Rich (02:17)
Wow, did you have any personal experience with that organization prior?

Miriam Payne (02:22)
No,

we actually hadn't and it would have been something that I would have just absolutely loved to have had that opportunity at school. mean, the kids get so much independence as well and they can do anything up to these sort of like three week incredible expeditions and they can go back year on year and keep growing and developing. But when we sat out to do the challenge, we sat down and had the conversation of we really want it to mean something.

and what cause do we do it for and we thought we've gained so much from adventure over the years and sort of almost in some ways it would have been great if we'd have found adventure sooner. For me I suppose I found it a bit later because I hadn't travelled that much so we sat and we decided we wanted a charity that focuses on kids

and that sport and adventure aspect. We found the Outland Trust and they were just perfect. It's such an incredible team and they're just all so passionate about it and it really makes such a difference.

Rich (03:22)
there anything or anyone in particular that inspired you to take on this challenge?

Jess (03:30)
that's a very good question. I suppose we both, so we both actually met and we are taking part in the Atlantic Rowing Challenge, which was called the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge. It's now called the world's toughest row. It's a 3000 mile rowing race from Lagomera to Antigua. And I think we just wanted a bigger challenge after that. And I think just being out on the ocean inspired us to try and do something bigger.

But before I even started ocean rowing, my dad had rowed across the Atlantic in the same race in 2005. So I guess that's maybe where it all started for me.

Miriam Payne (04:08)
Yeah, I think just to echo what Jess says, think we both just absolutely loved being out at sea. And that sort of was what got us wanting to come back and just really loved that piece. I think what's great about the Ocean Rowing community is everybody's so supportive. So having that background and that network that are all sort of pushing you to do these incredible things and

and saying like, yeah, you can do that. That's quite inspiring. I think you're around such an incredible group of people. But I think we take, you know, take inspiration from a lot of places. There's so many people and things and environments to be inspired from. There were a couple of solo rowers that had rowed the full Pacific. And there was a women's team that had done it in three legs. So

That I guess gave us bit of confidence to think we could go for it but then there was also the element of can a team do it non-stop and unsupported so that was a little bit of an unknown as well just with is there enough space in the boat mainly.

Rich (05:15)
Now, also Miriam, you said that it's unsupported and nonstop. So...

It's maybe a stupid question, but what exactly does that mean in terms of this categorization of being a record? I've seen other like swimmers that may have a boat nearby, but they don't necessarily help. What in terms of your achievement does that mean?

Miriam Payne (05:34)
Okay.

So it basically means that we were out there on our own. There's no support, there's sort of no resupply. We didn't stop at any islands to pick up some more equipment or get some more food. It was just us from A to B. We did have land support in the fact that we had a weather router and we had a safety officer so we could talk through problems and stuff but there was nobody physically.

that could come and help us. was no, you we weren't getting off a boat and going to sleep on a bigger comfy boat at night. It was just like the two of us for the whole trip, basically.

Rich (06:13)
What other members or the non-rowing members of your team assisted you with this challenge?

Jess (06:20)
⁓ Obviously a massive part was our families. They did so much behind the scenes and we had all the sponsors as well. We wouldn't have been able to do it without sponsorship, corporate sponsors and brand partners. ⁓ our support team consisted of a weather router, a safety officer. ⁓ We had a girl doing our social media.

We had a personal trainer, ocean rowing coach and the lead up to the row. Yeah, so many people helping us.

Rich (06:50)
As far as the preparation and planning, it must have been just overwhelming, immense. what were some of the more significant aspects of that planning and preparation that were required for this journey?

Miriam Payne (07:05)
Yeah, it's quite, it's quite overwhelming. And they always say with ocean rowing, the hardest bit is getting to the start line. And it is pretty much true. So first off was just actually deciding the route when we finished our Atlantic crossing, and we decided we want to do something bigger and more challenging. We decided, okay, we'll do the full Pacific, but then okay, there's quite a lot of different options of where to go from. And because so few people had done it, there wasn't, there wasn't

like the tried and tested route like there is with the Atlantic race is a bit of a formula to success in a way that you know you go from the same point you end in the same point and there's a lot of there's a lot of knowledge there whether it was with this you know we chatted to a few people we chatted to some of the sort of experts in ocean rowing but ⁓ even a lot of them were having different opinions there was deciding what what boat to get for starters ⁓ because it was such an unknown trip you know you don't

you don't fully know what the weather is going to be like the whole time. You see across 8,000 miles you're expecting it to be stormy. There are actually no storms. Then it's how much food can we actually fit in a boat? So that was one of the bigger factors to get in the boat. And then also just budget as well. So there was a lot to decide in that respect. But once we've got the basics nailed down, as in start point, end point, I say end point, but

and country, we didn't actually know where we were going to finish, we just knew that it would be somewhere in Australia. Then it just became to organising all the logistics, all the planning and just trying to get the funding to do the challenge in the first place.

Rich (08:36)
you

let's talk a little bit about your boat.

Jess (08:49)
So our boat is a Rossiter Ocean 2. It's got two rowing seats. So we were able to row together. And then there's a cabin at each end. So bow and a stern cabin and you are able to sleep in both of those. But in the stern cabin, that's where all the electronics and all of the navigation equipment is. So the chart plotter, the VHF radio, ⁓ we were able to see the level of the batteries and all that kind of thing. So we built.

both switched in and out of that cabin rather than the bow. And then all of your food is stored below the rowing deck. You've got solar panels on the top of the cabins to power the lithium batteries. ⁓ We had an onboard water maker, desalinator. So we had a pretty packed boat. The boats actually arrived back in the UK last week. So I'm actually...

pulling everything off at the moment, getting her ready to resell, which is really sad. But we did have a lot of things go wrong. We had power issues on board. We had watermaker issues.

name a problem, we had it.

