We wouldn’t have been able to push ourselves much harder: Wick rowers reflect on epic round-Britain bid
Allan Lipp and Mhairi Ross pushed themselves to the limit during their round-Britain rowing attempt this year. At one stage they put in 14 hours of non-stop joint rowing to reach a headland before bad weather swept through the English Channel. Further along the south coast they had the unnerving experience of battling through tidal overfalls in darkness, hearing the “almighty roar” of waves but seeing practically nothing. And they endured “biblical” rain off the west coast of Scotland before finally agreeing they had to call a halt.
It was gruelling, it was exhausting, and as 2024 comes to a close the couple are still feeling the physical effects of their 80 days at sea. However, there were uplifting moments too as they made their way around the coastline in their compact carbon-fibre boat – from unforgettable encounters with whales and dolphins to spectacular sunrises and sunsets, and the knowledge that they were raising huge sums for two charities close to their hearts.
The decision to pause the row after 1465 nautical miles, with around 220 still to go before reaching their home port of Wick, was “utterly devastating”, according Allan – but it was, he says, “the right thing to do”. They hope to go back and finish the voyage when the time is right.
Allan (45), the Wick lifeboat coxswain, and Mhairi (48), who works as a paramedic and is a lifeboat volunteer, took unpaid leave for their epic challenge, Stormy and Steth: The Long Row Home, in aid of the RNLI and Scotland’s Charity Air Ambulance. They were aiming to become the first mixed pair to complete an unsupported circumnavigation of the British mainland by rowing boat.
They set off from Wick on a calm morning at the start of June, heading south-east into the Moray Firth after being cheered off by family and friends and other supporters. On August 20, having been battered by the elements, the pair stepped ashore unsteadily at Tobermory on the Isle of Mull, having accepted that they wouldn’t be able to get around the exposed Ardnamurchan peninsula any time over the coming few weeks as the abysmal summer weather was set to continue.
“The coming off the boat, that was certainly one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make,” Allan said. “It was the right decision, but it was just utterly devastating.
“We were sitting at anchor and looking at the weather forecast, we’d spoken to the coxswain and the mechanic at Tobermory lifeboat station to see what their views were, and I think there was about a day-and-a-half gap. We needed at least a two-day window to get round Ardnamurchan and up through the Sound of Sleat to afford some sort of protection and we couldn’t have done it safely.
“We weren’t willing to compromise safety. We’d come so far without anything bad happening, and factoring in fatigue and tiredness… I’d lost 10 kilos, and a lot of that is muscle, so you’re in a position where if something was to happen, how much fight have you actually got left in you to get out of that?
“We couldn’t see a weather window. It was the right decision, because looking back it would have been three weeks of bad weather. There was a short window which wouldn’t have got us all the way home. It probably would have, best case, got us up the north-west corner somewhere where there are very limited shelter options, and then it was straight into bad weather.”
On day 52 of the journey the couple had passed the halfway point at Land’s End and were perhaps entitled to expect improved sea conditions going up the west coast.
“We were kind of hoping that once we got there the bad weather was going to be behind us,” Mhairi said. “But we had some pretty tough rows. The weather came up within hours of getting round Land’s End.”
Rowing past the Mull of Kintyre was a “massive fight”, Mhairi said. “We were pretty exhausted, I think it’s fair to say, by the time we’d made it up close to Ireland and across to Scotland. It was quite surreal because everyone was sending messages saying, ‘Welcome back to Scotland, you’re almost there!’”
The nature of the challenge meant Allan and Mhairi were not allowed to touch land or accept provisions so they brought dehydrated food with them. Their seven-metre ocean rowing boat, Boudicea, was fitted with solar panels with a desalination unit for turning salt water into fresh water.
“The concern we had was the batteries weren’t recharging because the weather was so horrendous,” Mhairi explained. “We were getting to the point where we couldn’t make water. We had 10 days of really cloudy weather with no real sunshine whatsoever. We were potentially going to lose communications as well.
“In Tobermory the rain was biblical, and forecast to stay biblical for days, so hypothermia actually became a risk because once we got wet there was nowhere to get dried out.
“They had all their sandbags out – they were expecting to be flooded big-time in Tobermory and their fishing boats didn’t go out for something like 10 days. In August, that is unheard of.
“We took 16 tubes of sun cream with us, because we were really concerned that we’d get fried on the south coast, and we’ve not even used two tubes. I can count on one hand the number of days that I had shorts and T-shirt on.”
Boudicea itself proved to be “absolutely perfect”, according to Mhairi.
Allan pointed out: “It’s a very, very, very seaworthy boat. I feel quite proud of what the wee boat did. The boat looked after us.”
Stepping shore proved tricky after so long at sea.
Allan said: “To put it into context, we didn’t walk for 80 days and we weren’t using the muscles that you would use to walk, so when we did come off the boat in Tobermory, after being on it for 80 days, it was a strange feeling.
“It is a known phenomenon when you step ashore – seasickness is at sea, obviously, but you become landsick when you come ashore. I felt weak and wobbly.”
Mhairi found she couldn’t walk in a straight line at first. “My balance still hasn’t recovered,” she said.
Settling back to domestic life in their home outside Wick, the pair found their sleep patterns were disrupted. “Certainly the first few nights I was up and down like a yoyo,” Allan said.
“We’re months down the line from it and I’m still feeling a few aches and pains from the row.”
Mhairi added: “We wouldn’t have been able to push ourselves much harder. There wasn’t much left in the tank.”
