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What this blog is and why it exists
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On every post, you’ll find a clickable list of tags:
Boat • Learning • Money • Personal • Team • The Race • Training
Click on any of those to see more posts on that topic.
In December 2027, my teammate Lauren and I are rowing 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean in a 24-foot boat with no motor and no sail. The race is called the World’s Toughest Row, and if we finish, we’ll be the first American female pair to do it.
I’m Janie, a novelist from Colorado Springs in my mid-50s. Lauren is an emergency physician from Missouri in her early-40s. We met on a medical mission trip in the Philippines. We’ve only been in the same room together a handful of times. And now we’re going to spend 45 to 60 days in a boat the size of a parking space, rowing in two-hour shifts around the clock, across open ocean.
Quick note: this is my account of this process. Mine. Lauren might remember things differently, disagree with my choices, or have done it all another way. She’s my teammate, not my co-author. Everything here is one woman’s version of how to row an ocean.
This blog is the manual I wish existed when I started.
When I decided to do this, I went looking for the practical stuff. Not the inspirational quotes or the highlight reels. The actual information. How do you find a teammate? How much does it cost? How do you train for an ocean row when you live a thousand miles from the nearest coast? How do you get a boat, modify it, ship it to the Canary Islands? What do you eat for 50 days? How do you fund the whole thing?
Some of that information exists, scattered across podcasts and YouTube videos and the occasional blog post from a team that already finished. But no one has written it down, in order, from the beginning.
That’s what this is. I’m writing it as I go, in the order I’m living it. If you’re here because you’re curious about ocean rowing, you’ll get the real version. If you’re here because you’re thinking about doing this yourself someday, you’ll get the closest thing to a playbook I can give you. If you’re here because you followed us from Instagram and want the longer story behind the 30-second Reels, this is where it lives.
I’m posting on social media too (@teamstillmakingwaves). That’s the day-to-day, the short clips, the jokes. This is the depth. The stuff that doesn’t fit in a caption.
I’m not sure how often new posts will be… since writing is my day job, sometimes more writing just isn’t possible. So I imagine it will come in fits and starts. But I’m excited to share what I’m learning.
Start at the beginning and read forward, or jump in wherever. At the top every post, you’ll find a clickable list of tags:
Boat • Learning • Money • Personal • Team • The Race • Training
Click on any of those to see more posts on that topic.
Let’s go.