Miriam Payne (09:55)
Yeah.

Rich (09:58)
as far as your preparation, How did you train for the physical demands that this would require?

Miriam Payne (10:07)
demand we had a fantastic PT called Gus Barton who's quite experienced with ocean rowing and trained me from Atlantic crossing as well. We focused a lot on strength and conditioning, a lot on the trunk and core. In river rowing you're constantly trying to balance a boat, whereas in ocean rowing that's obviously impossible. So it is a slightly slightly different demands on the body to traditional rowing and your technique ends up going slightly different. So it's a little bit more in the back.

in the trunk and a little bit more shoulder heavy even though it is predominantly legs only sport. So a lot of just trying to maker ourselves as resilient and bulletproof as possible then supplemented with a lot of long hours on the rowing machine. So in river rowing or flat water rowing you would do two kilometres of tests and that would be a really good benchmark for how well you're doing. We would do two hour tests and it would just sort of be

as max distance and max watts for two hours, which was quite brutal. I've not missed that. And yeah, it was just trying to do as much as possible. It was actually really hard to fit in the training. We actually wish we could have done more, but you know, we were working full time and the admin kind of took a bit of priority because, you know, if you can't get the funding together to do the trip, the training is pointless anyway. So it was a bit of a juggle and quite a sacrifice at times trying to fit it all in. So we

We're a little bit sleep deprived going into the crossing to start with, but yeah, we were, our bodies held up pretty well out there. We didn't really have any niggles or injuries. So we were quite happy with that.

Rich (11:34)
the

As far as sleep goes and your other daily routines, what was your schedule like, a typical schedule during the day and night?

Jess (11:50)
So to start with during the day and through the night, we would row two hours on, two hours off. So we'd switch every two hours. But as we got to the middle of the trip and from the middle to the end, we just ended up rowing together all day. And then only when it was dark, we'd do the two on, two off. But in your two hours off period, you're not only trying to get rest, you're making your meals and eating, you're fixing things on the boat, which

was like an everyday thing. Also trying to clean all the salt off you. And also maybe speaking to the weather router on the satellite sort of Garmin inReach device. Yeah, all kinds of things, making water, cleaning the solar panels, just kind of the normal ⁓ daily chores that we'd have to do every day.

Rich (12:39)
And what was your food

What did you eat?

Miriam Payne (12:43)
Gosh, the food is quite a hard one. So we were trying to eat about 5,000 calories a day as recommended by our nutritionist Nancy. And so half of that was in freeze-dried rations. we were supposed to be eating three 1,000 calorie freeze-dried rations a day. That's easiest at the Dunkin' quite revolting and looked like dog food a lot of the time.

Rich (13:05)
you

Miriam Payne (13:05)
And then the

other 2000 calories was in snack packs. So that's more normal things like dried fruit and nuts, flapjacks, protein bars, and then some chocolate and crisps thrown in there. But we really struggled with the food. And so sometimes we were just, we'd double up on snack packs or just nick something out the next day snack pack. And then we actually ran out of snacks. think, I think Jesse ran out about a month before the end and I ran out about two or three weeks before the end.

Jess (13:33)
Yeah.

Miriam Payne (13:35)
And then we ran out of chocolate and it was, oh my gosh, it was so hard, wasn't it? It was devastating because snacks and food is one of those major things that gives you a good morale boost and cheers you

Jess (13:39)
you

Miriam Payne (13:45)
So yeah, it's a bit of a love or hate relationship with freeze-dried food. There were some rations that we absolutely loved, but then you soon run out of those.

Rich (13:56)
You probably don't ever want to eat any of those freeze dried meals ever again, do you?

Jess (13:59)
No, absolutely not. And

then also a lot of our snacks were just going off. I mean, it's so hard to take enough things for six months that are actually going to last because we had to get all of our food in the UK, you know, a few months before shipping and then it all got shipped out and some of it just wasn't going to last until the end of the trip and it all just started going moldy. I mean, we were scraping mold off.

off the remaining chocolate bars because we are so desperate. ⁓

Miriam Payne (14:29)
There was

a couple of nights where we didn't realise you obviously eat a lot of your snacks in the dark and you wouldn't realise it was full of mould and you just go to eat your flapjack or something and you just feel like fairies.

Rich (14:37)
no.

Jess (14:43)
You

Miriam Payne (14:45)
actually I forgot about that.

Rich (14:47)
no.

Miriam Payne (14:51)
you

Rich (14:53)
⁓ no. Now you had a desalinator, so you didn't have to carry any ⁓ bottled water or anything. You made your own water.

Jess (15:01)
Yeah, so we did just have about 100 litres of emergency drinking water in plastic bottles, which ⁓ also doubled as ballast weight so that if we did capsize, then the boat would self right. But luckily we never capsized. And then so, yeah, we had a desalinator, which made about 30 litres an hour. However, ⁓ unfortunately, it was installed with pipes that weren't rated for the pressure. And in the first week of the restart,

one of the pipes burst and we ended up having to maker about nine repairs just to try and reinforce all of the pipes by wrapping ⁓ tape and rope around them. So that was a bit of a nightmare every day. once we'd finished making our water for the day, we'd both cheer and celebrate because we'd got through another day. ⁓ But we also had an emergency water maker on board, which is something that you'd usually use if you ended up in the life raft.

