Tim Crockett: Rowing 3,000 Miles Alone and Overcoming Depression at Sea

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 278 with Tim Crockett.

Tim Crockett: That was one of the things when I did have those bouts of depression and I struggled on the boat, because I was thinking, how am I going to get to the other side? I think it was right about day 11 or 12 when I was having problems with the auto-helm. My mind went to the size of the challenge. By then, I was probably only a few hundred miles into the journey, and I kind of just saw that I could never get there.

Tim Crockett: So to get past that, as with most things, you've got to break it down into smaller, manageable, bite-sized pieces. Whether that for me was nautical miles, or for something like this self-isolation, it's like, well, what can I do today? How productive can I be today? Develop useful, productive routines.

Tim Crockett: That might mean getting out of bed at the same time each day, getting in a shower, having a healthy breakfast, putting comfortable clothes on. It doesn't have to be a suit and tie, but something that is a little bit more normal for the working week, and start to break your day up into a routine that your body gets used to. You'll find that you're more productive and more geared up to tackle something that, at this stage, we don't know when it may come to an end.

Tim Crockett: This is Tim Crockett, and this is the Tom Rowland Podcast.

Introduction: Rowing 3,000 Miles Solo Across the Atlantic

Tom Rowland: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the show today. On one of my first episodes, I tracked down this guy that was getting ready to do a race that seemed extreme even to me. That was a row across the Atlantic Ocean, 3,000 miles. He was doing it to bring awareness to veterans' issues, PTSD, and veteran suicide.

Tom Rowland: He is a former special forces member himself, with a background in the military and special forces. His name's Tim Crockett, and his organization is called Tame the Kraken. He did that race and he successfully completed it. We're going to catch up with him right now and find out. I want to hear what happened.

Tom Rowland: I know that rowing 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean alone in a 24-foot boat had to be full of a lot of stories. So hopefully Tim is going to recount those with us right now. Here we go. Tim, how you doing?

Tim Crockett: I'm doing well.

Tom Rowland: Man, it's good to hear from you. I followed your race. It was amazing.

Tim Crockett: Thank you.

Tom Rowland: So how long has it been since you finished?

Tim Crockett: It's been just over a year. I came into Antigua on February 13, so a good year.

What the Race Is and Why He Did It

Tom Rowland: So I know we've done a podcast before. You're one of the earliest guests, and the podcast has grown quite a bit. So let's bring everybody up to speed on what this race was and why you were doing it.

Tim Crockett: Absolutely. This is a race that, when I did it, was in its twenty-first year, set up by Sir Chay Blyth back in about '97. It's an ocean rowing race. It starts in La Gomera in the Canary Islands, just off the northwest coast of North Africa, and finishes in Antigua.

Tom Rowland: Wow. And you were doing this solo, but there were other teams that were multiple rowers?

Tim Crockett: That's correct. There were 28 teams in total, with 88 rowers. There were five of us doing it solo, including myself. Everyone else was either a pairs team, a team of three, four, or five.

Tom Rowland: And so how many people finished?

Tim Crockett: Out of the 28 teams, 27 boats finished. There was a mixed pairs team that pulled themselves out after about three or four days, and we're not quite sure why. We don't know whether it was a result of injury, seasickness, or some sort of mechanical failure on board. We haven't got the full details, but they were rescued by one of the safety yachts, I think day three or day four, and were brought into Cape Verde, and then they returned from there. Other than that one boat, the other 27 boats made it safely across.

A Race With No Weather

Tom Rowland: That's pretty good. Was the weather decent for everyone?

Tim Crockett: That's the one big factor that has the most variation from year to year. I think everyone in the fleet, myself included, was prepared for big seas, the prospect of being capsized, and all the drama that goes with this type of race and the North Atlantic. The year before, all of the world records for the crossings were smashed because there were big seas and a lot of sustained, strong following winds for the entire race. So we went into this thinking, let's get amongst this. But we had the complete opposite.

Tim Crockett: We had three very distinct periods where we had no weather. Not that the North Atlantic is like a millpond, but as close to it. There were still large rolling waves, but not a breath of wind. Flat calm seas. That might sound fairly idyllic, but when you're trying to drag a boat that weighs about a ton through flat calm seas in eighty, ninety degree weather and high humidity, it's a different story. It's actually quite miserable, because we would want to make good use of the trade winds, which come from North Africa across to the Caribbean to help push the boats along.

Tim Crockett: But we never got it. I think that's why a lot of the crossings were a lot slower than everyone anticipated. I myself was planning on a fifty-day crossing. Even though, for safety reasons, you have ninety days' worth of food and you make your own water through a desalination unit, all these things are geared up for a worst-case scenario. I was planning on fifty days based on two or three years' worth of data from other solo rowers, but it took me sixty-three days. That was largely due to the lack of weather and a few mechanical issues on board.

An Injury, a Broken Auto-Helm, and Falling Behind

Tom Rowland: How soon into the race did you realize that you were going to be way behind schedule?

Tim Crockett: It was still fairly early. I would say probably week two or three. On day two, I sustained an injury to my knee, which was just a basic error. I was climbing into the cabin, came down on a fairly large wave, and my knee twisted. I perhaps tore a few bits and pieces inside my right knee, which in itself wasn't that bad. It was a bit painful, but it wasn't stopping me from rowing, and the weather at that point was still a little bit favorable.

Tim Crockett: Then about day 11 or 12, my auto-helm, which is a piece of equipment that keeps the boat pointing in the right direction and is a big help to a solo rower because you haven't got anyone else there to steer the boat while you're rowing, that packed in. That caused a lot of problems in terms of being able to steer the boat in the right direction and make decent forward progress. So that started to slow me down while I was trying to figure out how to work around not having an auto-helm and manually steering the boat and locking it off on a heading.

Tim Crockett: Shortly after that, we got hit by our first period of no weather, which meant I had to go onto a para-anchor. It's a big parachute-like device that holds you still in the water.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. We use those for fishing, sea anchors.

Tim Crockett: Absolutely. We have those to prevent the boats from getting blown backwards. During the whole course of my race, my best day was 67 miles. On this period, my best day was, I think, minus two. Even with the use of a para-anchor, I got blown back a couple of miles.

Tom Rowland: Wow.

Tim Crockett: So that was the first wake-up that, okay, we're now a little bit behind schedule. On top of that, with the injury and the problems with my auto-helm, I dropped from leading the solo pack, and being even ahead of a couple of threes and pairs boats, to now dropping a position and seeing the gap start to open up between myself and the other solo rower in front of me. That was the first indication that things were going a little bit slow. But at that point, you think we can make it up later in the race. Once we get down into the trade winds, things will pick up and we'll soon make up this lost ground.

