Since our last ocean rowing roundup, the World’s Toughest Row has crowned its winner, one crew has started an Arctic row, and everyone else is still battling across the world’s oceans.
Pacific Ocean
World’s Toughest Row: This year, four teams entered the World’s Toughest Row, a 4,500km race across the mid-Pacific from Monterey, California, to Hanalei Bay, Hawaii. Teams set off on June 6, and two crews have crossed the finish line so far. After tricky conditions at the start of the race, and the expected issues with seasickness and fatigue, the four crews have settled into their rows.
After the first 10 days, the crews began to move quickly west, thanks to helpful waves and wind.
Four-person crew Swiss Raw aimed to set a new speed record. They succeeded. Jun Hurni, Samuel Widmer, Ingvar Groza, and Yassin Boussena completed the row in 25 days, 2 hours, and 21 minutes, shattering the previous record by four-and-a-half days. “We were told to push hard out of Monterey, and we just didn’t stop,” Boussena said.
The next crew, Ocean5, came in seven days behind the winning team. Thomas Higham, Kevin Gaskell, Matt Gaskell, Stephen Greenan, and Patrick Deacon crossed the finish line after 32 days, 6 hours, and 51 minutes. They are the fastest five ever to complete the race, beating the previous record by almost 20 days.
The two remaining crews are drawing close to Hawaii and expect to land in the next few days.
Peru to Australia team making good progress
Seas the Day (UK): Jess Rowe and Miriam Payne are rowing from Peru to Australia. They first set off in April but had to abandon their attempt after 480km when their rudder broke.
In May, they restarted and have now covered 5,900km of the mammoth 14,000km journey. Originally, they were aiming for Sydney, but it is so busy during the months that they would likely finish that they have changed course for Brisbane.
A big milestone for the duo came on June 19, when they officially completed the first quarter of their journey. Now they are just weeks away from the halfway point, and are hoping to cross the imaginary line on July 25.
They have been incredibly upbeat since their first day, but even for the chirpiest of duos, months at sea can become monotonous. Nearing the halfway point has given them a huge boost. In the last few days, the weather had been on their stern, giving them some of their fastest days yet. Recently, they have clocked between 105km and 125km each day.
However, power remains an issue. Since the start of their row, their batteries have been playing up. Now, their electrical system has almost completely failed. The batteries drain every night, and they are unable to figure out what is causing the leak. They use all the power remaining solely for the autohelm. They have switched everything else off.
Self-imposed silence
MacLean Brothers (UK): Ewan, Jamie, and Lachlan McLean are also rowing from Peru to Australia. Three months after setting off, they had covered over half of the 14,000km.
They are hoping to set a new speed record, but unfavorable conditions are making that unlikely. In the last few weeks of June, they reported a “messy sea state with no regularity.” Ocean swells combined with wind-driven waves. At one point, the squall was so strong they said it was like being “tossed around like a rubber duck in a wave pool.” Constantly soaked, they ruefully remarked that they “yearn for the Edinburgh drizzle.”
Conditions improved as they moved through to the end of June and the beginning of July. Deciding it felt a bit too easy, they decided to row in silence for three days. They did not speak to each other, turned off their Starlink, and went radio silent on all comms. Before starting, they made a plan for their silent days and came up with a few signals they could use for essential communication.
“Time moves differently when you’re completely silent,” they wrote.
More speed record hopefuls
Tame the Kraken (US): Tim and Harrison Crockett are a father-and-son team taking on the Pacific. Their route is similar to the World’s Toughest Row, starting in California and rowing to Hawaii.
They are also hoping for a speed record, aiming to complete the row in 45 days. This is becoming less and less likely because of a difficult start, when they struggled with exhaustion and a broken autohelm.
Tim and Harrison Crockett. Photo: Tame The Kraken
It is hurricane season over the Pacific. Bizarrely, this is helpful (as long as you don’t get caught in one) because it creates quite reliable trade winds that can push you along. However, the downside is that for the first three weeks of June, they were almost always in full foul-weather gear. Cloud cover was near constant, alongside heavy rain and choppy seas.
As it stands, they have been rowing for over 10 weeks and have 1,100km to go. To finish the row within 45 days, they need to cover 125km per day, approximately double their average pace.
Around the world with human power
Louis Margot (CH): Louis Margot is making his way around the world by rowing and cycling. He started by cycling from his home country of Switzerland to Portugal. Then he hopped into his boat and rowed to Columbia in 115 days. From there, he once again began pedaling, this time to Peru.
