'Commando Joe', a military rowing team is making final preparations for its four-man crew to row the Atlantic on an epic 3,318 mile journey from New York across the Atlantic Ocean to Falmouth. They have a 110-year old record in their sights. Almost three years of fundraising, planning and hard work will come to a head on June 10, 2006, when Commando Joe, rowing under the name of 'Team Hesco', stake their claim in the Shepherds Ocean Fours Rowing Race. It's the second in a series of three extreme challenges, they've already raced to the North Pole in a record-breaking time, to raise more than £100,000 for the Meningitis Trust.
 | | Capt. Pete Rowlands |
The endeavour is particularly poignant for one of the team members from Long Riston in East Yorkshire. Commando Joe's Capt. Pete Rowlands lost his son to meningitis in 2003. He said: "He was away at boarding school and because the disease developed so quickly, the first we knew of it was the call every parent dreads: Gareth's headmaster phoning us with the news that Gareth had died." He added: "Although a family can never entirely recover from the loss of a child, the support and counselling provided by the Trust to me, my wife Helen and daughter Sian helped us to cope with the situation in a way that we would otherwise have found very difficult."
 | | Team challenge |
Capt. Rowlands will share 'Mount Spirit', the 29ft long, 6ft wide boat, with three fellow Royal Engineers: Capt Mark Waterson, also from Long Riston; Staff Sgt. Ben Fouracre and LCpl. Charlie Martell. The crossing is expected to take them up to two months, but they'll need to reach Falmouth less than 55 days after leaving New York if they're to beat the existing record, set in 1896. It will also make them the first team in history to row from mainland USA to mainland UK. "I hope we'll get a better reception than the two Norwegians who made that first crossing," said Capt Rowlands. He added: "When they touched land in the Scilly Isles, no-one believed that they had arrived from New York. So, they got back in the boat again and rowed on to France, where they arrived, and believed, five days later."
 | | Capt. Mark Waterson from Long Riston |
Mount Spirit is bristling with a variety of equipment to make the crossing easier and safer than their historical counterparts, including a water maker to generate fresh water; GPS navigational equipment, and satellite phones. Capt. Rowlands: "It's still going to be tough, four men spending two months in a confined space; eating similar food day-in, day-out; getting a maximum of just two hours sleep in every four and feeling completely exhausted every day."
 | | Preparation on the Humber Estuary |
Mount Spirit has been a familiar site on the Humber Estuary but will be formally launched on April 6, 2006, at St Katherine's Dock, London, in the presence of Falklands' veteran and charity campaigner Simon Weston, before the team heads to Weymouth for a final week of training and testing the boat. Then it will be shipped to New York for the start of the race on June 10. The team's race progress will be tracked by GPS on their website where messages can also be left for the crew. The challenge will be the middle leg of in their endeavours. The first challenge involved three members of the team skiing to the Magnetic North Pole in April 2005. The 320-mile journey was completed in a record-breaking nine days, 17 hours and 39 minutes. The third challenge will involve a race through one of the world's great deserts. | 