Tim Crockett: But then we got hit by the second period, and then towards the end, another period of unfavorable weather. So around the thousand-mile mark, 1,500 miles, almost to the halfway point, we knew we were all moving a lot slower than previous races.

Seeing Other Boats and the Shipping Lanes

Tom Rowland: So how often were you seeing these other boats? You've got 27 boats all departing. Did you depart at exactly the same time?

Tim Crockett: We all left on the morning of December 12. The first boat departed about eight, eight-thirty in the morning, and then all the boats were released at five-minute intervals. You're all lined up there in La Gomera, and it's a real big deal. There's a lot of people that come down. You've got friends and family all waving you off.

Tim Crockett: They start with the faster boats, so the five-person teams go first, and then the fours and threes and twos, and then the solos go off last. I think I was the third from last boat to depart. For the first couple of hours, you may see one or two boats off in the distance. For the first twenty-four, forty-eight hours, you would only really see them at night with the navigation lights way off in the distance. Of course, using your chart plotter and AIS system, you could see them if they were in close proximity, and we're talking just a couple of miles.

Tim Crockett: But after that, your boat is very low on the water. You're in amongst the waves. So even at those distances, you both had to be on the crest of a wave and looking in the right direction to see another boat. After about day two, I didn't see another rowing boat until I arrived in Antigua.

Tim Crockett: That said, I didn't see it through my own eyes. We had around about a thousand miles left to go, and at three o'clock one morning, my AIS system goes off, which is an anti-collision system on all modern boats of a certain size. You set it a proximity alarm. So any boat that's in that area or is coming on a collision course with you, this alarm goes off. Half asleep one night, about three in the morning, I'm rowing along, and all of a sudden the alarm goes off. I go into my cabin, pull up my chart plotter, click on the dot, and see who it is. And lo and behold, it was a friend of mine who was rowing as a pairs boat that had set off fifteen minutes ahead of me from La Gomera.

Tim Crockett: Like I said, almost six weeks previously. And we crossed paths within half a nautical mile of each other. Obviously, we couldn't see each other. We saw a dot on the chart, and we spoke on the radio. But other than that, there was no other real contact with any of the other racers.

Tom Rowland: So did you have the AIS system there so you could see the name of each vessel that you're passing?

Tim Crockett: That's one of the advantages of having it, not only from a safety perspective, but it gives you the opportunity to call up the vessel on the radio by its name, and obviously you know its heading, its speed, those things that, especially to a solo rower, are very important.

Tom Rowland: How what distance did you have that alarm set for another boat being close to you?

Tim Crockett: I think I had it at five nautical miles. I had one that I could set with two different alarms. One was the proximity, which I think was five nautical miles, and then I had another one in terms of speed and collision. So within five miles, I would get a chirp that just let me know there were boats in the vicinity. The other one, which was a persistent alarm you had to go and acknowledge, was if something was heading straight for you.

Tom Rowland: Because I mean, were there container ships and big boats in that area as well?

Tim Crockett: The area that we leave from and then come down and across, just to the north of us, is a fairly busy shipping lane. We would get everything from container ships to pleasure yachts transiting across the Atlantic to oil tankers. Pretty much everything would go back and forth. Most of them were often in the distance, but I was surprised how many ships I would see.

Tim Crockett: Certainly early on, the closer you are to land, you see more vessels. In the middle of the Atlantic, it would be a pleasant surprise to see something pop up. Then as we started to come in closer to the Caribbean, you had vessels that were traveling north more so than going across the Atlantic, those coming up the Eastern Seaboard perhaps from the Caribbean or Latin America. Again, that was one of the things you could punch up in the chart plotter and see where they were coming from or going to, and the speed and all those things, which when you're stuck on the boat with very little entertainment, even that scrap of information was interesting.

Isolation, Loneliness, and Needing Other People

Tom Rowland: That had to get pretty lonely out there, I would imagine. For those who didn't listen to the first podcast, you have a military background in special forces, and you have a lot of training, probably to understand how to deal with these things. But did you have a problem with isolation and loneliness when you were doing this race? How many days? Sixty-somewhat days?

Tim Crockett: Sixty-three. Sixty-three days, two hours, and thirty-seven minutes.

Tom Rowland: Counted every one.

Tim Crockett: Exactly. I didn't quite get it down to the second. Well, let me go back one step further and let those that don't know why I did it in the first place. Yes, I have a military background, and the reason I undertook this challenge was to raise awareness and funds for post-traumatic stress and mental health issues amongst veterans.

Tim Crockett: The reason I chose to do it solo was really to try and draw as many comparisons as I could to those that are suffering from mental health issues, and certainly those that are isolated and lonely and suffering from anxiety and things of that nature. Even though I'm an introvert and a loner at heart, and yes, I've got a military background that has trained me in a lot of those things and operated in isolation in some parts of the world, it is a different story when you're on a boat in the middle of the Atlantic by yourself.

Tim Crockett: I think I was fully prepared mentally to deal with being by myself for a long period of time. But it's when you mix that in with an injury, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, when things are not quite going your way and the wind is blowing you in the wrong direction, that's really when it weighs on you more. I didn't realize how, even though I'm a loner, how much we really do need other people, not just in a physical sense, but in a mental sense, just to know that someone's out there.

Tim Crockett: The physical separation was difficult at times. I was very fortunate to have a satellite company as one of my sponsors, so I had the ability to communicate with anyone I wanted whenever I wanted. While that was good, sometimes it was also a double-edged sword. You would relieve some of the anxiety and stress by being able to speak to someone, certainly my wife, my kids, my family. But as soon as you come off that call, after a while you would dip down a little bit deeper into depression and loneliness, because you've hung up the phone and now that's gone away and you're still faced with all of those challenges that you're battling and that perhaps caused you to reach out on the phone.

Tim Crockett: But we knew that going into it. So while it was more of a realization of how much we do need other people, and it challenged you further, it is part of doing a race like this solo, or perhaps any long endurance challenge, when you're by yourself and have to be very self-reliant.

Lessons for Lockdown: Routine and Bite-Sized Goals

Tom Rowland: Well, it's interesting. The time that we're doing this particular podcast, we're all kind of a little bit like that. That was on the far extreme of the scale, but now we're basically in lockdown. We're isolated from others. So can you draw any comparisons to how you dealt with that on the extreme scale, like when you have those moments of real down?

Tim Crockett: Yeah, absolutely. There are a lot of comparisons, because even though it was a challenge that I pursued and I knew I was going into essentially self-isolation, there were external factors that challenged what I wanted to happen that I had no control over. I think that's the situation we're faced with now. Many people may not be used to working from home.