Now he is on his second rowing section, from Peru to Indonesia. After rowing to Hiva Oa in the Marquesas Islands, he stopped for a few months to rest, make repairs, and restock. He has been back on the water for just over a month and is chipping away at the 11,638km to Indonesia. So far, he has rowed approximately 2,300km.
Indian Ocean
Ocean Revival (UK): Matthew Mason, Jake Mattock, Matthew Inglesby, and Mathew Hemmings are rowing 8,500km from Australia to Kenya. Originally, they were rowing to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, but have decided to change course slightly and are now heading towards Kilifi, slightly north of the city of Mombasa. Mid-row, they discovered that the port in Dar es Salaam has no slipways, which would make getting the boat out of the water incredibly tricky.
Showing how close-knit the ocean rowing community can be, the team got in touch with the Seas the Day crew. Jess Rowe was quick to respond with some helpful information; her father lives in Kenya and knows the coastline well. A few phone calls later, and the boatyard in Kilifi is getting ready for their arrival.
After two months, they have covered 6,800km. In the last few weeks, conditions have been changeable. They had 24 hours on the para-anchor as a big weather system crossed their path. They almost capsized, and then panicked as a large ship passed too close for comfort. To try and conserve power, they have been switching their navigation on and off. While it was off, a ship suddenly appeared. At first, they thought it was a wave, but within 20 minutes, it was a few kilometers from them.
“Somewhere between survival and bliss, we’ve found a strange kind of peace out here,” the crew wrote recently. “As a crew, we’ve laughed hard, rowed harder, and been broken and rebuilt more times than we can count.”
The world’s blue highway
Untamed (BG, NL, CN, UA): A second four-person crew is also trundling across the Indian Ocean from Australia to Kenya. Almost eight weeks into their row, Evgeny Sudyr, Liu Yong, Ralph Tuijn, and Stefan Ivanov have covered 7,100km of the 9,000km.
The Untamed crew, out on the ocean. Photo: Untamed
An ambitious crew with a wealth of ocean-rowing knowledge, they had hoped to make the crossing in 75 days. Despite their best efforts, they won’t achieve this. Even for experienced rowers, the Indian Ocean is difficult. It is why so few ocean rowers tackle it.
The team has given few updates but noted the difficulties of rowing across the “world’s blue highway” after so many weeks of solitude: “We are right in the middle of the major shipping lanes connecting Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Seeing dozens of vessels appear on our tracker feels surreal after days alone with the waves, a reminder that this ocean is a global thoroughfare.”
Around Britain
52 Degrees North (IE/UK): David Irving (IE), Rod Tredgett (UK), and Scott Brown (UK) are rowing 2,700km clockwise around Great Britain. Starting at Tower Bridge in London, they made their way down to the south coast and are now moving up the west coast through the Celtic Sea into the Irish Sea.
Photo: 52 Degrees North
Slow progress has frustrated the trio. Conditions have forced them onto anchor at multiple points, sometimes for days at a time. “It is very hard to remain positive when momentum is so fragmented due to the adverse weather,” they commented on social media.
Row with the Flow GB (UK): This six-man crew, originally called Counternavig8, had planned to row counterclockwise around mainland Britain in 2024. The weather at the time made it impossible, so they postponed the row for a year, only to face the same issues in 2025.
After waiting weeks for an appropriate weather window and running out of time to complete the row, they changed plans and rowed clockwise. They renamed themselves Row with the Flow.
Unlike most crews rowing around Britain, they did not start from Tower Bridge; they set off from Eyemouth on the east coast of Scotland. Having started three days ago, they are working their way down the east coast of Northumberland.
Arctic Ocean
The Arctic Challenge 2025 (US): This four-person American crew is rowing 1,000km across the Arctic Ocean from Tromsø, Norway, to Longyearbyen, Svalbard. The speed record for a four-person team on that section of the Arctic Ocean was set in 2023 by Ocean Revival, which made the crossing in 15 days, 5 hours, and 32 minutes. This crew hopes to beat that time. If they complete the row, they will be the first all-American team to row the polar ocean.
They started on July 4 and are getting used to the icy conditions. The last 24 hours have been wet and cloudy, and they are in battery conservation mode. They are making excellent progress, having already completed 70% of the journey.
