At the end of 2025, data scientist and rower Jake Still plans to embark on an almighty rowing challenge while fundraising to support the restoration of his beloved rivers back home. Spending up to 50 or so days at sea alone, he’s aiming row across the Atlantic solo. This is the first in his series of guest blog posts, in which he’ll keep us updated with his training and eventual race progress.
The World’s Toughest Row Atlantic 2024 race is nearing the end with the last few boats still to come in and officially marks 10 months to go until I launch from San Sebastion in La Gomera. Earlier in December, I had the opportunity to travel down to La Gomera to see the race start line. It was exciting to be down there and see the marina with all the boats lined up in the water and how amazing to see the support from the locals with the race banners spread across the various local businesses such as restaurants.
If you can, it is advised to travel to La Gomera before your race year because it has been very helpful to familiarise myself with the process getting to the island and the knowing where everything on the island is. It is a little thing to help take pressure during my race year. To travel to La Gomera you have to fly Tenerife and then take the ferry across. The ferry was an interesting ride and my first taste of being rocked by deep water waves in the Atlantic as it travelled between the islands, a teaser to what will happen daily on my little rowing boat.
Visiting the start line La Gomera is one of the rare moments when you get to experience the largest fleet of ocean rowing boats. It was very beneficial seeing many different crew boats because each crew had their own unique setup and seeing the different approaches helps to generate ideas for what additions/work I need to do on my boat to prep her for the Atlantic. It was lovely to catch up with some of the crews I had met throughout 2024 either through doing sea survival courses together or training up in the North Sea at Hartlepool. Got the chance to hop on their boat and ask them lots of questions and deep dive into their kit. One of things I wanted to check was how spares were being secured. It was great to see them set off in La Gomera and having met some of the crews made the 2024 race more special to watch them as they traverse across the Atlantic and seeing them finally arrive in Antigua was amazing.
It was not only just current rowers there. There were lots of past rowers and future rowers, some who had raced in the previous year and others who enjoy coming back every year. It was fantastic speaking to them too about their own stories and how they found their crossing. La Gomera is very special for ocean rowing because of the World’s Toughest Row and it is great to be a part of this awesome community.
We wish Jake well with his training and eventually on his epic challenge. You can follow his progress via occasional blogs on this site.