Tim Crockett: After a number of days, that thought of, oh great, I don't have to get out of my pajamas, I don't have to suffer a two-hour commute into an office, you realize that wasn't so bad. It can be a challenge for some people, being stuck at home and not being able to have the freedoms that you once had before.

Tim Crockett: What I would say is, don't look at the whole period of time. That was one of the things when I did have those bouts of depression and I struggled on the boat, because I was thinking, how am I going to get to the other side? I think it was right about day 11 or 12 when I was having problems with the auto-helm. My mind went to the size of the challenge. By then, I was probably only a few hundred miles into the journey, and I just saw that I could never get there.

Tim Crockett: So to get past that, as with most things, you've got to break it down into small, manageable, bite-sized pieces. Whether that for me was nautical miles, or for something like this self-isolation, it's like, well, what can I do today? How productive can I be today? Develop useful, productive routines. That might mean getting out of bed at the same time each day, getting a shower, having a healthy breakfast, putting comfortable clothes on. It doesn't have to be a suit and tie, but something that is a little bit more normal for the working week, and start to break your day up into a routine that your body gets used to. You'll find that you're more productive and more geared up to tackle something that, at this stage, we don't know when it may come to an end.

How the Hard Days Compounded

Tom Rowland: One of the things you said there was that it wasn't one thing for you. It wasn't the fact that the weather was not ideal. It was the fact that the weather wasn't ideal, and your knee hurt, and the helm's broken, and you just got off the phone with somebody. And now it's like, oh, man, I don't feel so good. It's this combination of a lot of factors, and I think that's what a lot of people are going through right now. It's not just that things are shut down. It's that things are shut down and you lost your job, and two more things happen, and it's raining outside, and you can't get out.

Tim Crockett: Yeah.

Tom Rowland: Those are the kind of things that compound. And it sounds like on your experience on this race, that those compounding factors kind of brought you down more at certain times. How did you deal with that when you're out there completely alone? You try making the phone call and you get a little lift, but like you say, after it's over, now you're facing 1,500 more miles of this race. How do you deal with that when you're completely alone out in the middle? I guess one thing to the advantage is it's not like you could just quit right there.

Tim Crockett: Yeah. Once you're on the ride, it's very difficult to get off. So myself and all the rest of the teams, a lot of preparation goes into this. There's a lot of research. Everyone is ready to tackle the things we know are coming. We know there's likely to be damage to the boat or equipment loss or equipment failure. We know there could be extremes of weather, whether that's big waves thirty, forty foot high, the heat, the humidity, the storms that come through. You're on the boat for a long time exposed in that environment. So we know how to deal with blisters, infections, salt sores, all those things, as well as your body breaking down.

Tim Crockett: The more time you spend on the boat, the more your muscles are breaking down, because what you don't realize is that you're not walking anywhere. You're not even standing for any long period of time. So parts of your muscles start to waste away because you're just not using them. And then there's the physicality of it, rowing for myself between twelve and fifteen hours a day.

Sleep Deprivation and Negative Cycles

Tim Crockett: I think the biggest factor of all of this, and I mention it now because it plays into what we're dealing with today, is sleep deprivation. I would sleep on average between three and six hours in a twenty-four-hour period, and I was working in four-hour blocks. At night or during the dark hours, I would row for two hours and rest for two hours. But in those two hours of rest, I'm still having to get dressed and undressed and deal with the issues on the boat. So really, the sacrifice you had to make was real restorative sleep, and over time, that has the biggest effect on one's body.

Tim Crockett: If you look at what we're facing now, if you don't get into a productive routine, if we don't know what we're going to do tomorrow, more than likely you're stuck with your face in your phone, either playing games or scrolling through social media or looking at the news. And it's all fairly negative. Whether you consciously or unconsciously are affected by all this negativity and uncertainty, that plays on you. If you're staying up late at night and then getting up late, that's going to have the same negative effect on your body, and you'll get stuck in a negative cycle and find that you will get down, if not somewhat depressed.

Tim Crockett: So that's why I say you've got to get into a productive working routine, whatever that is for you. Don't stay up late at the weekends and do the sort of things you would do normally. Without a place to go and a structure of work or study or whatever it may be, we can easily slip into these negative cycles. At times on the boat, that's similar, in the sense that, okay, I couldn't do much about the sleep deprivation. There were times when I just physically couldn't get out of the cabin and I had to roll over and try to get another thirty minutes of rest. But there were times where you have to step back and think, I can't get control of this at the moment. What's the next best option?

Tim Crockett: We can't control everything, certainly when you're on a small boat in the middle of the Atlantic, and having that realization. To be honest, some days I got it and some days I didn't. That's sometimes when I would pick up the phone to complain and whinge to whoever would listen, mainly my wife. Sometimes she would have to verbally slap me around the face and say, hey, just get on with it. There's very little I can do; complaining about it's not going to help. And I think that was another sobering wake-up call. So to go back to my earlier statement, you don't realize how much you need other people, whether it's a sympathetic ear or someone to give you a little bit of a pep talk or a slap around the face to gee you up and get on with it. But at the end of the day, sometimes we do just have to buckle down and get on with it.

The Team Behind a Solo Row

Tom Rowland: Was your wife your champion, or did you have others? You said you talked to your kids. Who would you call if you were super down? Obviously your wife, but was there someone else that gave you some real motivation and support, or told you the right things at the right time while you were out there?

Tim Crockett: Yeah. Not intentionally, but I had a fantastic team. I had an old school buddy of mine from back in the UK who was my team manager. He helped me hugely with a lot of the buildup and preparation just before the race, and he was there to be a sympathetic ear and inject some humor into the day. A lot of the time I didn't realize how depressed and complainy I was until I spoke to my wife, and she's the one that could tell me straight.

Tim Crockett: I had another team member who was helping me with the weather, kind of pointing me in the right direction and giving me all the weather updates to work with or around the weather as best we could. He was fantastic. He's a former Marine as well, and he lives on board a yacht in the Mediterranean. Couldn't have asked for anyone better. He knew when to give me words of encouragement, when not to say anything, and when to say, look, this is what needs to be done, get on and do it.

Tim Crockett: So I had people, from friends to family members, who knew me and knew when to just show up and listen or when to say, hey, go get it. It's up to you, because no one else can do it. We can give you the support verbally, but you're on the boat. You're the one that's got the oars in your hands. Keep moving. We didn't talk about that before we went into the challenge. It just kind of happened. And what I would say is that I would have taken longer and struggled a lot more had I not had that team around me.