Allan and Mhairi have raised about £78,000, including Gift Aid, to be divided between the two charities. They hope to bring the total up to £80,000 through talks and merchandising.
“It’s really humbling,” Mhairi said. “We didn’t think we’d hit the £30,000, and even without the Gift Aid we’ve doubled that plus some. It was the money rolling in that kept us going.”
The couple produced daily blogs as well as a podcast, and were heartened by the supportive messages they received as well as likes and shares on social media.
“We raised the profile of Wick as well, because everyone asked us where we came from,” Mhairi added.
Off the Isle of Wight, Allan and Mhairi had the frustration of sitting at anchor for a week – seven days and one hour, to be precise – as they waited for westerly winds to ease.
“We spied a weather window and it meant leaving at half-past 10 at night to catch the tide going through the western Solent,” Allan recalled. “We set off and the row through the Solent was quite uneventful, in fact quite straightforward, because we got a good bit of tide behind us after about an hour or so.
“You pass Hurst Point, which is on the mainland side of the water, and there are tidal overfalls there. We approached Hurst Point and it was very much past the point of no return – we couldn’t turn and get back to get shelter or anything, it was pitch dark, there was a boat bearing down behind us, and you could hear the tidal overfalls roaring, and I felt quite uneasy.
“Mhairi was quite uneasy as well. We didn’t have any option but to go through it, trying to keep us navigationally safe at the same time.
“You can only row at about two knots maximum and if you’ve got four knots of tide trying to push you in one direction you’ve got to try and think ahead, keep us safe, but at the same time you can’t see what’s coming at you wave-wise. You’ve got to put 110 per cent in to try and force the boat through to fight out of the tide and get in the direction that you want.
“We took a wave and it basically dumped on top of the deck where we were sitting and trying to row, and there was just a series of waves, and you couldn’t see them coming because it was pitch dark, but you hear this almighty roar. We got clear of that thankfully without any major mishap and we just kept rowing.
“The boat took it. I think it took more of a toll on us than anything else. I did say to Mhairi after that, we’re not getting backed into a corner again, we’re not dealing with tidal overfalls in the dark.”
The 14 hours of non-stop rowing, with both on the oars, had come earlier as the pair made a run as far as Selsey Bill, a headland into the English Channel, with bad weather closing in. The last mile or two was an “almighty slog”, Allan said. After getting there and dropping anchor, they slept for 20 hours.
At other times their spirits were lifted by stunning skies and close encounters with marine life.
“We had whales, dolphins, porpoises,” Allan said. “They were quite inquisitive in coming over to see what we were, but there were a few occasions where it was almost like they were guiding us as well.”
Mhairi added: “Rowing at night you can see nothing, and things would pop up beside the boat – you knew there was something beside you but didn’t know if it was a dolphin or a whale because all you could hear was the noise of the blowhole.
“They weren’t scared of the boat either. They’d be swimming right under the boat and I was scared I was going to hit them with the oars – that’s how close they were.”
Completing the Long Row Home by making their way from Tobermory to Wick would bring a sense of “closure” for the couple, although the full circumnavigation would no longer count as unsupported.
“We were hoping to do it in 2025 but due to circumstances outwith our control it might need to be delayed until 2026,” Mhairi said.
Allan added: “We’ve kept the boat, and not sold it, because it would be nice to go back and finish it. We do want to do it. It should be easily achievable, with the right weather window, within a two to three-week timeframe.”
The pair were supported by a number of businesses, with two gold sponsors – renewable energy company Boralex and the Beatrice offshore wind farm.
Allan pointed out: “It’s not just the sponsors that supported us getting round. Personally, I wouldn’t have been able to take time off here if it hadn’t been for Andrew McPhee and the rest of the volunteer coxswains stepping in.
“Andrew covered most of my time off. He willingly came in and did that, and I’ll forever be grateful. I wouldn’t have been able to take the time off had it not been for Andrew’s support, and the rest of the guys supporting him, and the whole crew for that matter, because everybody stepped up.”
When asked whether being at sea for so long had put a strain on their personal relationship at any point, Allan joked: “Mhairi knows I’m right all the time anyway!”
Mhairi said: “We didn’t actually argue. I got told I had ‘attitude’ once!
“But it’s not about your personal relationship, it’s about getting on with the task in hand and doing it.”
Reflecting on the challenge as a whole, more than four months on from the decision to pause it, Mhairi said: “We pushed the boundaries, but we kept within safe limits. There were times where we could have pushed on further, but it would have risked us and potentially somebody else having to come out and get us.”
Allan agreed, saying: “We set off with that at the back of our minds: we want to do this, but it’s got to be safe. We want to get back in one piece.
“We were realistic. We put everything into the row, and we wanted to succeed, but at the same time it had to be safe.
“Getting to the end point at Tobermory where we had to hit the pause button, as difficult as it was, it was the right thing to do.
“It doesn’t really feel like we did what we did – we both feel exactly the same with that. When you’re telling people about it, it genuinely doesn’t feel like we spent 80 days on that little boat. It just feels like we went out for a little row, and that was it.
“It would be nice to finish it, from a closure point of view. Getting to the start line was enough of a challenge.
“We’re just two normal people that wanted to do something and went off and did it. If there’s one thing anyone can take away from that it’s if you’ve got a goal, aim for it and go for it.
“I think we actually did a not bad job, albeit we didn’t finish, but that was outwith our control. We looked after each other, we looked after the boat, we didn’t die, and we raised the profile of the charities.”
The Long Row Home has its own website and JustGiving page, while there is also a Stormy and Steth page on Facebook.
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