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[suspenseful music]
[suspenseful music continues]
[waves lapping]
[music tempo increases: dramatic instrumental]
*
[man] It is miserable out here. Absolutely miserable.
You're sweating so much
your two-hour shift feels like four.
Um, so, I'm just being down so.
It's kind of quiet on the boat today.
Everyone is just kind of in their own heads
trying to get through their shifts.
[suspenseful music]
[Jason] Why would anyone want to row across an ocean?
Or climb Mount Everest, for that matter?
Or run across a desert?
What type of person does this?
*
The effort chews you up and spits you out
until you're essentially unrecognizable to yourself.
You sacrifice time with your family.
It punishes you. It humbles you.
It breaks you.
So why would anybody do it then?
For myself and for my teammates,
it was because we were chasing something...
and we didn't know what it was
until it was all over.
[dramatic orchestral music]
Everyone has something they dream of achieving.
If you had asked me at seven-years old
what my dream was, it was to be a baseball player.
Just like any other seven-year-old's dream
of being an astronaut,
a ballerina, musician, teacher, a doctor.
But all of us are really saying, though,
is that we want to be the best at something.
The older you get,
the harder it is to pursue those dreams.
But they're still there.
So, the question is, why do we give up
on our dreams?
This is my story, but it can be anyone's story.
It's about what happens
when you're faced with failure
and what kind of person that makes you.
[waves crashing]
The Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge.
World's toughest rowing race.
[fast-paced adventure music]
A 3,000-mile rowing race across the Atlantic Ocean.
*
The race attracts up to 30 teams
from all over the world.
Teams of four, pairs and solos.
It's a challenge that pits you against the elements 24/7.
*
It's unassisted.
You have to take all your own food
for up to 90 days
and use a desalinator for making drinking water.
And there's no stopping.
Over one and a half million strokes.
All day and all night.
[fast-paced suspenseful music]
Until you set foot on land.
[splashing]
When I first heard about it,
I thought, "This seems impossible."
I mean, I'm a rower,
but rowing 3,000 miles across an ocean
seems just removed from reality.
You've got moms that are crossing this.
You've got people that have gone through war
and then are missing limbs and that are doing this.
You see recovering drug addicts.
People that had gone through failed marriages,
people that have a void to fill.
And I don't think I was any different than that.
[calm melodic orchestral music]
[Amelia] I think The Talisker Atlantic Race
is unlike anything he'd ever heard of.
I know when he first brought it to my attention
that he had found this race, he was astounded.
He couldn't believe that people could actually do this.
So, he almost became a bit obsessed with researching it
and finding out how do people do this
and the intricacies of it.
The more that he researched it,
the more he kind of fell in love with the idea of,
"I could do this."
And I think the idea of doing something
that seemed impossible was very romantic to him.
I had no idea really what was in store.
[Gary] When somebody says,
"I'm going to row across the Atlantic Ocean,"
you know, I just didn't understand it.
Trust me, I had people that said, "You got to be kidding me.
What is he doing?"
[Jason] There're two types of people entering this race.
The first type of person or team was
a team just trying to represent their country
or their charity and just complete the race.
Just try to literally get to the finish line.
And the others were trying to win the race
or potentially break a world record.
I knew that I was going to be in the latter.
There's no way that I was going to dedicate
18 months of my life and do this
and work as hard as that to simply just finish.
I wanted to win.
And potentially even break a world record.
And I allow myself to once again dream like a seven-year-old.
[fast clicking]
[clicking slows then stops]
[Ardell] Jason's dad and I separated,
divorced when he was-- Jason was five-years old.
One week on with dad, one week on with mom.
[Jason] Going to my dad's certainly, it wasn't--
it wasn't that it wasn't loving, but it was intense.
There was an intensity to it.
I remember having to almost pump myself up
knowing that after school, like,
that week was going to be a tougher week,
more filled with structure and discipline.
[player] You can do it.
[man] Strike!
[Gary] Good job, Jason. Good job, buddy.
[Jason] Baseball was a soundtrack of my childhood.
It seemed like everything that my dad and I did
revolved around baseball to some extent or another.
I thought I loved baseball,
but I-- I loved my dad and he loved baseball.
He was passionate about the sport.
He loved the sport.
[fans chatting]
[fans] Oh.
Well, when Jason decided he wanted to be
a-- a Major League Baseball player
at ten years old, I took that
just like you should take it from a ten-year-old.
And that's that, "Okay, let's see what
we can do to-- to get you on that path."
[Jason] I come into the backyard and there's this structure.
And maybe for a second I thought,
'Oh, my dad made a fort
or some kind of a play structure for me.'
But it wasn't.
It was-- it was a means to getting better.
Growing up, I played baseball as far as I could go,
and I understood the art of hitting.
I sent him up a net and a tee and I said,
"This is what you need to be doing on your off time.
Hit that bucket of balls.
Don't hit 30, don't hit 60, hit all 62,
and then fill it back up."
[Jason] So, when my friends were out playing,
out on their bikes, having a good time,
I was in the backyard hitting balls off that tee.
And he didn't force me to do it.
But if you didn't then you weren't doing what it took.
"You told me you wanted to be a professional baseball player.
Here's the bucket. You're not hitting them.
I don't believe you."
[twack]
When I went up to Sonoma,
pitching was my best bet.
I'm left-handed.
I can throw hard, I'm tall, I'm strong.
[Gary] Sonoma State was very good.
They had asked him to go and play in the summer
for the semi-pro team, San Francisco Angels.
*
[Jason] At that moment, that was my best shot.
[Ardell] There were times where I know
he-- he worked really hard and-- and didn't do well.
He wasn't considered at the top.
I, at the time, was-- was a little bit concerned
that what if he doesn't make it?
And would that be such a terrible letdown
to him or even his dad?
And so there was a part of me that were saying,
"I didn't want the sport to define the person he was."
[cheering and clapping]
[Jason] But on the 24th of July, 2004, everything changed.
In the third inning, one pitch, you just hear this pop.
[witnesses] Oh.
[Jason] People in the dugout could hear it.
And all of a sudden, I just--
I can't-- I can't throw.
[X-ray machine beeps]
[Gary] He had done some damage to his-- his elbow.
[Jason] The tendon is completely ripped in half.
And that-- that was a tough crossroad.
[slow melancholy music]
I remember being at the doctor's office
and us asking the questions,
"What happens if I do have the surgery?
How long is the rehab?"
Which would have been about a year.
Versus if you don't have the surgery, you'll be fine.
It just you won't be able to throw the ball
90 miles an hour like you are now.
[Jason] They're throwing this information like it's nothing,
but it's a lot to me, and it's-- I'm overwhelmed.
Being in a brace for six months,
my senior year of college, that didn't sit right with me.
I'm thinking about all night.
I was dreading making that call to my dad.
I called him. I said,
"I am not going to get the surgery."
And his response was,
"I don't think you're making the right decision
and I think you need to think about it again."
And I said, "Oh, okay.
I mean, I can think about it again,
but this is my decision."
He said, "You should think about it.
Call me back in an hour."
And then he did call me and he said,
"Dad, I'm-- I'm not going to have the surgery.
I-- I think I'm done."
[Jason] Like, this was my dad's dream and not mine.
And that made him so pissed that we didn't talk for months.