A Team Event and a Solo Test: Kokoro vs. GORUCK

Tom Rowland: Yeah. I don't have any experience doing anything quite like you did, but I did do this one event that was particularly impactful to me. It was called SEALFIT Kokoro, and then another event called GORUCK Selection. They were both very different. I've talked about them many times on this podcast, so I won't talk about it much. But one of them was very team-driven, SEALFIT Kokoro. That was all about developing this team around you. You can do anything with help from others. If you're feeling down, help others and you'll feel better. It was all about creating this team around you with people you had never met before. And that was great. I made it through that event.

Tom Rowland: Then GORUCK Selection was exactly the opposite. You could not talk to anyone. You could not help anyone. You could not accept help from anyone. You were completely on your own. Even though it started out with 270 people, only one finished. And even though there were that many people there, there was no help from others. You were completely a lone wolf.

Tom Rowland: I didn't fully understand the lessons that I learned in the first event until I was faced with the new rules of the second event of not talking to anyone, not helping anyone, being completely alone. And I found that I had much more difficulty with the second event for many of the reasons that you're talking about. In the first event, you've got words of encouragement, you've got acts of kindness. Somebody hands you something or helps you up. That was completely not allowed in the second event.

Tom Rowland: The reason I preface what I'm going to ask: when I got home from the first event, I didn't fully understand the lessons. I got home from the second event, and I'm like, oh, it's all about the team. It really made me reevaluate every area of my life. Who is my team here? In my training, it's with my friends. In my fishing, it's with the customers. With filming the TV shows, it's with the whole production crew. In my family, it is my family. This is my team that is going to go through life with me. I just wonder if you had a similar realization when you endured sixty-three, sixty-four days on the boat. When you get back, do you have a different opinion of team and support than you did before you left?

Tim Crockett: Absolutely. Going into this, I realized that while it was an individual physical challenge, it was still very much a team event. Throughout the challenge, I was reminded of that time and time again. And again, it wasn't intentional, the way the team was set up. Everyone had a role to play, and they just naturally fulfilled that role.

Tim Crockett: Once I got to the other end and had a moment, a few days, a few weeks, to start to adjust and then reconnect with the wider team that helped me get to that start line and certainly helped me get across, it reinforced a lot of the things I had come to know by first playing sports. Before joining the military, I played a lot of rugby back in the UK. You realize the value of everyone on the team and how you can succeed working as a team. In the military, exactly the same.

Tim Crockett: It's funny you mentioned those two different challenges, obviously both born from different types of special operations training. What a lot of people don't realize when looking at these challenges, because we're force-fed certain media and we create our own opinions and perceptions of these units, is that they are designed for a very specific purpose. Something like the GORUCK challenge, those individual efforts, that's to test the individual, not just physically, but mentally. What you're subjected to when working in that sort of role within a special forces unit, you have to be a hundred percent dependent on the people in your team, left and right of you. And you have to know yourself.

Tim Crockett: Some people go into that process thinking, oh, that's the life I want, I'll be great at it, and they don't really know themselves. So that part of the training really tests the individual and weeds out those that really don't want it. They may think they want it, but it really puts you under a lot of pressure, because you have to rely solely on what's between your ears or in your heart.

Tim Crockett: And then the SEALFIT type of training is very team-oriented. You're only as strong as your weakest link. Everyone's a leader. Those things that come out of that training are very much at the heart of any small-team operations and unit. And that very easily translates across to the corporate world, whether it's a nonprofit or a sporting organization. The principles remain the same. It's not this alien world of the military where they do their stuff and we do our stuff. We can learn from both sides, and those that have made the transition, whether they row an ocean or climb a mountain or run across a desert, the value of the team is so important. Whether they're with you helping you carry the load, or whether it's moral support, technical support, camaraderie, that cheerleading, they're all important at different parts of any challenge. I came to see that almost on a daily basis. When you get back and everything soaks in, you realize what you've done. Still to this day, talking to you now, I think back on certain moments and think, that wouldn't have been a nice challenge had I not been given the support from outside.

Spinning in Circles: Improvising Solutions at Sea

Tom Rowland: Like what? When you think about that, do you have an example?

Tim Crockett: Yeah. My boat was a new design, and obviously it's very proven from a technical point of view. But when you fully load it, and as you go through the race, you eat food from certain parts of the boat, so the trim of the boat changes, and the performance of the boat changes. And then as the sea changes, it does different things to the boat.

Tim Crockett: When my auto-helm died, I had big problems steering it in a straight direction. There was one time where the sea was coming from a certain direction, I needed to go in a different direction, and for two hours, all I did was spin around in circles. Every time I locked the steering off in a certain direction and started to row, it would creep around and creep around and then go broadside to the waves, which would almost capsize me. I would get soaked, and it would knock stuff around on the deck that I'd have to tie back down and reposition. That is just soul-destroying, and it would hit you again and again. After two hours of all that effort, you get to the point you just want to throw the oars away and be done with it and get off the boat.

Tim Crockett: That's when you have to reach out. I couldn't figure out how to do it on board. So I reached out to someone that helped me with some of my training, and I reached out to the boat builder, and we reached out to other teams. By combining all these different scraps of advice, I filtered out what was going to work for me, with some encouragement from my team. Like I said, it wasn't the perfect solution. It was the next best thing, and it kept me advancing towards my destination. So it was a combination of the right advice at the right time with the realization that sometimes you just need to step back, control what you can control, and then not worry about the rest.

Tom Rowland: So were you able to get that auto-helm working eventually, or did you battle with this thing the whole time?

Tim Crockett: So I'll go back first. I'd asked someone who has a ton of experience in ocean rowing. He also built the boat. He's rowed the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic twice, and he's preparing to row the Pacific again, hopefully, later this year. I asked him, what's the one piece of equipment on the boat that's likely to fail, and what do I need to do about it? And he said, auto-helm. Straight away. It's likely to break down. You've got to get a second one, maybe even a third, and rotate them every four to six hours.

Tim Crockett: Perfect. So I wrote that down in my notebook. I had all the intentions of getting a second one and maybe a spare, and then just didn't for some reason. So I had the one auto-helm. I thought, well, I know how to lock off the steering and figure out a different way of doing this. And when I was getting tossed around and pirouetting around, I was really regretting not having that second auto-helm on board.

Tim Crockett: It was actually the Silver Fox, my weather router. He suggested taking it apart and cleaning the motor. There's an electrical motor in there that powers it. I did that. I cleaned it out, reset it, and I got the thing working again. Now it wasn't working a hundred percent. Any severe lateral or side-on pressure to the boat, and it would trip itself out. But in calmer seas, it would work, which meant I could cover more distance in the same amount of time in certain weather conditions.

