The tall, burly man asks: ‘Can you row?’ ‘No, never before,’ I answer, and mumble something about canoeing in school. 􀂦Well get in the boat,’ says Eamonn Kavanagh. That first day is hard. The hands begin to cramp, drops of blood start oozing through your fingertips …

Two non-rowers take on one of the great challenges: the Atlantic. Holmes, a slight 21-year-old from Alberta, and Gleeson, a 29-year-old from Limerick, met when Holmes answered an advert to drive support for Gleeson’s cycle across Australia. He had big falls - off his bike and for the woman behind the wheel.
Crossing a continent was not enough. Acting on self-belief alone, Gleeson and Holmes embraced the dream of rowing a tiny boat in the 2005/06 trans-Atlantic race. But first they had to learn to row! So they contacted the only Irishmen to have done it, Eamonn and Peter Kavanagh. The tough seafarers took time to give assent, but then gave their blessing and the boat called after their mother, the Christina. Always going to be a huge challenge, the race of 2005-2006 turned into a terrifying ordeal of storms and capsizes. Six of the 20 doubles, including another Irish boat, had to be rescued. They were thrown around by huge seas, saw whales and sharks up close, suffered days of thirst when the watermaker broke down and hallucination due to chronic sleep deprivation. But they persisted, with stubbornness, humour and a little help from a mysterious shadow.