But once Jason made that decision,
there was a sense of relief.
[Jason] I didn't know what I was going to do next,
but I was okay with it not being baseball.
[Jason] School starts again.
I'm drifting at this point.
I'm at the gym working out,
but I don't know what I'm working out for.
The worst thing in the world for me as an athlete,
it's not having anything to compete for it, to be a part of.
And this guy comes up to me.
[Mark] As a coach, you're always on the lookout
for the next great athlete.
Jason, specifically, I could tell
he had really strong focus from the beginning.
[Jason] He says, "You know, I'm the rowing coach
here at Sonoma
and I think you'd be pretty good at rowing."
[Amelia] He kind of plucked him out of a dark spot.
[Mark] So, the Sonoma State Rowing Program
was the newest program in the country at that point.
It was a complete shit show.
So, first of all I show up and it's not a boathouse.
It was a boat yard full of gravel and shipping containers.
I've been used to intense try outs
where everybody goes there is good
and they're eyeing the competition.
I was too good for these people. That's what I thought.
Too good for this.
[Mark] While I think sports like baseball
can be phenomenal team sports,
they don't have that deep connection
as an individual player.
In rowing, you're all doing the same thing.
And if you're not together,
you're lost before you've even begun.
[Mike] Jason is a very big, intimidating person,
and he really wanted to win
and he wanted everybody to work as hard as him.
He definitely rubs a certain type of person
the wrong way. And there was a--
Somebody on our team that told him,
"People are only pulling because they're scared of you."
Yeah, I was a hothead.
And I thought that that showed a level of passion.
But that's-- that's immaturity there.
I was shocked by how little I knew what it meant
to be part of a team until I got into rowing.
Rowing is so interdependent.
If you take one person out of the boat,
the thing completely crumbles.
There is no rugged individualism.
And I started to fall in love with that team aspect.
Mike sat eight seat, the stroke seat, I sat seven.
I can tell you every single T-shirt he owns
as I stare at the back of him.
I see after we were doing the piece,
how he would almost collapse upon himself
because he had given everything.
And I loved that about him.
And I was scared to death of not doing the same thing.
You're more afraid of letting them down
than you were of the pain
that you were going to go through at that practice.
And that is a strong human emotion.
[Mark] And Jason is one of those people
who won't let anybody down.
That nature in him really made him perfect
for the sport of rowing.
I realized, no, I did not love baseball because this is love.
One of the things that was so apparent
about the sport of rowing was that it was mine.
*
[Angus] When Jason called me.
He told me that he was trying to put a team together
and I'd already semi-committed to another team.
And I knew that Jason had the right mind frame
to get a record or win the race,
and I wanted to be part of that.
[Jason] Angus was my first pick.
He won the race last year, set the course record,
and he was the skipper of that team.
[announcer] Ladies and gentlemen,
37 days, nine hours and 12 minutes.
New race record.
[cheering]
[Jason] There's a lot of reasons to want Angus on your team.
A lot of them.
Angus has got over 100 days of ocean rowing experience.
He's rode the Indian Ocean as well as the Atlantic.
He's one of the most experienced ocean rowers alive today.
He builds boats for a living.
Angus is part of a family legacy of ocean rowers.
His uncle had actually broken the world record
as the fastest solo rower to row across the Atlantic Ocean.
His sister has also rowed across the Atlantic Ocean
with her team breaking the world record
as the fastest all-women's crew
to ever row across the Atlantic Ocean.
[crowd din]
[Angus] I've known Jason for two years.
And sometimes, you know if someone
is someone you want to be on a boat with.
He's looking at me for the technical side
that I've been doing for quite a few years,
which the weather reading,
and how to make the boat move fast
through certain wave conditions and with certain winds.
Last year we were on track for the record...
and we had a storm that turned into Hurricane Alex.
We then had to para-anchor for three days
and we saw the record just being ripped away from us.
The weather stole three days away from me.
We missed the world record by only 32 hours.
We'd landed in Antigua and we celebrated.
And I already knew that I wanted to go and do it again.
I just keep getting called back to go and row it again
and wait for that perfect crossing.
[mellow techno music]
[Jason] After Angus and I had decided
that we were going to row together,
the next sentence that he gave me was,
"If I was putting this team together,
I would bring this guy on the boat, Alex Simpson."
I said, "Okay, who is he?"
He says, "This is a guy I rode in the Indian Ocean with."
And I said, "All right. And what makes him so great?"
He is like, "He just shuts up and rows."
[Alex] I rode the Indian Ocean in 2013
with Angus and two other crew members.
We spent 71 days at sea
from Australia to, originally, Mauritius.
Didn't go to plan.
We ended up going to the Seychelles.
Equipment was breaking. We had no spare oars left.
Our batteries were failing.
Our water meter was failing by the end.
We rowed 4,300 miles.
But I always wanted to cross again.
I always wanted to do it better,
always wanted to do it faster.
So, I think I bring an element of calmness.
I'm a fairly laid-back person.
I'm not looking to be confrontational
or argumentative on board.
Having said that, I'm rubbish at waking up.
I've struggled for the last six months.
It's my girlfriend's annoyance
that getting out of bed and going to the gym.
[tense instrumental music]
I went through a pretty hell of a childhood.
So, I was-- I was a really pissed-off kid,
even as an 18-year-old.
It's probably the reason why I could pull so damn hard.
I just took all that aggression out physically
on a rowing machine.
I viewed teammates as obstacles
that you had to go out and crush.
And I just wanted to go to all these guys
that I thought had these, like, you know, privileged childhoods
and I was going to show them
that I was going to take their seat in the boat.
I found out really quickly,
well, first of all, that I love the sport.
And, second, that I wanted to take it to the highest level.
At that point, I started considering
that at the end of the day,
you're in a boat with a couple of other guys.
It's not just you in that boat.
And you're going to cross the line at the same time.
So, if everyone hates each other,
the boat is probably not going to go that fast.
I ended up making the varsity eight,
the top boat at Yale, and I rode at Oxford.
I ended up winning
the United States National Championship in the single.
I've broken maybe six or seven American records
on the rowing machine.
I went to the Olympic trials in 2016.
That had been my dream for 15 years.
And, um, I didn't qualify.
And I spoke to Jason about a month after that, and he said,
"Hey, I've got something you might be interested in.
You ever thought about rowing across the Atlantic?"
He didn't even have to finish the sentence.
And I was like, "That's it."
So, I've got a little baby daughter.
We named her Olympia Faith because we want her to go on
and do amazing things, Olympic-sized things.
Me doing this race,
I just want to show her
that she can do anything that she wants to do
and she can be a strong, powerful woman
and-- and she can look at me as an example.
[Jason] Matt and I have a history,
and we rode together on the East Coast at Vesper Boat Club.
[birds chirping]
[Michiel] Vesper Boat Club is
the best club in the United States.
They have more Olympic gold medals
than any other club in the United States.
The history, the atmosphere just breeds success.
If you select a group, you're not just looking
at, you know, the best athletes.
You're also looking at character.
And, uh, what struck me with Jason
was his dedication to the sport.
[Jason] Michiel doesn't ask about how well I row,
but he asks about my background in baseball.
He asked what position I played, how long I'd been playing for,
how hard I could throw, all these different things.
And Mark doesn't even know the answers to all this stuff.