Tim Crockett: By the time I got to Antigua, I think I rebuilt the thing four times, stripped it down, cleaned it out. Pieces that were broken or bent within it, I pulled out, and it still worked. Then with about six, seven hundred miles to go, the closer you get down into the Caribbean, the warmer the temperatures are, not only the sea, but the air temperatures as well. One of the big problems with this auto-helm was it would overheat. I had a small USB electrical fan, just to circulate the air in the cabin. I thought, hang on, why don't I repurpose that? So basic science: I put a couple of wet baby wipes, the ones you use to clean your skin, over where the motor was within this device, soaked them, and then directed the fan on it. Through evaporation, it lowered the temperature by about five, six degrees. That allowed me again to run the auto-helm for longer periods of time.

Tim Crockett: Up until that point, I would row for three hours and then switch the thing off for an hour. So I would row for three hours, rest an hour during the day, and then at night, two hours on, two hours off. That would allow the motor to cool down and preserve its life a little bit. So through rebuilding it and my improvised cooling system, it got me all the way to about two miles short of my destination when it finally died. But by then, there was nothing going to stop me from crossing that finish line.

The Toughest Two Miles: The Finish at Antigua

Tom Rowland: That's interesting, because just this morning when I was doing a little research, I came across an article that said the finish line, I mean, you didn't just coast right into this thing.

Tim Crockett: No. It was strange. I thought for some reason that the last day was going to be some picture-perfect blue skies, calm seas, and a pleasurable entrance into English Harbour, and that would be the end of the race. Because you see the race finishes of all the previous races in flat calm water, and it's fantastic.

Tom Rowland: Even some of the pictures that I've seen of you, sorry to interrupt, but even some of the pictures I've seen of you, it did look pretty nice where you were. It's a harbor situation, obviously, and it can be quite a bit different a mile away.

Tim Crockett: Yeah. I'm not sure. I think everyone's so focused on the start and the actual crossing that most people don't focus on literally the last quarter of a mile, the last few hundred yards, which is actually inside English Harbour, a natural harbor on the southern side of Antigua. It's in the lee of this big headland. So once you get around the corner and into the actual harbor where the finish line is, and it's the entrance to the harbor where the first buoy is and the fort, you're in the lee of the cliff and the island itself. That's why it's so calm. But you go half a mile in the other direction, and you have 20-foot waves coming in from the wrong direction. And that's what I was faced with.

Tim Crockett: I knew a couple of days beforehand, with all the other factors and my weather router, that the weather was due to change. When you're in the middle of the Atlantic, it doesn't matter what direction you're going in as long as it's west. It can be northwest, west, southwest. You could head in any direction as long as you're making forward progress. It's only when you get to around eight, nine hundred nautical miles away that you have to start to make sure you're positioned in the right place. Picture yourself coming down like a funnel, and the closer you get to the island, the more accurate you have to be.

Tom Rowland: Right.

Tim Crockett: Otherwise you'll just float right on past, and Antigua's a small island. So we would always plan three days in advance, looking at the weather to make best use of the direction of the winds and the sea state. About five days out, we knew the potential of the weather to change was coming. So I was trying to make more of a northerly approach so that I could turn in and let the weather do most of the work. Well, just over twenty-four hours to go, the weather didn't change as we hoped.

Tim Crockett: So the morning of the thirteenth, when the sun came up, I was much further north than I should have been. And the weather was coming in from the southeast, so essentially it was pushing me up against the island. That doesn't sound too bad when all the stuff is in your favor, but not when you have a steering system that could go pop at any moment. And that injury I picked up on day two: the only other option to steer the boat when you're in close quarters like this is by using a foot-steering system, where you take the steering lines, wrap them around one of the foot plates, and then twist your leg or foot in order to steer the boat. But that puts a tremendous amount of strain on one's knee, and that was the knee I had injured.

Tim Crockett: Coming into this, I had it plotted out on my chart plotter. I was about 12 nautical miles from the finish when the sun came up. Now I can see the island. This is the first time I'd seen land for sixty-three days. I needed to get further south, to about a six-nautical-mile point, in order to come in and clear this headland. So I had about six miles to try and work my way south against the wind and the seas with a dodgy steering system and a bad knee. It was about four hours of battling with that, getting closer and closer. I never made that waypoint. I was about two or three miles, straight-line distance, on the other side of the headland, with the seas pushing me in.

Tim Crockett: I knew it wasn't going to be that idyllic finish I had in my mind's eye. I knew the steering was going to go at some point, and I would just have to buckle down and get it done. So I strapped my knee up in anticipation. I had everything set. I had the handheld VHF to call for the local search and rescue, and started to prepare myself. Then probably about a mile or less, maybe thirty minutes before I was going to switch the steering off and just go manual and literally battle my way in, the boat did its own thing. I got hit by a wave, the auto-helm tripped and died, which triggers an alarm, and then everything was just going crazy.

Tim Crockett: So for those last two, two and a half hours coming into Antigua, I got this constant alarm screaming, the seas pushing me up against the cliff, and I got to about a mile from the finish, and I was about fifty, sixty feet from the cliff with the waves smashing up against them.

Tim Crockett: It's the only time in my life I wore a life jacket, because I thought I was going to end up on the rocks. I went more into survival mode then. I just put my head down and rowed with every ounce of strength I had, still getting pushed closer and closer to the cliffs. And then all of a sudden, whether it was local currents, the boat started to move away from the cliff and back out to sea. About ten minutes later, once I'd cleared the cliff, the search and rescue boat that helps guide you in pops up on the radio and says, I'll be with you in two minutes.

Tim Crockett: I could hardly speak at that stage. I was so dehydrated. And twenty minutes later, I crossed the finish line. It was a huge relief to have completed not only the whole challenge, but just to have survived this final two miles.

Tom Rowland: Man, that's...

Tim Crockett: ...which were, for me, the toughest two miles of the whole race.

Tom Rowland: That's incredible, because you row 3,000 miles, you endure all these obstacles and challenges and overcome them all. Was there a moment there where you thought, I've come all this way, and I'm going to bash this thing into the rocks and come up a mile short?

Tim Crockett: I didn't have that much time to think about it or dwell on it. But yeah, when I started strapping the life jacket back on, staring at the cliffs, I was thinking, I've come all this way, not only to end just shy of the finish, but there's a lot of money and effort and everything tied into that boat. You're somewhat emotionally attached to it. It's been your home for the last sixty-three days.

Tom Rowland: The last sixty-three days.

Tim Crockett: Yeah, if not before. So all of that did go through my mind. But then, when you see those waves, and I've got some video of it, the waves crashing up over the rocks, my mind went to, well, if I do have to bail out, am I going to try and swim around? Am I going to try and climb the cliff? I went into more survival mode, thinking of the various contingencies if it were to end like that. And as I was focusing on the cliff and just pulling on those oars, all of a sudden, like I said, I started to move. When I was clear, literally within seconds, the radio pipes up, and I knew they were heading in my direction. The worst was over, but the end wasn't quite in sight.