Miriam Payne (15:42)
Yeah.

Rich (15:48)
you

Miriam Payne (15:48)
Yeah.

Jess (15:58)
⁓ and it only makes three liters an hour versus 30 and you've got to hand pump it and we also lost the filter of that on the first day which Mims repaired with a pair of her knickers.

Rich (16:12)
wow.

Miriam Payne (16:12)
We

didn't lose it by being stupid by the way, it just broke off into the ocean, you put the pipe over. But actually the best day by far because we'd had spare pipe for the main watermaker but obviously you don't expect it to be installed wrong. But I think it was Jim who's an expert in watermakers in the UK, by I think about day 90 or something he recommended that.

there was a section that we could bypass that would well he thought we could bypass. He'd never had to employ that technique before because he'd never heard of a water maker being fitted wrong and said if you take out this section, it'll shorten the pipe. And I think it might work. So when it when the pipe then burst again, we did that and it was I think the day before my birthday. And it worked and it was like the best birthday present I've ever had because

Rich (16:44)
Hmm.

you

Yeah.

Miriam Payne (17:06)
We didn't have to worry about the watermaker, we only had to worry about having enough power to run the watermaker.

Rich (17:11)
Wow. And you know, that all of that sounds very difficult and challenging and frustrating. I'm thinking of just being in the middle of the Pacific Ocean by yourself and having all of this happen and knowing that your survival depends on it. That's. I mean, that's really spectacular, I have to say. I just.

Jess (17:13)
you

you

Miriam Payne (17:38)
You

Jess (17:39)
You

Rich (17:39)
My

credit goes to you for all of this that you had to do, the ingenuity of repairing things on the fly that you weren't really even prepared for. ⁓ Just, it's amazing. I'm just blown away.

Jess (17:53)
⁓ thank you.

Miriam Payne (17:54)
Mm

Jess (17:55)
Although,

Miriam Payne (17:56)
hmm.

Jess (17:56)
although it was, yeah, always frustrating when something broke, we wouldn't be able to ⁓ write a book which we're doing at the moment. We'd have no stories to tell if everything went smoothly.

Miriam Payne (18:02)
Yeah.

Rich (18:09)
That's true. What other types of things went wrong? You mentioned you had to constantly be repairing things, or at least some of the more notable things.

Miriam Payne (18:20)
⁓ how long have you got? Story time. The main thing was on day six of our first attempt.

Rich (18:22)
Ha ha ha ha.

Jess (18:22)
you

Miriam Payne (18:31)
Our rudder broke, it was about two in the morning, we'd swapped over and we just got pinned by the wave, we couldn't figure out why. It was quite windy and it was quite wavy but it should have been fine but we thought right we'll go to bed, we'll drift for a bit because we've got room in our course to do that and we'll get up in daylight and we'd get the boat back on course and turn the auto-helm on and it would be all right for a few strokes and then we'd just go completely off course again and we can...

what on earth like you know it's a big boat and it's hard to move around but why on earth can't we stay on course and I thought I'll just get out there's a little hatch in the top of the stern cabin and you can get out and you can see the rudder and I thought I'll just check

rudder sensor is on and just check that everything's okay nothing needs to clean while we're sort of waiting for the weather to die down a bit and I looked and I thought I don't think the rudder's at the right angle it was sort of 90 degrees toward it

supposed to be and it was sort of flapping around like a wet fish and I said, Jess, the rudder snapped. She goes, no, no it's not, no it's not and she would not believe me until she looked at herself. And then anyway we've got a spare rudder and we've got a dagger board that's interchangeable as a rudder. So we got the rudder off the stern, it's stern mounted and it sort of totally delaminated it, totally split open. We got to putting the spare rudder in, well

Firstly, it took us about a day to get the spare rudder out, the rudder casing, it had swollen up so much. We got the spare rudder out and that didn't fit in the rudder housing and looked like that was starting to delaminate too. We later found out that when we got on land it was because of manufacturing error. So they'd left the peel ply layer inside. And so that had caused it, which was really frustrating because it had been refurbed before we'd gone out too.

Rich (20:04)
Mm.

Miriam Payne (20:20)
So it was one of those errors that just shouldn't have happened. So then we spoke to our safety officer and we were like, right, plan C, we'll put the daggerboard as a rudder and we'll just have to go across without a daggerboard. So we tried to drill into that. We snapped and blunted all our drill bits. We had one of those hand drills because you can't guarantee you're going to have power to charge an electric drill and also it's really heavy.

We spent about two or three days trying to drill in that and then smacked and blunted all our drill bits. So it became quite clear that even plan C wasn't working across to plan D and we'd have to get rescued back to land. So the original plan was to try and sort of row a bit closer, but obviously with no rudder, no daggerboard, no steering whatsoever.