I mean, he's my rowing coach and not my baseball coach.
Knowing his baseball background, the details,
the coordination for pitching
that made me decide, let's give this guy a chance.
[Jason] Michiel offers me a tentative spot on the team.
And I knock on that door,
and the first guy to open up the door...
guy is 6'7".
And I'm thinking, 'I'm out of my league.'
I am the least experienced by far, by years,
the shortest, the lightest,
and come from the shittiest school."
For Jason to go from, you know,
our little boat club here in-- in Sonoma to Vesper
and not only to be successful there during the summer,
but to be invited back just is--
Speaks to who Jason is.
So, for the next three years, I rowed Vesper.
I live in the boathouse.
I've got this prison-like lifestyle,
practicing twice a day with a weight session in between.
And my greatest contribution to this team
could be the guy that you could rely on.
The guy that would pick you up from the bar
if you were drinking that night and shouldn't have been out
in the first place.
The guy that would do extra reps with you in the weight room
if you needed it, go out in a boat,
take some extra strokes if that's what you needed.
I was that guy and it worked.
I go from the worst rower there
that probably has no business being there,
to barely making the second boat...
to being one of the fastest rowers in the second boat,
to being in the first boat.
And you could just feel the legacy
that we had all created together over the last two years.
To Jason's credit, working so diligently,
you know, here at Vesper to work his way into the first boat,
to make such an impact on such a short time,
quite exceptional.
But he started maybe then
a little bit too late to make it to the national team.
The goal then, end goal was to make it to the Olympics.
Some of us did, um, and some of us didn't.
And I was one that I wasn't able to quite make it.
*
At the end of three years, I had a decision to make.
Either do another four years for the next round of Olympics
or retire and go home and start a career.
And that's what I decided to do.
[low melancholy music]
So, all four of us had something in common.
We had fallen short in some place.
And we were desperate to change that.
[upbeat music]
Training for a crossing of this proportion
isn't just your average marathon-type training.
It takes the average team approximately two years
to properly prepare for this endeavor.
Training not just physically,
but doing emotional and mental training as well.
Sleep deprivation training.
You're going to average four hours of sleep
for every 24 hours.
That's going to wear on you by day three, let alone day 30.
How to train with less calories.
You're going to be so seasick
the first three to seven days of this thing
that you'll be lucky if you get 1,000 calories in
without puking them out.
In which case, you've got to learn
to be able to still get on those oars
having a major calorie deficit.
Dehydration training.
Maybe you're only getting three liters per person
of water a day.
That means you've got to go ahead and row
12 hours a day on three liters of water.
You've got to take classes, such as how to navigate at sea,
how to navigate at night.
You have to train to live on the boat.
And sometimes the not-rowing hours are tougher
than the rowing hours.
Hey, man.
How are you doing?
You all good?
Yeah, yep, yep, yep. Good.
How are you feeling about it? Are you mentally ready?
Yeah, I'm-- I'm definitely there.
Like, I'm ready to go. I'm crawling out of my skin.
You know, I've got the holidays coming up,
Thanksgiving as you know.
But I'm kind of like checked out already,
so... I know Amelia's getting a little nervous.
What about you, man? How are you feeling?
Yeah, good.
Yeah, been feeling really good and then,
yeah, starting to feel a little bit nervous now.
Um, kind of all the memories coming back
about that first kind of, you know,
what we're going to have to go through that first ten days,
just hell.
You have a lot more to lose in terms of
what you did last year was so special.
Yeah. There's--
See I don't get really good [indistinct]
not just the result last time, but also...
by three really close mates.
So, for them, they kind of look at me and think,
"Why are you doing it? There's no reason."
For me, yeah, there's a lot to lose,
but it's also just a lot to gain.
So, you've got to take those risks
and we've done everything we can to put together
a pretty perfect team.
We're co-leading this, you know, there is--
there is no skipper on this team.
So, I'm looking forward to,
you know, just making decisions together.
Yeah, we've got the engines in the front, Alex and Matt.
We can just keep feeding them and tell them what to do.
[laughs] Yeah.
So, we don't have to do any rowing.
Just keep throwing food at them.
[laughing]
[low peaceful music]
*
[music tempo increases]
[Jason] To properly prepare for this race,
it's going to cost you more than it would
if you were trying to summit Mount Everest.
The first big thing that you've got to purchase is a boat.
You need corporate sponsorship for that.
Once you've got the boat, you've got to fill it
with the things that are going to be necessary
to keep you alive as you cross
3,000 miles of Atlantic Ocean.
You've got a life raft, then you've got a water desalinator.
This thing weighs a ton.
You've got all the food
that's 5,000 calories per person per day.
The race requires you
to pack a minimum of 60 days worth of food.
You've got your radios, your SAT phones,
your navigation, your chart plotters,
tools for fixing all of these things.
If it can't be fixed,
you're going to have to learn to live without it,
which means you've got to bring other things, like a hand pump
so, if your water maker breaks on you,
you're going to literally be pumping
saltwater by hand the rest of the crossing.
And you've got your personal stuff.
Sleeping bags to keep you warm when you're sleeping at night.
A few extra layers of clothes, foul weather gear,
spare shorts, hats, sunscreen.
Then you've got something called the ditch bag.
This is a bag that, if all goes wrong,
you're going to take this along with you in your lifeboat.
And this is going to be everything that you need.
Your passports, money.
And I haven't started to mention things
already mounted on the boat: solar panels, rudders.
These are all things that are going into this small boat.
And that means that if you want to take less food
so that you have more room for other things,
you're taking a chance there.
Once you've got your boat,
you start to focus on some of the competition.
It's a good competition,
I heard the Row For James guys are really strong.
They've been using their boat while they've been training
with the right guys.
And I'm really looking forward to that competition.
[Jason] I think Row For James are definitely competitors
and, you know, a couple of the guys are bigger than I am.
We've done everything we can to prepare mentally
and physically, preparing our boat now behind us.
I think the biggest anxiety
you have with ocean rowing is the unknown.
I would be lying if I said that there wasn't fear
and thinking about the 30 days
because of the discomfort, the pain.
The last year,
I've been obsessed with putting together the right guys,
prepping the boat in the right way,
training the right way.
[Jason] And then all of a sudden, here we were.
The morning of the race.
[ringing]
Hi, Olympia. Where's Daddy rowing a boat?
On the ocean.
That's right.
[laughs]
[woman] Daddy is on the ocean?
On a boat!
On a boat.
[woman] Do you want to show Daddy the picture?
Go, get it.
Okay, she's going to go get a picture with Santa.
She was so excited, she kept saying,
"Going to see Santa."
And then we got there and she was, like, silent.
And she wouldn't even sit on his lap.
[laughs]
Oh, that's cute.
[suspenseful music]
[man] So, I wish you all safe crossing.
Be careful out there and see you in Antigua.
[clapping]
*
[clapping]
[suspenseful music]
*
[oars thud]
[water splashing]
Oh. All right.
Coming into the afternoon of our first row,
first day, already seen dolphins.
That's a good sign.
From the very first stroke I was motivated and excited.
So, we rowed three up for probably half a day
and we had two hours on, and 40-minutes off.
We're currently in the most southern boat.
Hello. Jason?
And we all have this vivid memory of Matt
coming off the oars, dripping in sweat.
