Best friends Jessica Oliver and Charlotte Harris recently set the world record for the fastest row across the Pacific Ocean, beating the previous record by nine days. Oliver and Harris met playing in the hockey club at Cardiff University 15 years ago, but they didn’t start rowing until 2020 when they decided to row across the Atlantic Ocean from the Canary Islands to Antigua. The friends set the world record for the fastest female row of the Atlantic during that trek, which took them 45 days. Six months later, they were eager to get back in the water and decided to compete in the World’s Toughest Row Pacific Challenge— a race that travels 2,800 miles from Monterey, California to Kauai, Hawaii. The journey took them 37 days, 11 hours, and 43 minutes, and was fraught with poor weather and mechanical issues. They were the first pair in the competition to have rowed both the Atlantic and Pacific, and now are world record holders on both oceans.
Image via World’s Toughest Row
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