Tim Crockett: When I looked along the cliff, along the shoreline, I could see some boat masts in the distance. That's what I thought was the entrance to the harbor, which actually wasn't where I was heading. It was the next harbor further along the coast, literally another mile or so around. So the finish was a lot closer than I'd anticipated at that point, when he said, you're going to do this. You're going to look for a cross up on the cliff, and when you get to that point, head north and pull with all your might, and you'll cross the finish line. I'm thinking, what is he talking about? This is the coxswain of the search and rescue RIB. I just went, well, okay, I'll let him direct me.

Tim Crockett: Then I looked over my left shoulder, saw the cross, and suddenly realized where I was and how close I was to the finish. And again, then it just takes over. At that point, even though I couldn't see the finish, knowing it was literally a few hundred meters away, you just keep pulling. And then when you finally cross the finish line and the cannons go off, that's when I kind of collapsed, literally on the deck of the boat.

Crossing the Line: Family, a Flotilla, and Emotion

Tom Rowland: And so you got your family. Did they come to the finish?

Tim Crockett: My sister, my wife, and my kids were all there. And again, Sean, my school buddy, team captain, was there. When you cross the finish line, that's about a quarter of a mile, maybe a little bit more, from where you come in along Nelson's Dockyard. So they're all on the dockside, listening to the race organizers and the safety people. They can't see the finish line unless they go up to the English fort on the hill, where one of the race marshals is. They're the ones that signal that you've crossed the finish line. Everyone else is down on the dockyard. They knew I was just outside, but they were kind of like, what's taking him so long? He's only a mile away.

Tim Crockett: And obviously, I'm battling with these big seas, and they don't know what's going on. Then they hear the cannon go. It took me a little while to get organized and put everything together, and then it's a very surreal moment. Now it's flat calm seas, very different from ten, fifteen minutes ago. You have this flotilla of small boats all around you. People that are either vacationing or live on the island come to welcome all the boats that come in. So all these people, and I haven't seen people for two and a half months. All of a sudden I go from being by myself to all these other people in boats around you, which is a little bit overwhelming.

Tim Crockett: You're still very emotional in terms of crossing the finish line. Then you row past these massive superyachts, and they start sounding their horns. Again, going from no noise other than the sea to people clapping and cheering and these massive horns going off, it's a little bit disorienting. And then when you go around the bow of the last superyacht, you look over your shoulder and you can see this mass of people on the dockside. That's when the emotion really grabs you. I could pick out my family, because they were wearing T-shirts the same color. You get closer, and then you can hear them. They finally come alongside and do the welcome procedure, take pictures with the flags, before they let you step off the boat. And then you just kind of get lost in the whole ordeal and the emotions of it all.

Life After Sixty-Three Days at Sea

Tom Rowland: That's got to be an incredible moment. I've got to know: you get off that boat. You've been eating dehydrated food. You haven't had much water. You haven't slept. What was it like to get in a hotel? You've got clean sheets, you can take a shower, you can eat whatever you want. What did you want to eat and drink after all of this? Did you just want to drink a gallon of water?

Tim Crockett: A lot of that takes place on the dockside. They arrange your first meal. So you go through all the initial interviews and interacting with people. I got an ice-cold can of Coke. I didn't drink a lot of soda, and after battling with the sea for two and a half hours and not having anything to drink, that was just pure nectar.

Tom Rowland: I bet it was.

Tim Crockett: What you don't realize is that on board, there's no air conditioning. Nothing's cold. It's the same temperature as what's around you. As you get close to the Caribbean, everything's warm. So even the water you're drinking is warm, it's not cold. So a cold drink was fantastic. I think my first meal that they provided on the dockside was a cheeseburger and fries. I'd asked for grilled octopus to go with the whole Tame the Kraken theme, but that was a bit more difficult, especially when they don't know exactly what time you're coming into the harbor.

Tim Crockett: That first day, the first couple of days, you're adjusting to everything, being around people, walking. Some people get a little bit wobbly after a few hours on a boat, but after two and a half months, walking was quite a strange sensation. The backs of your legs, your hamstrings, have withered away. Your calves have withered away, and you need those muscles to walk upstairs and walk in a straight line. So it took a few hours to walk around unassisted, and walking up and down stairs was a challenge. It took about three, four days before you could get around safely, and a good three months of training after that to get my knees and legs working properly again.

Tim Crockett: The biggest thing, obviously, was being around my family, having a shower. I must have drained the tank. I must have been in the shower for nearly an hour, just letting the water run over you.

Tom Rowland: There's nothing better than getting the saltwater off. You've been covered in saltwater for sixty days. That had to be just unbelievable.

Tim Crockett: Yeah, because you can't escape it. Even if it's just light spray that dries on you, it becomes almost like sandpaper. Every time I came off a rowing shift, you would wipe yourself down with the baby wipes, but it's not the same as jumping in a shower and washing it off with fresh water. Fresh water was something that was in supply, but it drew a lot of energy from the batteries to make fresh water. So I would have a bucket bath about every five days when I would get in. I'd get in the water and clean the bottom of the boat, scrape off all the barnacles, because that would slow the boat down. Every five days I would do that. Then, getting back on board, I would draw myself a bucket of fresh water first to clean all the clothes I was wearing and the equipment I was using, and then I would use it to have a bucket bath, which was quite refreshing. But still nothing compared to standing in a shower for an hour and just letting the water run over you.

Tom Rowland: I can imagine. And were you craving anything? I would think you would be craving anything fresh. Fruit?

Tim Crockett: I'm sure I did. Like I said, they throw everything at you. Having an ice-cold beer was quite a nice experience. I don't think there was anything I was really craving until I actually ate it. Oh, other than the hot sauce. I tell a lie. It was one of those things, I like spicy food, and I thought, two bottles of hot sauce will be plenty.

Tom Rowland: For fifty days.

Tim Crockett: I think I ran out in the first two weeks. That's not to say the food was bland, but it was a lot blander than one would think. So every meal while I was on the island, for about three days before I flew back, was a different meal from a different place, and I would say they probably were all spicy. So spicy food in general, I think, was what I missed the most.

Tim Crockett: Coming into the final month and a half, other than that, I think it's the experiences that came back to me. I don't know if it's the same for a lot of the other rowers. It's more gradual. I've spoken to many different groups, whether it's rotary groups or explorers clubs. Answering different questions sparks different memories and thoughts, because it's too much to recount in any one sitting. Everyone has different questions and different things they want to learn about, and those are the things that come to top of mind when those questions are asked.