The very first stroke,
I'm treating it, like, it's a 2,000-meter race.
I'm, like, chugging water and just sweating like crazy.
He's just drenched and he gets out of the wet food
and he is just eating and all-day breakfast.
And he goes,
"Got to stay hydrated, got to keep the--
got to keep the body going."
Just coming up on 24 hours since the race start.
I think it's fair to say that
the adrenaline of the start has worn off.
And now we're trying to slowly settle
into the reality of a month-plus at sea.
Something started to change.
And I start-- I started feeling a little bit queasy.
People starting to feel ill, tired
and, uh-- and having trouble holding anything down
and having an appetite.
But that's all to be expected.
Nobody's complaining and just powering through it.
I started to throw up.
The obvious reservations that Matt
hadn't spent a lot of time at sea.
On paper, we knew that he was able
to pull the oar stronger than us.
To Jason that meant a lot, but in my eyes,
that screams disaster.
He was trying to eat, trying to hydrate himself.
Nothing was happening, and that's normal.
I thought it was fine.
Give him two to three days.
I was on this team to be the guy who's the strong rower.
And that was my strength on the team.
And I wasn't doing that.
He was losing a lot of weight. I was rowing in front of him.
I noticed the power disappearing behind me.
Angus would spend Matt's first hour on a shift with him
and then I'd come in and spend the second hour.
So, as we pass each other, he'd say,
"Hey, he's barely pulling at all."
[wind gusting]
[Matt] It got worse and worse and worse.
Alex was right outside the cabin door
and I would throw the door open and hopefully make it to--
to the edge of the boat,
just puking up everything that was in my stomach.
I went through for four or five days just thinking,
"This-- this is now time wasting."
And it coincided a time where Row For James were equal to us,
ahead of us and behind us
and every stroke, every day, every mile mattered.
And then we have Matt not performing to his 100%.
And that was really, really painful.
I know more than anyone that you need
to have everything 100% to get that record.
I think Jason must have-- must really be having flashbacks.
You see, he was getting nervous about it.
And there's a lot of me thinking,
"Have you not learned a thing from last year?"
[Jason] Let me pause right there.
[tape rewind screeching]
This is not the first time that I was attempting this race.
In fact, I had attempted this row a year ago in 2015.
So just a week after we got married,
we went to Costa Rica and I flew home
and he flew to the Canaries to get ready for the race.
It didn't really hit me until the day that he was leaving
that I won't see you for a month and a half, maybe more.
[Jason] Look, I knew it was going to be hard on Amelia,
but in my mind, it was worth it.
I was going to redefine the sport of ocean rowing.
It was two ends of the spectrum for this race.
You've got on one end the Salty Sailors
that can take storms and know how to read storms,
that can over-correct, that can take harsh conditions.
And that is certainly a lot to be said there.
Then on the other end of the spectrum,
it's pretty much our team.
We've created a new spectrum,
I think, which is this elite athlete
that comes from the traditional rowing background.
It doesn't matter that they haven't gone in the ocean.
It matters that they understand what pain is all about.
They all know how to fight through that.
I'll start off with Tom Magarov.
Tom and I have worked together for the last three years.
Since then, him and I have become very, very close.
He was one of my groomsmen at my wedding.
Next guy, Nick Khan.
Six-foot-four, huge guy, great rower,
an elite athlete, to say the least.
Greg Wood, fourth and final guy.
He's got a lot of boat knowledge.
I had selected people that on paper were perfect for this.
They were essentially, like hired guns.
I mean, Jason thought for sure they were going to win.
I was surprised at how confident he was.
The only thing we were really worried about was Angus' team.
These four guys were old childhood friends
that had grew up together in boarding school,
and this race was literally a reunion for them,
which is why they call themselves Ocean Reunion.
So, we've been training for that for two years now
and we've had to sacrifice a lot.
Some of us have lost jobs, lost girlfriends.
So, if you're going to sacrifice all of that,
you might as well try and win the race.
But it's not up to us at the end of the day.
Even though they were loud and obnoxious,
showing up late to mandatory meetings,
seeming like they're half drunk when they were there,
it was also so apparent
how much they loved and respected one another.
They had come with the ambition
of breaking the world record
for the fastest four-man crossing, as had we.
Love you.
-Good luck to you. -Yeah, you too.
Thanks for helping us. Yeah.
And in the ocean rowing world, that's a big thing
like the four-minute mile, it's the 30-day crossing.
And it is only possible
if the weather is absolutely perfect
and the team is perfect and the boat is immaculate.
But I try not to think about it because I'm going to jinx it.
So, our goal is and it's always been to row
these 3,000 miles in 30 days.
There is some arrogance in that.
There has to be a little bit of arrogance,
you're crossing the fucking ocean, for Christ's sake.
Jason, I thought, he was very naive to the ocean,
very good at talking about rowing hard,
not knowing what that meant.
A lot of people think, "Oh, I rowed a Henley Regatta,
I rowed for my university,
therefore, I'm good for rowing an ocean.
And the fact of the matter is, when you're rowing out
in the Atlantic, you're rocking all over the place.
It's nothing like river rowing.
There are so many other prerequisites
that are more important than rowing itself.
[chattering]
You have to think that
you're a little bit special in order to do that.
If you don't, you're in trouble.
And I could be wrong.
Talk-- talk to me after this race.
And if we finish in 50 days, then everyone can say,
"I told you so."
[suspenseful music]
Within 24 hours of starting this race,
Nick started getting sick.
He started throwing up as he was rowing.
One of the toughest things I saw him do
throw up, row, throw up, row.
And it didn't take more than a half a day of us being out
in those swells for him to start taking a turn for the worse.
As the days went on, I tried eating, I tried drinking water.
Nothing was staying down.
And then finally it got to a point
where he couldn't even move.
And then he never left the cabin.
And that was-- that was the beginning of the end.
By day six, he was so dehydrated,
malnourished and seasick
that he was starting to shake and talk out of his mind,
even saying he was going to jump out of the water and swim home.
And so, I made the call to the duty officers
who knew that this was now a life-threatening situation,
that he needed to be taken off-board and given an IV.
You guys are going to come out?
You're going to send a boat out?
Two days plus, you think.
They're going to leave today?
We anchored, which we weren't expecting to do.
We did not know that we were going to have to anchor.
But it makes sense, right?
Stay where you are so that the sailboat
doesn't have to chase you down.
The first thought that rolled through my mind was,
"Shit, we're not going to win this race."
The thought of anchoring for days
while teams were going ahead of us
was, you know, soul crushing to me.
We always knew that Latitude were going to be a big threat.
And then we realized Latitude
just basically weren't really moving,
compared to the other four-man boats.
We thought something bad must have happened.
[Jason] We knew Nick was going.
I was very surprised by the fact
that Greg came up to me and said...
"Jason, I-- I think I'm going to go with Nick.
Now, remember, Nick needs to get off the boat.
This is life-threatening for him.
This was not his choice.
But, Greg, Greg's healthy.
Before we even left, we were talking about the team
and-- and how we were acting or how we meshed.
And Nick and I were like,
"Yeah, we're on the team,
but we're not as tight as Tom and Jay ever were."
And there's a little crack like, you know,
that something's not as tight as it could be
or probably should be when you're going to go on
an outrageously difficult journey.
Jason didn't want to acknowledge that the team
he put together wasn't going to work.