So we spoke to our friend Alec Hughes who we'd met in Peru and he was a fantastic support to us helping us with Peruvian customs and we thought right let's put Alec in touch with our safety officer he seems to sort of know everybody in Peru he might know somebody that can help whatever he said the Navy can come and get you but it would have to you'd have to be towed at five knots and the lines are probably too big and

five knots is way faster than our boat goes downwind anyway so there's that risk of damage then obviously we started to drift into international waters so we could get rescued but our boat couldn't and then we got a message from Alec one day and said I'm coming to get you and which was just incredible I mean you don't meet many people like him because he was about to set off to sail around the world

He was still just finishing off a little bit work on his boat and he sailed I think 350 miles off course to sort of come and get us, us back to land across eight days. We were sort of upwind so we were tacking the whole time and he went at about three knots to maker sure velocity got back safe and sound and just absolutely, absolutely saved us. I mean, what an incredible human.

Rich (22:32)
Hmm.

Miriam Payne (22:34)
And then, yeah, on the restart, we had the watermaker issues and then we started experiencing major power issues, which we also couldn't figure out the problems for that, but I'll let Jeff tell you about that one.

Rich (22:45)
you

Jess (22:47)
Yeah, so we, it was, we were approaching on the second time we were approaching the point where our rudder broke and we're quite excited to pass further than we had the first time around. And yeah, that's when we had the watermaker issues and the power issues that started and we couldn't figure out why, but our batteries just weren't holding the power. And over the period of the second week, we were having to just turn one thing off at a time. So the chart plotter

then we weren't able to use the navigation light and then the VHF radio. And then we had to be really careful charging sort of speakers and phones and anything in the USB ports. So one by one, we were turning things off until we just had the auto helm on ⁓ as we felt that was the most important thing. And we just had enough power to run the watermaker in the middle of the day. We also had to turn off our AIS. So...

our automatic identification system, which allows other vessels to see us. So we're effectively a ghost ship. Nobody could see us in the dark. So it was quite worrying and we did actually have to turn the batteries off fully on some occasions and had to hand steer. So we had a steering wheel on deck, ⁓ which only Mims could reach. So she sat in that seat.

Rich (24:06)
Thank

Jess (24:07)
and had to move the wheel every three strokes or so to stay on course. And we had to use the compass as well, which we couldn't see at nighttime because we had no compass light. Yeah, mean, navigating was, it was quite, it became quite simple and we had so many cloudy nights as well and we couldn't see the stars either. So we were just looking at the direction of the flag. We knew, ⁓

we'd be able to charge, we'd have enough power to charge the satellite device. And so we'd have a message from our weather router to say, this is the direction of the wind. So we'd be able to see that on the flag. And that was quite a useful piece of kit as it really was back to basics. And we still actually don't know what the problem was, but we spent most of the crossing trying to figure it out, taking readings with the multimeter and speaking to various people.

on the satellite phone and yeah, quite excited to have somebody professional to come and come and have a look and figure out what earth happened.

Miriam Payne (25:08)
It was, yeah, just adding on to that. was quite baffling because at first our land team didn't believe us. I think they thought we were going mad or making it up because it didn't really maker ends the ways they were behaving. then you have some days where, you know, you get that really thin cloud cover.

Rich (25:09)
Hmm.

Miriam Payne (25:26)
that it would charge better than a day that was brightly sunny. And there were some nights that it would behave one way and others that would behave slightly different. So we were like, what on is going on? Like none of it makes any

sense But it became quite clear that whatever the problem was, we either probably wouldn't have to spare part for it or it or it's just not fixable. So we just had to get to managing it. And so it took us a while. We got a bit more confidence with it and like how far we could test the limits and how how far we could push it.

So used to do power logs. I've got about, I think about a hundred and don't know how many, I think from sort of day five or six, where I've literally got the power written down every two hours, because then we'd then analyze the patterns, what would happen at night. And then it would be making a decision of, right, we need to go to hand steering, we need to switch off or like how, you know, we're not going to have enough power to charge our headphones today. And like Jess said, the priority became having the auto helm on, especially at night.

So like she said, we had to go dad ship a lot during the day. And then also the priority became charging our earphones, which seems like such a luxury, but we really struggled with the sleep deprivation and stuff at night. having, especially across that length of journey, it's a little bit different to the Atlantic in terms of mindset, but having something to listen to, or something to try and like keep you awake at night became like quite important to us and such a morale boost.

But we did, it just kept getting worse and worse throughout the crossing. And we did get to a point where suddenly there were a of days, it just started getting better. And there's an area where there's a thinner, the ozone layer is thinner, I think there's a hole in the ozone layer. And I think if it wasn't for that, everything would have been switched off by the end of it. I think it would have been hand steering the rest of the crossing and hand pumping our water. Added to that, we also had the pressure because we had a lot of sponsors and we had a lot of

product sponsors and we've really struggled to sort of get the funding for the trip. So one of the few things you can promise is like a bit of content in return for products. So doing a video for social media and we were just thinking, ⁓ my God, how on earth are we going to keep all these sponsors happy? They're going to be so angry with us. And so that, and we were just like, my God, how are we going to manage this? We've got no power. in the beginning, we didn't know how manageable it would be.

And so like some days we would have to, you we couldn't have a starting con for a week or 10 days and we'd be getting all these sort of requests through. So we'd have to hand steer like all day to have enough power to turn the starting con for half an hour or an hour to send this massive backlog of content. And it was just sort of an added pressure in that situation as well. But we got to the point where we just accepted it and we're like, we're in this situation. Yeah, we can stop off at an island or something and maybe get somebody to have a look at it.

deliver a spare pipe and repair it. But that would mean this goal of getting these world records was totally over. So we, yeah, we accepted it. And we just thought this, you know, this could be the best experience ever. Or, or, you know, we can wallow in misery. But what's the point in that we're here. And we just wanted to be out to see and I think, you know, it's about the experience rather than the end goal. So we actually, we actually had a lot of fun and we became quite good at managing the situation. And, and, and yeah.