Words That Speak: The Quotes That Drive Him

Tom Rowland: So I looked also on your website this morning, and I was interested because you have a little collage of pictures up there, and I clicked them. There were a couple of really interesting quotes that I particularly liked. One: I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do. Edward Everett Hale. So did you choose that quote for your website before this race or after this race?

Tim Crockett: Actually, I posted that up this morning.

Tom Rowland: Oh, you did?

Tim Crockett: Yeah. As I've gotten older, I've become more of a reader, and I'm not really someone that reads fiction. I read either biographies or accounts, whether it's adventures or certain periods in time. I'll dig a little bit deeper, and you find some of these quotes that come out. When I come across them, I either write them down or take a screenshot on my phone. Then, when I feel like posting something, or it's in reaction to something going on, that's when I search through my little collage of quotes. I tend to pair it with a picture from my row. Then I put it up to social media, and that gets posted on the website, which actually needs updating.

Tim Crockett: But yeah, they do speak to me. They speak to me from what I think the quote is, and then I use them, hopefully, to speak to others, either through our campaign, which is for veterans' mental health, or that one this morning, which is more to do with what we're all going through at the moment. People can feel that the world is against them, the situation's against them, but you're not alone. Yes, you're one person, but you can do a lot.

Tim Crockett: It reminds me of that other story, the fable of the young kid that comes across an old man on the shoreline throwing starfish back into the sea. He asks, well, what are you doing? He says, I'm putting these starfish back in the sea. And he says, well, you can't make that much of a difference. And he says, well, I made a difference for that one. He throws another one in, made a difference to that one. So yeah, I think words are powerful. And if you can pair them to a personal experience, I think it just reinforces it, not only in your own mind, but for those that know you and those that may need a little pick-me-up.

Tom Rowland: For sure. Quotes and words are incredibly powerful. Sometimes they're famous quotes because the person who wrote it was eloquent and efficient in their use of words, and they generally impart a really powerful message in a few short words. I read that this morning, and I thought, I wonder if he posted that before the race or after the race, because the whole purpose of what you were doing was to raise awareness and money for mental issues, PTSD, veteran suicide. Is that fair to say?

Tim Crockett: It is. Yeah, it still is the case. I entered into this challenge with the sole aim of doing something that I felt was worthy of that cause. When I got to the end, I felt that I didn't quite achieve what I set out to. But then I realized that my ocean row wasn't the end, it was the beginning. While we don't know quite what the next chapter will be, we've got thoughts, we've got ideas, I've teased a few things out. Hopefully, once we get past this COVID situation, those ideas will crystallize a little bit more, and we'll renew the campaign. Like I said, I might be one person, but hopefully we'll have an impact on others, and we'll grow it from there.

Tom Rowland: I love that. That issue, veteran suicide, is such a giant issue that it would be very easy for somebody just to say, I can't do anything about that. But your quote really spoke to me, knowing who I was getting ready to talk to and what you had just done. It was like, that's pretty powerful. You're not going to be able to fix that problem, but don't let what you can't do interfere with what you can do.

Tom Rowland: And then, as we were talking, you're telling the story about the helm, and there's another quote on there. It's not enough that we do our best; sometimes we must do what is required. Winston Churchill. I was thinking about that, reading it off your website this morning. Those are Instagram posts, actually, that are just posted on your website, because it takes me right to Instagram when I click it. So anybody could go and see your Instagram, at Tame the Kraken. That's a perfect quote for what you said and what you had to endure and how you had to overcome. It's not enough to do your best. Sometimes you've got to dig deep and do what's required, which in turn, you realize you've always got more in the tank.

Tim Crockett: Yeah.

Tom Rowland: There's no way you're going to just do your best.

Tim Crockett: Yeah. That's how a lot of people sometimes think, that that is the case. And I think maybe before the race, certainly before the end of the race, that was very much my mentality. Like I said, I was a rugby player, I was in the Marines, I was in special forces. Sometimes brute force and ignorance is kind of that default setting. If in doubt, give it a clout. But in certain circumstances, I learned on the boat that sometimes rowing with all your might for hours on end is not the smart thing to do.

Tim Crockett: It was actually my wife, and then another good friend of mine on my team, that got me to realize that sometimes you just need to step back and apply a little bit of logic or reason to the challenge, the problem, and figure out what you can do. So yes, you can interpret that as just brute strength and ignorance and muscle through it. Or you can think, well, sometimes you've got to be smarter and better rather than just powering through it. It can mean different things in different situations, and I dwell on both of those when I look at that.

Tim Crockett: But I'm a big fan of Winston Churchill. I think he was an incredible leader, and the right person at the right time. The country, in war, faced with what they were facing at the time, he was the right leader at that moment in time. So that's a lot of the teachings I take from that era, and certainly Winston Churchill.

Tom Rowland: For sure. Just loaded with really powerful quotes. If you just Google Winston Churchill quotes, you don't even have to really know what he's talking about, because what he's saying can be applied in so many different places in your life. He was a great orator, and he was very efficient in his speech. In his quote, he may have been speaking about something else, but it's easily applied to many other things in your life.

A Book Recommendation and a Word of Respect

Tom Rowland: What I want to do, I want to send you a book. I read this little book. Maybe you've read it. Have you ever read a book called U-Squared?

Tim Crockett: I've not.

Tom Rowland: It's a little book. You would probably never come across it in a bookstore unless it was recommended to you by somebody else. But I liked it so much that I bought a dozen copies, and I've given away almost all of them. I want to send you one. You'll read it in two hours, if it even takes you that long. And if you're like me, you'll read it in two hours, and you'll go right back to page one and read it again, and you'll get something different out of it the second time. It has a lot to do with what we just talked about, working smarter rather than harder. I'd like for you to read it, and we can talk about it after. Send me your address, and I'll send it to you. But this was awesome, man.

Tom Rowland: I am really proud to know you, because you are just doing some incredible things. Rowing 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean is certainly one thing. But then when you pair that with the reason you're doing it, and also couple that with the fact that you have a lot at home, you've got a family, a wife and kids, and to take this risk and go away on a solo isolation mission to try to make a difference, that's huge, man. So big kudos to you. Certainly, congratulations for finishing the race. There probably were millions of reasons that were going against you, some that we've talked about and probably many others that you overcame and probably even forgot about. Really cool what you're doing, and I'm sure there's more. So tell people how they can follow you and learn more about what you've done and support what you're going to do in the future.

Tim Crockett: Yeah. So Tame the Kraken, tamethekraken.com, is the website. On there, you'll find links to all our social media. I'd say I'm probably more active on Instagram than anything else, because I'm a man of few words, and I'll use other people's quotes and compare them to my own pictures. Like I said, the website needs updating. We are a 501(c)(3) charity here in Georgia. We have plans, so the best way is to stay tuned on our social media and visit the website. As soon as we know what we're going to do next, we'll post it up there and let everybody know. So no timeline at this stage, but it'll happen at some point.

