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Stuart Turnbull's hands are still calloused from the ordeal

Atlantic oarsman Stuart Turnbull is back at his Wiltshire home after a dream trip that took five years to plan turned into a nightmare at times.

In the comfort of his family home in Broad Town Mr Turnbull spoke of the rigours of battling against waves as big as houses for day after day.

He was still sporting the luxurious beard he grew on the 61-day Atlantic crossing.

He and buddy Ed Baylis, a 26-year-old banker turned entrepreneur from Dorset, had planned to row from the Canary Islands to the West Indies in 40 days to set a new record.

Tough moments

Mr Baylis, he said, was a big, brawny and tough keep-fit fanatic who succumbed to seasickness within six hours of leaving land when they ran into their first and worst storm.

Mr Turnbull recalled some of the lowest moments of the 60-day epic journey including running low on food with 500 miles of the 3,000 total still ahead of them.

He said he fantasised about drinking cold pints of Wadworths 6X in the cool bar at the Goddard Arms at Clyffe Pypard and about food.

"On one occasion I looked at Ed and all I could see was a big roast chicken," he said.

Just a few hours out from their starting point in La Gomera in the Canary Islands their water-making de-salination machine packed up.

Luckily, said Mr Turnbull, with the boat almost standing on end in the storm, he managed to fix the vital water machine and his repair lasted for the rest of the 60-day journey.

Physical endurance

While Mr Baylis was confined to their tiny sleeping compartment with his sea sickness, Mr Turnbull kept on rowing their 24ft plywood boat Memory of Zayed in the general direction of the West Indies.

He developed huge blisters on the first day but decided against wearing gloves and let blisters grow on his blisters until they finally calloused.

His hands toughened but after days of gripping tight to oars - even more than a week after the journey ended - he was unable to open his hands fully this week.

In the weeks ahead of the trip Mr Turnbull deliberately piled on the pounds to give himself a fat reserve and was his heaviest ever, 16 stones, when they departed.

“On one occasion I looked at Ed and all I could see was a big roast chicken." Stuart Turnbull

But almost nine weeks of virtually non-stop activity and little sleep proved to be a wonderful slimming aid and he shed more than three stones by the time they landed in Antigua.

Before the pair set off they had been concerned about how they would get on in a tiny boat, at sea for weeks with only rare use of their satellite phone possible because it depended on solar power.

They even went to the lengths of having some counselling which worked, said Mr Turnbull, because over their 61-day endurance test they never argued once.

There was despair when they found their supplies of Cadbury's Dairy Milk bars - an essential part of their diet of 7,000 calories a day - had become contaminated with sea water and had to be thrown away.

Five hundred miles short of their goal they began to run out of food but amazingly managed to arrange a Valentine's Day liaison mid-Atlantic with two Dutch rowers who gave them extra supplies.

Mr Turnbull said the Valentine's Day feast would live on in his memory: "They were the first people we had seen in weeks and we had an amazing night, a brilliant time."

Their feast included peanut satays with rice and huge helpings of mashed potato.

His lowest point, he said, was when he realised they were not going to achieve their aim of breaking the 40-day record for the La Gomera-Antigua crossing.

"Things got really gritty at times and that was about the worst," said Mr Turnbull, who added that his spirits were buoyed by the thought of his girlfriend Penelope Fisher and parents waiting in Antigua.

The pair may not have broken any world records but their epic row is expected to reach their other target of raising £200,000 for Cancer Research UK.

Offers have begun to pour in for Mr Turnbull to join teams rowing the Indian Ocean from Australia to Africa and a race to the North Pole.

But for now, he said, he was concentrating on going to college in September to train as an Army medic.

11:52am Wednesday 7th March 2007

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