Birr man completes marathon row across Atlantic Ocean

Fionn O’Carroll from Birr successfully rowed across the Atlantic Ocean earlier this month after a 54-day long journey.

After an adventurous journey that included six-metre high waves, pressure sores, dolphin pods and eventually, land in French Guiana, in South America.

Speaking about undertaking the impressive expedition, Fionn said: “I first heard about the challenge about five years ago. I actually saw a documentary on Amazon Prime and I just thought it was an incredible challenge. I made some enquiries on Facebook and it just popped up one day that there were guys looking for a teammate.”

The Offaly man emailed the group and discovered that they were departing in just three months. “It was quite kind of last minute for me because most people would spend two to three years preparing.”

He undertook the journey with three other men; Ciarán Kavanagh from Dublin, Jordan Godoy from California and Captain Ralph Tuijn from the Netherlands.

Speaking about the challenges of the expedition, Fionn said they had problems before they left from their starting point in Portimão, Portugal.

They had planned on spending three or four days preparing the boat, stocking up on food and conducting safety checks but Fionn said when they were carrying out safety checks their automatic water maker had a massive crack in it.

Unfortunately, another crack developed on the other side of the machine and the team decided to leave without the water maker. ”We had a special manual pump so we just had to pump the water manually which was quite strenuous,” Fionn said. They left the port on Friday, January 13.

“Initially we were aiming to break the world record of 48 days and the weather looked really good, so we were all quite excited that we would have a good start. After four days the weather turned and we ended up having to get in the cabins. We had up to six metre waves crashing over the boat and the wind was just under 50 km an hour against us. We were just getting blown all over the place.”

Fionn added: “We were stuck in the little coffin size cabins for 52 hours just laying on our backs. That was probably one of the first biggest challenges we had.”

About a day before the group expected to pass by the Canary Islands, their solar panels didn’t get enough charge. "That was a fairly big problem as well because our solar panels powered everything like our safety equipment, our navigational equipment and our communication devices.

“In the end we had to make the decision to stop in the Canary Islands and charge the batteries. That was kind of a blow to the team cause we agreed at the start that we all wanted to do it in kind of a pure fashion and not stop and it also meant that we wouldn't break records.

Fionn explained that the first 12 days of the voyage were quite difficult because their bodies were adjusting to sea life. “Ciarán was very seasick, so he was getting sick probably 30 or 40 times a day and we all had massive blisters on our hands.

“We were following kind of a sleep schedule of two hours rowing, two hours rest, so that was kind of a shock to the body clock.

Fionn said that one of the most difficult parts of the trip for him occurred around 33 days into the expedition when he developed a bad pressure sore.

“It was probably the only time of the expedition I really kind of questioned if the whole challenge was worth it or not but thankfully the pain passed and the pressure sores healed up and we continued on towards South America.”

Despite the challenges, Fionn also had some fantastic experiences on the trip such as observing a pod of dolphins near the Cape Verde Islands. “We saw a pod of about 30 dolphins come up to our boat one day and started swimming around our boat and jumping out of the water and doing flips."

The former St Brendan's Community School student continued: “One day we had a bird land on our boat, which we think was trying to migrate across to the warmer climate in Africa. We made a little nest for him down the back and gave him some food and snacks and so we gave him a bit of a taxi for about twelve hours before he flew off and continued his journey. It gave us a little morale boost.”

Describing how they were relieved to see land when they were about 20 miles from shore, Fionn said: “Eventually one of the guys on the boat just spotted a little faint light. That was kind of a special moment because it had been so long, it had been weeks since we'd seen any sort of land.”

They reached the Kourou River in French Guiana which marked the end of the journey on Wednesday, March 8 at about 3.30am.

“There was a local French fisherman on his boat and he had heard of our arrival via radio communication. He gave us a warm welcome by setting off fireworks off the back of his boat and passed us out some nice cold cans of Heineken.”

Fionn is the son of Brendan O’Carroll and Martina O’Carroll née Delaney from Birr.