Tom Rowland: Awesome. Well, I hope you're staying safe with all the COVID issues going on. Hopefully, when this is all over, we can get together and do a little training and catch up in person.

Tim Crockett: Absolutely. I look forward to it.

Tom Rowland: Okay. Tim, thank you very much. We're going to talk to you soon.

Tim Crockett: You too. Bye-bye.

After the Interview: What Comes Next

Tim Crockett: So I imagine this whole isolation thing, and not being able to do things, is impacting your world.

Tom Rowland: Oh, yeah. Quite a bit. Very much so. I don't think anyone is immune to this. Maybe a lawyer. One of my best friends is a lawyer. He said he just had his busiest month ever, because he's trying to help people navigate through this situation. But for the most part, I don't know that anyone is going to be immune to this. For us, we obviously can't shoot right now. We're lucky enough that we had all our shows done for the year beforehand. But a lot of our sponsors are, like, hotels in the Florida Keys, that's our biggest sponsor, and they closed the Florida Keys, and that hotel goes to zero. We've dealt with that before with a hurricane, where a hurricane hits and destroys the place. But the big difference there is there's business interruption insurance. There's hurricane insurance. All of these things, so they never missed a payment. Everything was fine. It was inconvenient for everyone, but it wasn't like this. This is different, and I don't know that anybody has any sort of immunity to this deal.

Tim Crockett: Yeah, it'll impact them one way or another. But it's funny, we've probably got another mutual contact, if not a friend.

Tom Rowland: Oh, yeah?

Tim Crockett: Rob Cervelo. He owns Tropic Airways, or...

Tom Rowland: Oh, yeah. Yeah, we did some work with him.

Tim Crockett: I've seen the airplanes on some of your videos, flying from these locations.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. He's a special forces guy, right?

Tim Crockett: Yeah. He was also a pilot, attached to the SF world. I got introduced to him through another pilot friend of mine that did some work for them, and then we connected. It was actually for the hurricanes, the year before or maybe even the year before that. They were pulling people out of private islands and other spots in the Caribbean. Then, I think last year, we started to discuss how we could perhaps support them supporting some of their clients, having a doctor at his base there, I think somewhere in Bermuda or the Bahamas. I can't remember what it was.

Tom Rowland: The Bahamas. Probably Abaco. That place got wrecked by the hurricane. That was the worst hurricane ever. It got there and it was moving like a half a mile an hour for twenty-four hours.

Tim Crockett: Yeah. And that's my next plan. I didn't want to say it on the podcast, but this May, late May, we were hoping to do a proof-of-concept row from the West End of Grand Bahama to Charleston.

Tom Rowland: Okay.

Tim Crockett: So we're looking now to set up our own charitable race, and have the first one, if it all works as we hope and we get a couple of sponsors on board. Memorial Day 2021, we were hoping to have a pairs team from each branch of the military row from Grand Bahama to Charleston. It's about 400 nautical miles, which as a pair, if the weather is with you, should take somewhere between seven and ten days at the longest. So it's something more manageable, because one of the things I find, and why I've still got my boat, because I'm hoping to sell it and put that into the charity, is that ocean rowing over here is not as popular as it is in Europe. Most people struggle to get two weeks off work, let alone two months.

Tom Rowland: Right.

Tim Crockett: And it's expensive. Those that are either retired, independently wealthy, or have their own business and want to row an ocean are the only ones that really can do it. So we were looking at how we can take the experience of ocean rowing, but do it in a more manageable size. We came across that area, and if you time it right, where the Gulf Stream is starting to form, you could quite easily just power up the East Coast. And obviously, Charleston, the finish line is literally at the back of the USS Yorktown.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. I've been there.

Tim Crockett: At Patriots Point. And obviously it would play into the whole veterans' mental health piece. So that's what we're planning. I'm not sure if this proof-of-concept row will happen this year. We're now hearing that people are predicting we might get hit quite hard with hurricanes this year. So those are the factors we've got to play into it. And then with this global crisis going on, sponsorship is a little bit difficult. I'm also part of a team that's considering doing the Northwest Passage.

Tom Rowland: Oh, really?

Tim Crockett: In rowing boats.

Tom Rowland: Did you see that guy Colin O'Brady did a big row across, what did he row? It's a real dangerous, cold place. I don't know.

Tim Crockett: Well, there was a team that just rowed down into Antarctica a few months back.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. It could have been. I think that was him.

Tim Crockett: I think they were a team of four or five. I can't remember.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. I think he was on that. That guy's pretty interesting. He's done a lot of mountaineering and different things. He's been on Joe Rogan a couple of times. He was just on there recently talking about this row. I didn't listen to that one, but I listened to his first podcast, where he had done all this mountaineering and set all these different records, which was pretty interesting. He's kind of on the same page, very extreme, and certainly a tremendous amount of training goes into whatever he chooses for his next thing. A cool dude, seems like.

Tim Crockett: Yeah. There's a guy, I want to say he might be Italian, but he's an American Italian, or British Italian, I can't remember. He was planning to kayak from San Francisco to Hawaii later this year. I think he's now having to postpone his plans. It was interesting because they just released his design. If you take the design of my boat and trim it down even more, to a very oversized kayak with a cabin on the back, I find it intriguing, just because of the shape. It's more like a cigar shape and could easily get rolled and capsized. But I see he put a note out the other day saying he's perhaps going to have to postpone.

Tim Crockett: There's a lot of that. My boat, I was going to charter it to a team in Ireland that were going to do the race later this year. They've had to postpone that to next year. And then there's a team I've been working with in Jacksonville. They were due to do it this year, and they've now postponed, because all the sponsorship has dried up and people are just hunkering down.

Tom Rowland: Right. Well, hopefully everything will come roaring back when this clears up.

Tim Crockett: If people will stay at home and help flatten the curve, hopefully we can bounce back a little bit quicker.

Tom Rowland: I hope so. Well, anyway, man, great catching up with you. Send me an email with your address. I want to send you this book.

Tim Crockett: Absolutely. I'll do that now before I forget.

Tom Rowland: All right. Thanks, Tim. We're all good.

Tim Crockett: Cool.

Tom Rowland: Thank you so much.

Tim Crockett: We'll chat soon. Thanks, Tom. Take care.

Closing Thoughts

Tom Rowland: Well, thanks, Tim. That was incredible. Man, you are an inspiration. And just like that quote said, don't let what you can't do interfere with what you can do. That's what I'm going to take away from this conversation with my friend Tim Crockett. You can follow him and all of his different social media accounts, Tame the Kraken.