Rich (28:44)
I think that's a testament to even now in today's world with all the technology we have, all the innovations, how difficult it is to cross an ocean, especially the Pacific, and how many things can go wrong. You probably didn't go in expecting to have to read the stars or have a...

Jess (28:56)
Thank

Rich (29:05)
Marine chronometer to figure out your longitude or a sextant, you know, it's like all of these things happen,

Jess (29:11)
actually mad because we were both quite interested to learn how to use a sextant and go and do a course. And we sort of got told, no, you don't need a sextant. You're going to be on a rowing boat. You're going to be rocking around like anything. It's going to be so hard to get readings and you need to take this massive stack of books to work everything out. But in hindsight, it may have been quite useful.

Miriam Payne (29:16)
You You

Rich (29:34)
So all of those problems notwithstanding, one of the things I was thinking about as soon as I learned about your voyage was the weather and the rough seas you were likely to encounter. How was that? Was that a problem for you?

Jess (29:50)
So the weather, so the Pacific is known as being quite a peaceful ocean. So Pacific translates to El Pacifico. So peaceful one. And we definitely had a lot of weeks where it was just flat calm. And that may sound lovely, but it's not fun at all trying to row through that in the heat. It's like rowing through treacle. So it made it really tough. And as ocean rowers, you really do want a bit of swell and wind.

Rich (29:58)
Yeah. ⁓

No.

Miriam Payne (30:08)
.

Jess (30:18)
to help help you along a bit. The average swell height must have been two to three meters.

did have have some big waves on some days. But yeah, as Mim said before, we didn't have a single storm,

Miriam Payne (30:31)
Okay.

Jess (30:32)
which is pretty crazy. And in six months, ⁓ we had loads of squalls So when we get when you get a load of wind and rain come in and it just absolutely hammers down.

you get absolutely soaked and it may be for 20 minutes sometimes we had a full day of squalls and we actually quite liked it because it was a nice break from the heat from the sunshine but obviously it wasn't very good ⁓ for our solar power on those days. ⁓ It was always nice to have a fresh rinse though but yeah it was just really really quite hot not a lot of wind and also

Miriam Payne (31:01)
Hmm.

Jess (31:08)
when you're sleeping in the cabins, they must be over 40 degrees Celsius. You've got to have the hatches shut because if you do capsize and the water gets in, then the boat went self-right and all your equipment will be ruined as well. So there was absolutely no airflow in the cabin apart from a tiny little air vent. ⁓ We did stick fans on the walls, but we could only look at them. We didn't have enough power for them. So... ⁓

Miriam Payne (31:20)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Jess (31:35)
Yeah, definitely describe the crossing as quite hot, but now I'm sitting here wishing I was in the sunshine.

Rich (31:43)
What about anything you might have encountered, ⁓ like some marine animal friends perhaps? Did you spot anything interesting during the trip?

Miriam Payne (31:53)
Yeah, we have a lot of really cool wildlife actually. We saw a sperm whale, I think it was 30 days in or something around that mark, which was absolutely incredible. I thought I was hallucinating at first.

thought it was sort of like a part submerged shipping container and then I said, Jesus, that's a massive whale. ⁓ And they're just such incredible, gentle giants. They're so curious. I had whales on my Atlantic crossing as well and it's just cool how they come and check you

and sort of say, what are you doing in my home?

We saw dolphins which was incredible as well. It's quite crazy seeing them almost vertically above you as they're coming down, riding the wave towards you. That's really special. We sort had superpots. They were going past for a good half an hour. Loads of sea birds. I've never never glassed myself as being that interested in bird watching but we got totally obsessed with the birds, didn't we Jess? Loads of booby birds which mostly people tend to hate.

Jess (32:44)
Yeah.

Miriam Payne (32:48)
because they think they can maker quite a mess of the boat but they were quite kind to us and they're funny, it's crazy how far, how isolated they are and how far away from land they come and they're not bothered by us at all really, they're quite friendly and almost tame and they just sort of look at you as if they know you. Loads of flying fish, especially on deck, I think we started having them about a week or so in once we got into

sort of a warmer current and we actually had a little spatula for flicking them off deck. A friend from the Atlantic had given us that tip because they're really slimy and they're smelly and so one of the daily jobs where we were in certain currents was pinging the flying fish off the deck. We used one of them as bait actually to catch a tuna. Loads of storm pest, yeah, yeah we caught yellowfin tuna, loads of storm petrels.

Rich (33:28)
you

wow. ⁓

Jess (33:41)
you

Miriam Payne (33:46)
⁓ Jellyfish, whenever we got in to clean the boat it felt like we were getting stung by jellyfish. Jess even managed to get stung on deck because a wave washed one over her, ⁓ loads of blue bottles. ⁓ I think that was, we had a turtle when we were on parachute anchor waiting for the tow back into land which was incredible. We thought we'd hit something because we just kept hearing bashing on the boat and it was just a green turtle headbusting the boat consistently. ⁓

Rich (34:11)
Yeah.

Jess (34:12)
He

Miriam Payne (34:15)
I think that's it, isn't it Jess?

Jess (34:17)
Yeah, I think you've covered it. Yeah, but yeah, we are so lucky to see that sperm whale. That was definitely the highlight of the crossing.