The record was slipping away very quickly.
[waves crashing]
[man on radio] To any campaigns [indistinct] vessel,
this is Latitude 35 American Spirit. Go ahead. Over.
[woman on radio] We are reading three miles,
so you should be having eye contact with us.
The minute you do, please call and let us know.
'Cause for us, it's quite difficult to see you.
[man on radio] We heard all that and roger that.
[Jason] The driver of that boat,
she came into us in the high winds.
Getting our boats attached was a trick
because they threw the-- the line out.
You know, it went under our boat.
It got wrapped around our rudder.
[man] [indistinct] rudder.
[Jason] To have it under our boat
on our rudder, could flip our boat.
Eventually, we got attached to the cleat and we were good.
Now, the problem is they would get too close.
A wave would bring them into us.
[man] Watch out, watch out, watch out.
[Jason] And, you know, if their boat hits our boat,
we are going to be devastated.
Greg got off fairly easily because he was stronger.
[indistinct chatter]
All right.
Our boat kept getting tugged every four minutes.
Which would throw us back and off our balance.
And at this point,
we're trying to deal with a sick person
who can barely stand up.
He was in the cabin, scared, moaning, crying.
And I-- and this is one of the toughest men I've ever met.
I've got the life preserver.
He's holding it. He's got it.
He's attached.
I'm about to drop him in. "Are you ready?"
"Yes." We drop him in.
The first thing that happens is that he loses it.
He loses the line.
He then proceeds to go underneath our boat.
[bubbling]
He's gone.
[dramatic music]
I think that's the only time in my life
when I have actually been scared.
Um.
You're-- you're one person just in the ocean
um, floating there on your own
and hoping that one of these two tiny little boats
is going to be able to save you.
[suspenseful music]
[Jason] His foot gets tangled underwater on the line
that attaches our boat to theirs
and is now wrapped around his foot
and it's pulling tight and he is screaming,
"My foot's going to break."
Tom, in a great moment of clarity
takes a knife and cuts us away.
[man] Oh, it's gone. It's gone.
No, no, no, Maria, it's off, it's loose.
No, no, no, no, be careful. Please. Please.
[Maria yelling indistinctly]
[dramatic music playing]
[indistinct yelling]
[man] Oh God!
[Maria] Oh no! Stop it, stop the boat.
[Nick] Please help!
[man] Okay.
*
[Jason] I've seen the worst case scenario
with Nick in 2015.
I wasn't about to make that same mistake with Matt.
[Matt] There was finally this point
where almost to the end of a shift,
I had 35 minutes left and I said to J,
"Buddy, I don't know if I can do this
for the next shift."
[Alex] We knew Matt was really suffering.
We had to pull together to-- to help him anyway.
Matt was pretty sick the last couple of days,
rowing, throwing up over the side of the boat
and just kept on rowing.
Last was pretty bad, so Angus and I split his shifts,
giving him some time to eat and then fall asleep,
drink and fall asleep.
[Matt] And I took that two-hour rest session.
Jay came and knocked on the cabin door
after a couple hours and he's like, "How are you doing?
Like, drink some water."
He was just being very kind of like nurturing.
He didn't even ask if I was ready to come out.
He-- he knew that I needed some more time.
You know, six hours is better than two hours sleep.
And by the end of that session,
I had had even a little bit of water
and I was holding it down
and I had just a bite of a granola bar
and I held that down.
And I was like, "I think--
I think I'm going to make it through this.
[Jason] Here's the old Matt.
He's back. He's getting stronger
and we can feel him pulling now.
We went south.
History has shown that the better winds are in the south
and we were going to try to catch those.
Row For James decided to go almost due west
and take essentially a straight line.
Within a couple of days, we were realizing
that they were catching much faster wind and waves,
much fairer conditions than we were.
Angus came onto the team as like the guy who knows routing
and he's got this perfect routing strategy
and you could sort of see
Angus doubting himself a little bit.
And I didn't really let on to Jason and Matt,
but I think Alex knew as well
because I had experienced
that we were in a disadvantaged position.
And-- and it was really hard to admit
that we weren't in as-- in as strong position as them.
We actually rowed more miles than them every shift.
And so we knew that we were a faster boat
and we knew that we can out row them.
So, we then had to have a big, aggressive move
to come up to them.
And then we brought the fight to them.
[Jason] This is not a powerboat. This is not a sailboat.
This is a self-propelled boat with oars,
so if you are changing direction
and going against either the winds or the waves,
you're going to slow yourself down.
So in order to get there,
we're going to slow down and be wet and miserable
in an effort to just get to them.
It was one of the hardest bits to row.
I feel like I still have a crick in my neck
because the waves hit you, and hit you,
and you're just kind of trying to manage the wave
that is the next wave that's coming over to hit you.
And I was constantly looking left, I think,
for three straight days.
All night long, all we did was get soaking wet and row hard.
It took a toll on us today.
Um, we're going to do it again tonight.
[Alex] We'd work really hard to go
and catch Row For James.
[Matt] And when we finally got to them,
we would straighten up a little bit.
We passed them. Barely.
And then they passed us again.
We were 900 miles in
and we were separated by five miles.
For us to be looking around
and wondering if that white cap was a boat,
"Is that them right there?" It was incredible.
And so every four hours,
we required Tom, our land manager,
to send a text updating us with our speed, our bearing,
our distance away from Row For James,
whether behind or ahead.
It became a very technical row at that point.
It was make decisions all the time,
check the bearing, keep an eye on the speed.
3.1, 3.0, 3.3.
And we were sitting at 2.7, 2.8,
which meant that they were gaining half a mile
to a mile on us, every update.
[Matt] Today is Christmas Day here on the high seas.
This one today is my Christmas card.
It's from Olympia.
That's sweet. She put all these stickers on it.
Hey, how's it going?
We're good. Um, Merry Christmas [indistinct].
Hey, Mom.
Thank you for the Christmas presents.
Merry Christmas.
We're celebrating here on the American Spirit.
It's the evening.
Ho, ho, ho, ho! Got our Christmas hats on.
There are stockings down here,
Matt's in his pride and glory.
There he is. Christmas day.
Thank you, Mom. Merry Christmas.
-Jason is getting into-- -[Jason] Hold on!
[Alex] Into suit.
Angus is at rowing still.
[Angus whooping]
[Alex] No rest for the wicked at Christmas.
Ho, ho, ho!
It doesn't feel like Christmas at all.
Rashly flapping on water.
And I've got three up,
after the last shift for doing an extra 30 minutes
because we are two miles behind Row For James.
[Jason] There's nothing about the ocean
that says a human being should be living
or thriving there.
Everything is slowly killing you.
You're exposed to way too much heat.
You are burning more calories
than you're able to put in your body.
The salt is all over your body
and it's creating soreness, it's creating infection.
[Angus] So even when you come off shift
and you've been soaked by waves, you dry yourself off,
you will still have salt crystals in your body
and you feel like
you're just being pickled in the cabin.
And you feel all itchy and almost like
if you've jumped into a bed of stingy nettles.
And you're pickling there.
And then you come back out on shift
and it's almost relieving when he first get hit by a wave
because you feel like you've washed it off.
And then it dries on you again
and then you carry on being pickled.
