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Housekeeping Co Support Brothers 'N Oars as they take on Pacific Ocean challenge

Mar 14, 2023

Housekeeping Co are excited to announce they will be supporting one of the greatest physical challenges seen in the Pacific Ocean in just a few months time.

Taking place in June 2023, the Brothers ‘n Oars team will take on a colossal 4500km non-stop row across the biggest expanse of water in the world, all of which will be done for charity.

Expecting to take 40 days and 40 nights, the team, made up of four men who had previously never rowed before, will be taking on an incredible and grueling task, all while in a tiny ocean rowing boat and exposed to the elements.

The team is made up of British adventurer and TV personality Paris Norriss, sustainable technology consultant and former Captain in the British Army, Harry Amos, his brother, energy store specialist Oliver Amos, and strategy consultant Barney Lewis. First launching the idea of ‘Brothers ‘N Oars’ in 2021, over a year of training will finally be coming to fruition in just a couple of months’ time.

Putting themselves through extreme physical duress, the team have been training for months, with the route mapped out from Monterey Bay in California, all the way to the tropical island of Kauai in Hawaii.

14 teams will all be taking part in the impressive feat, and the world record is up for grabs, so the stakes are high to get across in the quickest time.

Preparing for all eventualities, from freak storms to 30ft waves and even coming face to face with sharks, the journey is set to be an immense uphill battle.

Raising funds for both the Blue Marine Foundation and the Invictus Games, the four men will be rowing non-stop, taking it in turns in teams of two as they battle over the largest and deepest ocean on Earth.

Switching every two hours, the resting pair will only have a short amount of time to get some sleep in the tiny cabins on either side, as well as wash, eat and tidy.

Speaking about the strict schedule, that will see them go without a full night’s sleep for over a month, Paris said:

“The cabin is not very big, and we have to keep things tidy. Two people will be sleeping in each of the cabins but only one at a time because we will have two people rowing and two people resting. We’ll switch every two hours.

“It’s really important to keep things clean and organized. There’s a lot of things we need to clean on the boat, but also under the boat, so someone has to go underneath with a snorkel on every five days and give it a scrub.

“There are some pretty scary animals down there, things like sharks, blue marlin, so someone will be watching with a snorkel while the other person cleans. We want to be as quick as we can so cleaning the bottom of the boat as effectively and quickly as possible is another factor to success.”

Not for the fainthearted, the group will be completely isolated while out in the ocean and told Housekeeping Co that if something was to go wrong, it could be longer than 72 hours before they were rescued.

Although the list of challenges seems monumental, the team explained that it is not the physical row itself that is the biggest challenge, rather the organization of getting themselves into the race.

The ocean rowing boat itself has been based in Dubai along with Harry and Paris for the last few months but will be shipped to the US at the end of March in order to ensure it is there in time for the main event.

Visiting the pair during a 36-hour training session out on the water, they explained that they were testing out a number of procedures and protocols on the boat while they still had the chance.

Ensuring they know how to deal with unexpected issues stretching from a man overboard to a puncture through the boat from a blue marlin spike, the team have acquired some impressive knowledge since signing up for the adventure.

The boat is also a top-of-the-range model and will be stocked full of freeze-dried food and even a solar powered water desalination machine, keeping the team going during the physical feat.

Paris continued: “Often people ask what we’ll eat because we’re burning up to 9,000 calories and we’re eating 6,000 calories a day, so there’s a deficit of 3,000 calories which has to come from your fat storages.

The food we eat is what you call freeze-dried food, it’s for the majority dehydrated food filled with nutrients and energy. You can imagine if we don’t eat or we skip a meal, then we’ll find we’ll pay for it the next day when our energy is low.

“We also need to stay hydrated, so that’s ten liters of water each per day that comes from our desalination machine, it turns sea water into fresh water and runs off the solar panels. We also have snack bars which are our treats and are highly calorific so we can eat as many as we want.”

Taking a tour of the boat as the team rowed it out and along the coast of Dubai, Housekeeping Co were keen to find out how the team would clean, cook, and keep things in order while on board. You can find all of the answers on our Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn pages.

You can find all of Housekeeping Co’s services, including full-time live-in maids and nannies, on our website https://www.housekeepingco.com/ .