The Challenge
This April, Jess Rowe and Miriam Payne, known together as Seas the Day, embarked on an adventure of truly epic proportions… to row non-stop and unsupported across the vast Pacific Ocean. Their journey spanned over 8,000 miles, from the shores of Peru to the coastline of Australia, navigating some of the wildest and most unpredictable waters on Earth.
Partnering with The Outward Bound Trust, Seas the Day set out not only to make history but also to raise funds for the charity’s vital work – empowering young people to believe in themselves and achieve more than they ever thought possible.
A World First
After 165 days at sea and 8,213 nautical miles rowed, Jess and Miriam made history as the first women’s team to row non-stop and unsupported across the Pacific Ocean.
On Saturday 18th October at 6:42pm (local time in Cairns), their boat Velocity crossed the finish line to an emotional welcome from family, friends and supporters who had followed their extraordinary voyage.
From a restart after rudder failure to months of heat, exhaustion and unforgiving seas, Jess and Miriam overcame every obstacle.
Hypro Marine and Dometic SeaStar Hydraulic Steering
Hypro Marine supported the team with a Dometic SeaStar hydraulic steering system and AP1219 autopilot unit – vital equipment for their journey. Hear from Jess and Mims below…
How did the steering perform?
“One of the best pieces of kit onboard has to be our SeaStar hydraulic rudder system from Hypro Marine. It has been completely faultless and we’ve not had to worry once about steering throughout the crossing.
As well as being able to connect the hydraulics to our autohelm, we’ve also been able to steer with a wheel on deck when our power has been too low.
Remembering how many times I ended up off course on my Atlantic row with a different system designed for sailing vessels makes me feel so grateful. We had many issues with equipment getting too hot, making a lot of noise and just switching off constantly. The alarm sounding numerous times in the night, when the swell caused the delicate system to fail.
Not this time. The hydraulics have worked an absolute dream and this is proven when you take a look at our course, which you’ll see on the homepage of our website. No loop the loops or getting stuck going in the wrong direction.
It was a race against time to get our boat sorted before shipping last year and the team at Hypro Marine offered to come last minute to fit a whole new system onboard for us, after they removed the old salt corroded parts.
They even put together a training day for us at their warehouse on the South Coast to talk us through the system, walk us through what could go wrong and how we could fix it, in the unlikely event that we’d have any issues.
Thank you Hypro Marine – we’ll certainly be taking the system onboard for our next crossing whenever that may be”.
Source: LinkedIn