The weekend of training brought our team together for the first time. It filled us all with anticipation of things to come and, because we trained our sea survival skills, opened our eyes to potential undesirable endings of our rowing journey.

After hearing some basics on the use of flares and on the importance of being generally cautious, we spent Saturday preparing our newly-painted and now half-equipped orange boat for its maiden row. The row was short - two hours all in all - but if we include getting to our launch site and back, making the boat seaworthy and cleaning it up at the end, the day lasted 9 hours.

- By Martin Berka from the Trans-Tasman Rowing Team