[Jason] Basically, whenever you're moving
when that salt gets in there and it's just rubbing
and wearing down your skin and creating sores.
[Alex] What are we looking at here?
[hissing in pain]
Oh.
Oh, yes. That's nice.
Not sure [indistinct] looking-- looking any better.
[Matt] After a while you've just sat on this thing
for so long that it's compressed
and gotten smaller in all the places
that it was supposed to take the pressure off.
So I'm making a new one.
Ligament damage to the hands.
So [indistinct].
You'll see if I don't grab the oars, my hands stay like this.
I mean, I can straighten them out,
but they always just go back.
Um, I try to stretch them out but really,
there's not much you can do.
Apart from that we're swimming pretty easy.
It's uh, five in the morning.
Just got in the cabin and uh, Matt, it was very nice of him--
[Matt] Hello.
Did a fucking massive fart.
[Matt] Hello, Mommy, you, all right?
As I walked in.
So, I'm going to fart all evening in here
and I'm going to close it now and just fart away.
[somber music]
[Angus] When you've got rashes all over your body
and your ass is in so much pain
and your legs, you're getting more and more bruises.
Those cuts are getting deeper.
It is a big mind game with yourself.
And...
how can you make sure that your mind doesn't give up?
I don't know.
[Jason] After Nick was evacuated back in 2015,
Tom and I slogged it out
for a grueling 41 more days to get to the finish line.
On the last day,
as Tom and I were rowing in, the sun's up.
We're just miles away. We can already see land.
And Tom is giddy.
He's giddy with excitement.
He sounds like a crazy man.
He's laughing at everything. He's joking.
He's singing, and he's-- he's happy.
But I'm not as happy or as giddy or as excited as he is.
And I don't know why that is.
I almost feel ashamed where I found myself
kind of like acting a little bit.
[crowd cheering]
[man] [indistinct]
[Amelia] I'm looking at Jason,
and he doesn't look like any human that I've ever seen.
I mean, he just looks so emaciated,
completely weathered, and just fragile.
He lost 40 pounds.
Everything was just aching, sore,
pretty much falling apart.
His body seemed defeated.
And in my mind, I'm thinking,
"Yeah, this is probably one and done."
This seemed awful.
[indistinct chattering]
[man] You all right?
[Jason] I was just so overconfident
at the beginning of that race
and we had got our asses handed to us.
And now all of a sudden,
that confidence was just replaced
with doubt and despair.
I couldn't shake this-- this feeling of failure.
Maybe I am a guy who's not good enough.
The guy that finishes in second or 11th.
The guy who dreams big but can't quite finish.
So what does that do to a person?
Do you just give up?
Do you go back to your comfortable life?
Or try again?
I knew that I needed to do it again.
Why? Why do you want to do this again?
I mean, I know you didn't win,
and I know that so many things went wrong.
But why do you want to do this again?
It affects me, too.
Like, he's not here for Christmas.
You get a sad phone call maybe once a week,
maybe it's twice.
You're lucky if it's three minutes
and you can actually hear what he's saying
on the other end.
You know, you're praying to God
that he's really doing as well as he says he is.
But it's just a lot of emotional strain.
And especially if it's not going well,
it's really difficult on both people.
Is there ever going to be enough?
What's going to be the end game?
You know, if you-- What if you don't win this year,
it's a huge question mark.
It could be another awful year of weather.
Something else could happen.
Someone else could be sick.
And then what if you don't win again
or break the record or even come in second or third?
Then what? Then, are we doing it again?
This is the last time. [chuckling]
[Jason] You lie.
And you tell the person
that you love more than anyone in the world,
that no matter what happens after this one,
I'll be happy with whatever result.
But she and I both knew that that wasn't true.
I've felt like I had a life
full of second place medals, you know?
We've got this baseball thing that didn't work out.
We've got the Olympics that I just missed.
And now we've got this race.
We did something against all odds, Tom and I,
But we didn't win the race. That's what we went for.
We went to win the race and we didn't.
I'm just so tired of, like, always being that close
and people saying, "Well, it was a valiant effort."
I don't want valiant efforts anymore.
I know when to quit.
Like I've shown that in my life.
I mean, I chose to not get the surgery,
and I had a choice at the end of Vesper
to go another round, another four years.
So I wasn't a stranger to quitting.
I understood how to give things up
when it was right for me and for my family.
But this didn't feel right. It didn't feel right.
There was something that was gnawing at me.
And it was that time with Greg.
It's easy to get down on Greg in this.
He left. He abandoned us.
But in the end, as the captain and the leader of that team,
I had failed to keep Greg on that boat.
And that failure was the biggest motivation
for doing it a second time.
[Amelia] I think maybe he forgot about
the great teams that he was on at Sonoma State,
at Vesper and the love that he had for those guys.
And that's the feeling that he wanted to create
for the second row.
[Jason] I've learned something
and I'm going to do it the right way.
Inevitably, the first person I ask is Tom,
to which I think he replied, "Fuck no."
[laughing]
And-- Which was fair.
But he did agree to be the land manager.
I started to build a community of people.
Yeah, we spent time rowing and working out,
but we spent more time just being with each other.
Having meals together.
Getting to learn about them more.
Our wives and girlfriends should be part of this team.
That change in perspective
is the greatest difference between 2015 and 2016.
[dramatic music]
*
[Jason] We started to make some changes here.
And I think this is-- this was the tipping point
with our competition with Row For James.
We kind of reset and we said,
"Let's do everything that we need to do on this boat
to give us the advantage."
[Alex] That's when our power, sea knowledge,
rowing experience came into itself.
[Matt] So we started to get lighter.
Any food that we didn't need,
we were taking out of the packets and dumping.
[Jason] We re-trimmed the boat.
We shifted weight around
to make it a little bit easier to surf the waves.
[Matt] That's Alex bravely volunteering to go
and clean the bottom of our boat.
We've been wondering why the boat's been going slow
and this is the reason.
[Angus] Like Jason and I both appreciated
that we lead teams in different ways,
and I'm more of a technical, factual leader
where Jason's more of an emotional leader.
That's when Jason's leadership came in and he said,
"Right, here we go."
And he set big goals.
Goals that I thought there's no way you should even--
You may be thinking of it, say it out loud,
50 miles, we're five hours behind them,
why are we thinking about 50 miles ahead of them?
And you then see
that every stroke does make a difference.
[Jason] Matt is back to his full strength.
He was now feeling like he needed the full extra time.
Now this guy is starting to just finish
his two-hour shift, shovel some food down,
and then all of a sudden,
he just started putting oars in that third position.
I'm like, "What are you doing?"
And he's like, "I think I'm just going to row
for another hour. I feel pretty good."
He just say it like it was no big deal.
Like he was, "I'm going to go feed my fish."
[Angus] And I came out, I actually got angry,
got angry at one stage and said,
"I'm not going to look after you
when you need to go to sleep.
You need to get off the oars and eat."
And he said, "Don't worry, guys. I can do this."
This is the first time he did a six-hour shift,
and I sat there in front of him fuming, thinking,
"Here we go. We've got somebody who thinks
they row for six hours,
hero and he's going to be asleep in four hours time
with a bad back."
He got back up and did six hours,
went to sleep for two hours and two hours off,
got back on route just as hard as anyone else,
if not harder.
Unbelievable.
I mean, that kind of selflessness
would just put a smile on my face.
