Rower Thomas Cremona and his five crew members on the 11-metre Sara G were ecstatic yesterday as they rowed into Barbados after a gruelling 34 days at sea, smashing the mid-Atlantic world record by 10 hours.
“I can’t describe it. We’re on top of the world. We can’t believe it,” the 22-year-old Mr Cremona said after being greeted by a small group of friends who applauded and hugged him.
“Running on adrenaline”, an exhausted Mr Cremona wrapped himself in the Maltese flag after coming ashore. He said he had lost a lot of weight from the row after getting by on high calorie rations, which were not bad for the first few days but did not taste very good after that.
“I can’t wait to eat a big meal,” he said as he celebrated with the rest of the crew.
The six international rowers made it into the record books by rowing from Tarfaya, Morocco to Port St Charles, Barbados in 33 days, 21 hours and 46 minutes, reaching their destination at 12.16 p.m. local time.
The crew, the others consisting of British and Irish rowers Matt Craughwell, the skipper, Graham Carlin, Rob Byrne, Adam Burke and Fiann Paul, covered a total of 5,098 kilometres at an average speed of 6.3 kilometres per hour.
The record they beat was set by the Hallin Marine only a few hours earlier. This boat had an additional eight rowers on board and newer technology when compared to the Sara G but this did not crush the determination of Mr Cremona and the team.
“It was extremely close,” the new world record holder said, pointing out that, considering they had spent a whole month at sea, 10 hours were not much. “Since it was a world record attempt, the team was thinking of going faster and faster all the time for a whole month. It was quite intense.”
The weather was in their favour for most of the trip. However, they had a number of encounters with “rogue waves” (large spontaneous waves) sometimes even up to seven metres high, which the boat had to ride out.
At one time, the Sara G lost the dagger board, a vital piece of equipment that kept the boat from swaying, Mr Cremona said. However, the team members did everything they could to make a makeshift dagger board from the bits and pieces that were left.
“Every other day was an adventure but it was so intense we didn’t have time to fully enjoy experiencing things like dolphins and flying fish going past the boat,” he said.
The first few days were especially testing for the Maltese rower as he suffered from seasickness, which got better later in the trip.
Now, he said, he planned to make up for it celebrating with the crew and resting. He will be spending about a week in Barbados before returning to Malta.
Hours after the rowers set foot ashore, he was congratulated by the Malta Sports Council, Sports Parliamentary Secretary Clyde Puli and the Labour Party spokesman for sport, Chris Agius.
This is the third world record the 22-year-old has set in less than three months. He managed the Concept 2 Longest Continual Row on a rowing machine in December and, on January 18, the crew covered a distance of 160 kilometres daily for 10 consecutive days. He is also the first Maltese person to row across the Atlantic.
An accountant by profession, Mr Cremona survived Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia when only four years old. His Row4Cancer campaign is not only about breaking records but aims to reach out and prove there is life after cancer, besides raising funds for Puttinu Cares, the children’s cancer charity.