Rich (34:23)
Mm.

about other ships or boats? Any encounters with other people along the way or just people coming by to say hi?

Jess (34:32)
We didn't really see many boats. You can't really see very far because we're so low down and so close to the water, but probably saw less than 10 boats and they were close to Peru or close to Australia. ⁓ Quite a few container ships ⁓ as we were nearing the Great Barrier Reef. A couple of sailing boats that, ⁓ so we actually had these handheld VHF radios that we'd always keep charged in case of an emergency because we had our main ships radio turned off.

Miriam Payne (35:00)
Mm-hmm.

Jess (35:00)
and

we radioed this sailing boat. don't know, we'd been out for quite a long time and we'd not spoken to anybody else. And we reached out to them on the radio and said, my gosh, it's so exciting to speak to somebody else. You know, we've been rowing for this many days and they clearly weren't interested in chatting. So yeah, that was quite funny.

Miriam Payne (35:15)
Haha!

Rich (35:15)
You

Miriam Payne (35:20)
You

Jess (35:25)
Yeah, I mean, there must have been a lot more boats around us, but without our AIS on and without our chart plotter on, we weren't able to see that they were any close to us.

Miriam Payne (35:35)
But we, off the coast of Peru, we were warned about these sort of fishing boats and some people have sort of encountered some problems with them and that was, it was very weird. We didn't really get them on our second attempt but on our first attempt it was like rowing through like a shanty town in a way, that sounds quite weird but there was all these sort of strange boats with sort of Jesus loves you and all sorts written on them and we were sort of

quite unaware going through them because we'd heard some people had some problems and thought, we just need to be quite careful. But I think they were just more baffled and confused and what an F are bright sort of pink and blue wrapped boat and these two girls rowing through it were doing. But actually when Alec, rescued us, finally got to set off on his sail around the world, he stopped by to say hello on day 20, which was absolutely incredible.

and offered us some bread and some cans of coke and stuff. were like, Alec, we can't take it. We're unsupported. But yeah, my dad was keeping an eye on marine traffic. So occasionally we'd get a really panicked message being like, there's a boat on your stern now. And obviously, because we didn't have our AIS on, he could only see the tracker, which updated two hours. So we'd have to sort of predict where the boat was and if it was sort of roughly on course, but there was...

There was one or two occasions we were pretty glad for the message because there was one sailing boat that was right on our stern and had a really weak light. And so we'd managed to just put the navigation light on and I think all we had was about five minutes before the batteries started plummeting. so that was really handy. I don't think he got much sleep on those nights.

Rich (37:17)
I was going to ask you on such a trip, how did you mentally deal with, I don't know, perhaps isolation or boredom, but it doesn't seem like you really had that many opportunities to be bored. You were pretty busy.

Miriam Payne (37:34)
You

Jess (37:34)
Yeah, we were always

busy. mean, I can't say I got bored once. I mean, I absolutely loved being out there. It's so peaceful and we're just doing our own thing. I mean, living such a simple life and the water's always changing, the weather's always changing. We're trying to learn the clouds. mean, we luckily did ⁓ have the charge to keep our headphones going. And I think I must've ended up listening to about 60 books on Audible. ⁓

Rich (38:02)
⁓ hey.

Jess (38:03)
We put the speaker on when we rode during the day and we were always singing along. Luckily there was nobody near us that could hear our terrible singing, but we got quite into all the musicals. ⁓ And yeah, it just felt like we were on a massive high throughout. mean, after there were a couple of weeks where we were quite down in the dumps ⁓ with all of the problems that we were having. But once we got over that and realized, you know, there's not really much we can do about it. We can keep problem solving, but you know, let's just enjoy the trip.

Miriam Payne (38:13)
Hmm.

Yeah, I think as well because we had such a fight to get to the start line and we had so many problems just getting there. We just were happy to be there and we finally made it out here. Like Jess says,

We're actually quite excited not to talk to anyone for six months and have those issues. But I think, yeah, you're no more bored than you are in day to day life. And there's obviously like the odd day when you're just kind of struggling to row. And I think those days are when we had sort of no wind and no waves. And obviously, we have this massive boat to fit all the food in it's just really hard to move. And so those days just got a bit hard because as well as nothing.

when you've got the wind and the wave, you're looking at the wave, you're looking at what's going on and it's funny because everyone's like, it looks the same, it looks the same, how do you not get bored? But actually it is quite different every day. But on those days where it's really flat calm, you haven't even got the waves to look at. So those days I could get a bit and creeped in occasionally. But like Jess says, we just try and turn some music on and reframe it and have a sing along or something like that.

Rich (39:42)
All these things considered, what do you think was the most challenging aspect of the voyage?

Jess (39:50)
trying to get to the start line. And I think every ocean rower says that. It is just so tough. mean, Mim said, you we were working, we were both working full-time office jobs. And we both had quite long commutes to work as well. So a couple of hours in the car every day on top of working and then, you know, just trying to get all the training in and we were up till one, two in the morning on our laptops

Miriam Payne (39:52)
Hahaha!

Jess (40:17)
trying to find sponsors and doing other bits, trying to get the boat ready. And then on the weekends doing 24 hour training rows and then trying not to fall asleep at work on the Monday. ⁓ So yeah, I mean, it was a whole two year campaign and we lived and breathed ocean rowing. We didn't have a social life. And we actually did this straight after our Atlantic. So it's pretty much... ⁓

Miriam Payne (40:30)
Hmm.