I've been on my off shift for 30 minutes
and I'm still sweating like this.
I'm trying to get as much food as I possibly can.
So it's that day 18, it's New Year's day in fact,
the first of January 2017, Happy New Year.
[Matt] Jason does a fantastic job
of making these days exciting.
So, for example,
here is the itinerary that he's come up with,
7 PM, a dinner with the theme of White Night,
1 PM, Rocking Karaoke in the Windjammer Lounge.
That's at 1 PM. That's--
that's coming up really soon.
Angus, you come out so well on film, though.
Say something funny.
[Angus] How do you make an American boat win a race?
[Matt] How do you make an American boat win a race?
You put two Brits on it.
[all laughing]
**
Hand steering. We're hand steering all night.
Decent amount of it today.
**
[Alex] We just got off
a really good night shift with Angus.
Matt's coming on the oars now.
Stunning moon up there.
**
I hate to even say it,
but right now we're tracking you for the race record,
even the world record.
We're on pace, but...
the ocean is fickle as [indistinct]
Who knows what we're going to have to do.
Talking about record is not a good thing.
And Jason and Matt loves talking about it.
Angus and I was slightly more reserved about it.
Angus and I might have a little chat on the oars
at 3 AM and when it was just me and him on the oars,
and I went, "What do you think about
this record attempt?"
And he went, "Yeah. I'm not quite sure
if we're going to make it.
I'm a bit nervous about the weather coming in tomorrow."
[Jason] So about every day or two,
we download the next file to get the update
on what the weather is going to look like.
Angus downloads it one day and I say,
"How's it looking?"
"Well, it looks good for the next few days,
but I'm seeing something."
And I said, "Well, what is it?"
And he says, "That's just a lull."
I said, "Okay, well, lull's okay,
we can power through that."
He says, "Yeah, but it's long." It's like three days.
If we got a 24-hour buffer right now
that we're working for the world record,
there's no way that a lull is going to wipe that out.
Then, on Friday the 13th, everything went against us.
The weather got harder, the water got thicker,
the wind died down, the waves came from the north
and our average speed dropped and dropped and dropped.
But we had flat water and we couldn't move the boat.
We were going 0.7 knots with three people rowing.
All of a sudden,
the water felt like you were rowing through cement.
That lull turned into a storm as a headwind.
You're going so slow at that point
that the auto tiller that helps steer you usually fails
because you're not actually going fast enough
for it to steer.
Now, we're going at 0.2 knots at the moment.
Which for those of you who aren't nautical,
you can probably crawl on your hands
and knees at around one knot.
It's back breaking.
The boat just doesn't move,
doesn't glide through the water.
And worst of all is
it's a repeat of what happened last year.
To have it taken away again because of weather,
because of something that's outside your control
was just heartbreaking.
[Matt] The waves are coming in from every single direction.
I mean, the sea was so confused.
We're not even going half-knot forwards,
we're getting blown backwards.
Angus came out of the cabin and he said,
"Get the pair anchor out." And I was like, "No."
That meant that we had been beaten by the elements.
We could no longer maintain what we were doing.
It-- it's almost not fair how hard we're pushing
and how dedicated we've been to this
and we've done everything right, rowed as hard as we can.
[Matt]
I was thinking like, "God, why do you always, always--
You get me, like so close to it?
And why can't, just this once, you give it to me?
Like, give me my dream
and give me what I worked so hard for.
[voice cracking] And that's the point when I was like,
I was so angry.
And it just felt like
it was gone, slipping through our hands.
[dramatic music]
[Jason] When I thought we aren't going to make it,
I couldn't help but think back to the year before.
It was the day before the evacuation of Nick
and I met Tom on the deck of the boat.
[Tom] I was sitting towards the boat cabin
and I was thinking, the race was over for us.
All the prep, all the families,
it's going to go down to, unfortunately, waste.
And I-- I did not think there was an option.
[Jason] So then Tom says, "J, just come with us.
We can't do this by ourselves."
And I say, "Yes, we can. This is possible to do."
And I said, "Think about the glory
that you could do two man rowing a boat
that's supposed to be rowed by four
across the Atlantic Ocean."
These were the reasons why I knew
I wasn't getting off this boat.
But in the end, those weren't Tom's reasons.
He's one of my best friends.
He's like a big brother to me.
So, I wouldn't have left him behind.
[Jason] And he said, "J, I'm not going to let you
do this on your own."
I know how scared Tom was to say that.
And he knew when that boat left,
when that sailboat left, he had no-- nowhere else to go.
He was stuck with me in this boat
and he said he was going to do it.
And he was very, very scared.
About a week after, we had had the evacuation,
about a week of us struggling,
rowing a boat that's too big for us, too heavy for us,
it's manhandling us
and the nights that are just punishing.
[wind roaring]
I think we wanted to just chuck it in,
just be done with it.
And I think right then, Tom comes out,
the first thing he says when he gets out of the cabin is,
"Well, what do you want for breakfast?"
Which-- which to me was like, "What are you--
Out of all the things you could say,
why do you ask me what I want for breakfast?"
But there was a complete mind shift right there.
And instead of saying, "What do I want for breakfast?
I just had the worst night of my life."
I thought about it, I said, "What do I want for breakfast?"
And I said, "I think I want chicken risotto."
I was just kind of going with it.
He said, "All right, you want a coffee?"
I said, "Yeah, I want coffee."
He says, "You want cream in it?"
I said, "Yeah, put the hazelnut creamer in it.
What are you going to have for breakfast?"
An he says, "I'm thinking about spaghetti Bolognese."
So we decided to take 30 minutes off the oars,
not rowing.
That was the worst thing to do.
But we took 30 minutes that morning and we ate our food.
We sat there, face-to-face, eating our food,
drinking our coffee, 30 minutes,
and instead of complaining about our miserable plight,
we started laughing about it.
"Oh, you guys, you should've seen what happened last night."
"I had a flying fish hit me right in the face."
"Are you kidding me?"
A flying fish hit you in the--"
And we're sharing these stories and now we're laughing
and we're joking about stuff.
And then the next morning,
we decided to take that 30 minutes again.
It became our ritual.
Those 30 minutes is what we lived for.
Every day, at least we had those 30 minutes.
Couldn't wait for those 30 minutes.
Yeah. Tom comes up for the camera now.
He's been sleeping for the last two hours.
[laughing]
[Tom] It was one of the things we would not give up on,
no matter what happens.
If Ian called us and he said,
"Guys, 30 more minutes of rowing a day,
you will pass a couple more boats."
We would say, "We'll probably not pass them."
[Jason] And we never sacrificed those 30 minutes,
no matter what happens, we always took those 30 minutes.
Those 30 minutes ended up being what saved us.
Because those 30 minutes
were continually recommitting ourselves to each other.
[Tom] We answered the question of why we're doing this.
And we kept going.
And I'm glad we did keep going.
[Jason] And so that's what I was thinking of
as the team and I were sitting there demoralized
and Angus and I were trying to figure out what to do next.
And so we decided, I'm going to pull the pair anchor in
and try rowing.
And I'm hand steering there and all of a sudden,
I see out around the corner of my eye,
"I'm like, J, J, look over there."
There was just a little fin coming up behind the boat.
I'm like, "J, it's a shark. That's definitely a shark."