Jess (40:45)
four years, five years back to back ⁓ campaigns. So I think, and it's just, was so hard to get sponsors as well. We thought it might be easier second time round and because we were doing something different that wasn't the Atlantic, but ⁓ I think it was definitely a lot harder.

Miriam Payne (40:56)
Mm-hmm.

I was just gonna say, think this on the crossing, I think the biggest problem for us was probably the sleep deprivation. It's really hard to figure out a sleep pattern that works. On my Atlantic crossing, I was solo, so I could do what suited to me and I could just row all day, because I really struggled with broken sleep and had one long sleep at night, which was fantastic because you'd get that deep sleep to recover. But obviously on this, you can't do that and the more...

And especially with the power issues that added another layer of complication because what we were maybe going to do is once a month just have, and if we had good waves and good wind, is just have a longer break because you'd be able to have a couple of hours where you could let the boat drift because you'd have your chart plotter and your UAIS on. But that wasn't a possibility at all. And obviously the more somebody sleeps, the more somebody has to row. And so we got, once we were sort of two, 3000 miles from the end,

especially we were really struggling on the nights.

So your body tends to go in, I think the researchers, one and a half hour cycles and our safety officer said to us that you need to be sleeping at least in blocks of one and a half hour but I want you to get a three hour block. And so we tried to figure out the maths of doing that but I think with the sleep deprivation as well that makes it really hard and also we couldn't figure out a fair way of doing it because the

things you look forward to in a day are the sunset because it's, you know, it's pretty and it's also just marks getting through the day and then the sunrise because as well if it's a horrible night, you've got the sunrise that brings new dawn and sort of new hope in that as well. So we couldn't figure out something that would be fair or as well when it gets, like Jess said earlier, when it gets to daytime, it gets really hot in the cabin.

would you be able to sleep as well in that time? And so we just carried on with the two on two off, but towards the end it was pretty brutal and it did make I think there were some some nights where we probably weren't putting as much power into the oars as we would have liked just because we were fighting the sleep deprivation and trying not to fall asleep. So that was a really hard element made harder by the power situation too.

Rich (43:13)
As you were approaching that final stretch, maybe a couple days out, what thoughts were going through your head about just everything you've been to, or what kind of emotions were

having as you were approaching the finish?

Jess (43:27)
That's easy. I didn't want it to finish. I was really sad that it was all coming to an end. I mean, even after we reached the halfway point, I was just like, no, now we've got even less days than we had ahead of us. And although like really excited to step on land and see family and one thing that we'd really missed was just normal food. we'd actually... ⁓

Rich (43:32)
⁓

Miriam Payne (43:39)
Hmm.

Jess (43:52)
already ordered our pizzas ⁓ a week before we arrived. ⁓ So we knew what we were having at the restaurant on the evening of our arrival. ⁓ But actually the final hours, the final day was really, really tricky. during the night on the day before we had to go through the Great Barrier Reef, which we were quite worried about without having a chart plotter and...

Miriam Payne (43:55)
Mm hmm.

Jess (44:16)
and all the rest of it and our weather router had given us waypoints and we did manage to stick to them but yeah there could have been a risk of running aground and the expedition coming to an end so close to the finish but also the weather drastically changed and we ended up with 20 knot headwinds on the final day we were supposed to arrive in the morning and we didn't arrive until after sunset and ⁓

Miriam Payne (44:29)
.

Jess (44:41)
We were basically being pushed out of the channel on our approach to Cairns Marina and thought that we were going to end up running aground and hitting the bottom. We just could not stay in the channel. We were both rowing as hard as we possibly could. I think it was the hardest that we both rowed the whole crossing. And we actually thought that we might have to jump in the water and swim ashore with all the sharks and crocodiles. So the last day was actually pretty brutal.

We also had a bucket, we had saved enough water to have a bucket wash in the early hours of the morning so we didn't look too ropey at the finish but we got absolutely covered in salt spray.

Miriam Payne (45:21)
Yeah.

We've got our pizza and it was absolutely phenomenal. And then all our parents, I think it was the adrenaline for us, all our parents were so tired. Jess's dad turned around to me while we were eating pizza and he said, you know what, I think I've had less sleep than you guys. I said, look, I don't think you win this one. And my parents were really exhausted because ⁓ their plane had to divert from medical issues. So it took them

Jess (45:41)
You

Miriam Payne (45:51)
longer to get here. they were all tired I think from the stress and the anticipation of it all as well. So we packed them off to bed and we actually tried to go for a night out but nobody would let us in because we'd left our IDs in the boat and we didn't realise how strict it was in Australia. And we'd had a friend from our Atlantic race that had come out to see us in and support us and he went he was horrified about this and went up the bouncer's in one place and was like these girls have just

Do know they just rowed across the Pacific? They need a night out, let them in and the guy was like, ⁓ don't play that one with me. So we had to go home earlier.

Rich (46:26)
you

you were met by ⁓ family and friends? Was there any kind of little celebration when you first arrived?

Jess (46:38)
Yeah, so ⁓ our family actually managed to wangle a free helicopter trip. So they actually ⁓ came to see us when we still out at sea. And it was a real surprise to us because we didn't know it, but when they started circling us, we realized it was them. ⁓ so that was really cool. And then they also all came out on a couple of dinghies and got absolutely soaked with the waves coming over the top of them. So they didn't last very long. They went back to land and...