We're all soaking wet. We're silent, we're demoralized.
And J's there,
like a little kid leaning off the side of the boat.
He's got a bag
of one of our dehydrated meals, beef broccoli.
And he's sprinkling it out
like he's feeding a little goldfish in a bowl.
And we just started cracking up at that point.
Like, the lowest point in the race.
[teammates laughing]
[Jason] What a nice, little rainy day on the Atlantic.
By that afternoon, the weather cleared.
The shark found something better to do.
The Sun started coming out right just about sunset.
[Angus] And then slowly, the waves died down there again,
so we were going one knot.
And you get a little bit more positive.
And then suddenly, we were going 1.5 knots.
And then we're out of Friday the 13th.
We're into Saturday.
And Sunday, we're back to three knots again.
[Jason] I crawl in the cabin to do the math.
We've got five days left
until the expiration of the world record,
almost to the hour.
And we've got almost to the mile, 400 miles left to go,
which means that we had 80-mile days
to achieve for the next five days.
To put that in perspective.
70-mile days, if you average 70 miles a day,
that's a world record speed.
75-mile days is incredible,
which makes 80-mile days just short of a miracle.
And to have to string five of those.
It seems impossible.
I had myself a little--
a little cry right there in the cabin by myself.
I opened the cabin door
and I've got three expectant faces looking at me,
waiting to hear what that number is.
The first person that spoke was Matt who said,
"Oh, thank God, I thought you were going to say 100."
He says, "This team can do 80-mile days.
The second person to say something was Alex,
who really struggled that night to row,
was literally falling asleep on the oar, says,
"I'll do whatever it takes, Skip.
I'll row all night if I have to."
And then Angus, who was right in front of me, rowing,
said, "This is the reason why we joined teams.
We wanted the best chance at breaking a world record.
It isn't a great chance, but it's ours."
The response by my teammates was the culmination
of everything that I had ever achieved
at Sonoma and Vesper and with Tom in the first row.
I knew that I'd done what I had come out to do.
I had put together a team that could do the impossible.
Everyone was about each other.
It ceased to become about the world record.
It became about the men in the boat.
[emotional music]
*
Up to that point, our best day was 81 miles.
And our worst day was, like, 20 miles.
So Saturday, we rowed two hours on,
three up, 40 minutes off, the length of the day.
And that was the hardest day physically
I've ever had in my life.
[Alex] You know, your bum's sore, your hands are sore.
You haven't got time to really stop and have a rest.
So the Great Depression is over.
We are now going about 2.5 to 3 knots.
And that day we did 79 miles.
[Jason] Leaving everything out there.
We didn't quite get what we needed that day.
Day two, smashed it with 92 miles.
Every stroke, pushing ourselves as hard as possible.
My thought was, "No way can we actually do this."
[Jason] Day three, just cruising, rowing hard,
hitting four knots.
We did 91 miles.
[Angus] Everyone was starting to stick their hand up and say,
"Yeah, I'll row an extra shift."
Matt was sticking his head out in five minutes,
"Yeah. Get me on the oars."
[Jason] Day four, weather slows down a bit,
we still hit 88 miles.
The ocean was throwing everything it had at us.
And it just-- it wasn't enough.
It wasn't enough to break our spirit.
The sun came up on Wednesday, the last day,
and uh, 20+ miles ahead of the pace
that everyone thought was impossible to hold.
And we were looking down the barrel of a 50 mile a day,
50 miles to go.
And then we realized, right,
we're actually 12 hours ahead of what the record is.
We all met on deck.
We pulled out a flask of whiskey.
Is this actually recording?
-There is the thing. -Yeah.
[Matt] Okay. It's the last night here on the American Spirit.
It has been a true honor
to share this experience with you.
There's more ships like this, mate.
There are big ships, but no ships' like friendships.
-[Matt] Brilliant. -Here, here.
[Matt] I am eternally grateful
to have shared this opportunity with all you guys.
Here we are, checking off boxes,
winning the race by 200 miles
and setting the course record.
And if all goes well in the next 24 hours,
setting the world record.
It can't be done without a team like this.
So, cheers to you, guys.
[Angus] Thank you, Skipper.
[Matt] "The motivation to strive forward
in any endeavor or personal journey comes,
quite simply, from passion.
The word passion actually comes from
the Latin word that means 'to suffer.'
Every now and then, you'll have to suffer for the things
that are important to you.
The inevitable failures and setbacks are not easy.
At times, they cut painfully deep,
and you'll be tempted to turn your back on the challenge
because that seems vast, overwhelming or unattainable.
Whatever your ocean is,
strive with a spirit of excellence to cross it.
If you can take those harrowing blows
and come across
with your zeal for life still intact,
you'll have not only a quiet confidence,
but also a sense of humility
because the journey, like the sea, is bigger than you.
[voice cracking] Your ocean is there to define you."
[Angus] I was extremely excited to step on dry land,
eat some good food, have a shower, stretch.
See my girlfriend. See my family. And--
But I'll miss this,
as much as I complained over the last 30-odd days,
I love the simple life.
Um, I love pushing myself, pushing the limits and...
it'll be something that I will really, really miss.
And... I'm sorry for saying it, Grace,
but I'll probably be back here again at some stage.
Oh, damn it.
[sentimental music playing]
*
[Jason] For my entire athletic career,
I was obsessed with being the best.
Not having a wall full of silver medals anymore.
And it took rowing across the Atlantic Ocean twice
to finally realize that once I did win,
it had nothing to do with what color the medal was
and everything to do with the people that I did it with.
It was about the small, authentic moments
that you share with your teammates
in the middle of the Atlantic.
It was about the highs, but it was also about the lows.
No one will ever really know, except for the four of us,
what it was like out there.
No one will know.
And sometimes you don't want to let that go.
For a split second, you don't want to get off the boat.
[crowd cheering]
[man] 35 days, 14 hours and three minutes.
[cheering]
With that they win the race and also set a new world record
-for crossing the Atlantic. -[crowd cheering]
-[man] Hip, hip. -[crowd] Hooray!
[Angus] I was so proud of the boys
and did not know that we had it in us to do that.
I now feel a huge connection and increased bond with Angus
and huge, huge respect for Jason in that
and I refer-- Would refer to them as my brothers.
[Matt] I love those guys.
Angus and Alex and Jason.
And we've done something that's rare in today's world
where we built ourselves up
to something greater than each of our individual parts.
[Jason] Now, I'm a father
and that pretty much changes everything.
It fills me with new purpose, grace,
and it also adds a level of complexity.
The sacrifice now that I'll be making
in any future adventures has gone way up.
And yet, I know I won't stop doing them.
[Amelia] Me and my son have such a bond.
Um. I'm sorry.
And I think--
I think the struggles have really helped him,
because I think he'll be able to show Tristan
um, how much you can learn and change from those things.
And they're necessary-- Sorry.
To grow.
Um, he's a wonderful father.
[Jason] Going back to the question
of why do people do these things?
Why do people cross oceans?
We've heard about this saying
it's not how many times you get knocked down,
it's how many times you get back up.
But that is only half of it.
You must spend time on the ground understanding
and learning how you got there
so that when you do get back up,
you're a smarter, tougher, harder,
stronger target to knock down.
That is why we keep doing things even though we lose,
because we learn.
[emotional music]