Miriam Payne (47:01)
You

Jess (47:05)
⁓ Yeah, so we celebrated with champagne. There must've been about 200 people there waiting for us to arrive and it was a really special arrival. We had all the super yachts blaring their horns and yeah, it was totally unexpected and yeah, really cool finish.

Rich (47:22)
So you arrive back in Australia, you get some pizza, maybe a few drinks, and get some sleep. Following all of that, how much attention did you receive from media, newspaper, reporters, or whoever wanting to talk to you or interview you? People like, I don't know, me.

Miriam Payne (47:44)
Yeah, sort of two weeks in Cairns are quite, I don't think we realised quite how hectic it would be. We had an incredible and pit Miller who was sort of organising, but essentially babysitting us for first few weeks back on land. And so the second night we got in, we basically had back to back interviews from 4pm till about 10pm. And then this just kept going on. Which it was it was just overwhelming that people were so interested and found found the story.

Jess (47:44)
You

Miriam Payne (48:11)
really interesting and could resonate with it in some way. But by the end of sort of those two weeks, we were just so exhausted because we still hadn't, it's really overwhelming getting back to land and you're sort of on still got a lot of adrenaline and you're on quite high alert because it's such a contrast to life in the boat. So we were still really struggling to get into a normal sleep pattern and sort of wide awake at 3am and not really sleeping at that point. So by the end of these interviews, we were just like totally

zonked out and unaware and kind of trying to stay awake and try not to zone out and we got into a good rhythm of taking turns answering the questions and then we just have to hope nobody said and what about you because we were sort of zoning out and really strict so it was a bit overwhelming and a bit intense towards the end but yeah we did appreciate that everyone was so interested.

Jess (48:55)
You

Rich (49:01)
would you like people from around the world to remember or be inspired by what you have accomplished?

Miriam Payne (49:10)
Oh, that's an interesting question. I think it's quite hard because I just find it weird that anybody would remember something I've done.

Rich (49:20)
you

Miriam Payne (49:21)
I think maybe just that no matter the problem, we always found a way and always try to find the good in a situation. I think that's something we're very proud of that when things went wrong, we jumped into action.

we communicated well and sort of intentionally, you know, it is a bit of a choice isn't it to be happy out there and to maker the most of it because it's very easy to go the other way. So maybe because of that just keeping going when the sticks are down and that you can find the joy in things and I would maybe say that. I don't think we've ever sort of been asked that question before so that's a good one.

Rich (50:04)
And I think that's important too, you know, just in general in life, your critical thinking skills, problem solving, understanding your situation, being aware of the moment. So all of those things

must have been critical for you. So ⁓ well done. What is next for you, either as a team or individually?

Jess (50:18)
Thank you.

So that is the golden question. ⁓ Everybody's wondering and at the moment we've still got lots of loose ends to tie out with our boats just arrived back. So we've got to sort all of that out and clean it up, put it up for sale. ⁓ We've actually not managed to fully cover the costs of the campaign. So we're doing quite a bit of public speaking now to try and earn some money.

Rich (50:28)
.

Jess (50:52)
We're obviously writing our book together and then we're also doing a kids book. There's been talk about possibly putting our videos together and doing a little short documentary, but not sure where we're at with that. I would love to go and do another adventure tomorrow, but the campaign of challenges like this just does take over your life and I think I need to earn some money and go to work for a bit. ⁓

Miriam Payne (51:21)
Thank

Jess (51:21)
We certainly had a lot of time to talk about bucket list things and the list of things we both want to do has grown massively. It's just trying to choose one thing.

Miriam Payne (51:32)
Yeah, I think we're quite keen for some smaller weekend adventures that, like Jess says, don't take a whole massive two-year campaign and so much money to plan. Because like we said, it was so hard to get to start line. We're just quite tired of planning things. ⁓

Rich (51:52)
Yeah, that's understandable. It's a massive commitment. Like you said, it takes over your life for quite some time. all of the things that a normal person does throughout the day, you have to put aside for quite a while. So that's, ⁓ once again,

accomplishment. I'm really impressed and ⁓ amazed by what you've

Jess (52:12)
⁓ thank you so much.

Rich (52:14)
So where can everyone follow you and perhaps if they wish ⁓ contribute to help offset some of the costs that you're still facing for your team? And ⁓ also how can people follow you personally or individually if they wish?

Jess (52:29)
So our website is seasthedayoceanrowing.com Our Instagram is Seas the Day 2022, but we've also got our own Instagram account. So Mims has Mims in the world and I've got row underscore ventures.

If people did fancy donating, ⁓ they can do that through our website. They're also still able to donate to our charity via the website as well. We're selling merch and also Seas the Day Rum. So yeah, many ways to support us still. And if people would like to have us to come and do a talk, whether that's in a school or a corporate event, ⁓ then they can reach out through the website as well.

Miriam Payne (53:19)
Okay. you

Rich (53:19)
will put all of those links and social media mentions in the show notes for this episode just for everyone listening.

Miriam and Jess, thank you again so much. It was an absolute

pleasure and an honor to talk to you for taking time to talk to little old me in my podcast. ⁓ I know I appreciate it. My listeners will appreciate it. And I wish you the very best. And once again, thank you for joining me today.

Jess (53:36)
Thank

Miriam Payne (53:46)
Thank you so much.

Jess (53:46)
Thanks so much for having us.