Atlantic Diary: Paul Gleeson and Tori Holmes had a good week, but the shadow has returned

We had difficulties with the swell driving us south in the last couple of days, but we've had a fairly good week. Once we got rid of the barnacles, it made a huge difference. We upped our benchmark figure for the day to 40 nautical miles, just over 46 statute miles, and we made more than that on Thursday and Saturday.

We scraped more barnacles off the boat on Friday. We went down and had a look, and it only took us about half an hour this time to do the job.

On Monday evening we broke the target we'd set of having under 1,000 nautical miles left when we did this week's diary, but we need to get back up towards 17 degrees, the latitude of Antigua, and the swell is pushing us south. We can cross it, and we've been trying to do that in the last couple of days. But it's painfully slow. It's taking its toll on our progress.

It's pretty heartbreaking. Just when we're starting to make progress and thinking this is a back-breaking week but we'll get to within six or seven hundred nautical miles of Antigua - y'know, we're nearly there - we find it's not going to be like that. That's a real kick in the face.

We tried the two of us rowing together to see would that work, and we got more out of that - but not enough to warrant the two of us busting ourselves.

It's actually quite draining. Because you're going so slowly you're not building up any momentum, you feel like you're starting from a standstill with every pull of the oars.

If you look at the chart it says 2,535 miles, but those waves are so high. It's not as if you were crossing flat water. Tori is just saying here that she's seven stone and she's pulling the best part of three-quarters of a tonne. It's quite gruelling.

On a night shift it's weird, because you're running out of things to "daydream" about. You've gone through all the stuff in your life, and every little thing you're looking forward to you've gone over in your head a million times.

Two boats, Row4Life and Atlantic Warrior, have just finished, but they were too far south and had to be towed in. But they'll be credited with crossing the Atlantic. We're probably at the crossroads here. It's very tempting: we could go with the swell, which is pushing us west and slightly south, and we'd make great mileage, although we might end up so far south that we'd have to be towed in. Neither of us want that - it's a pride thing - but we have a call to make.

I rang Eamon Kavanagh yesterday. He made the crossing in this boat with his brother, Peter, and is a mentor. He said if you can maintain your latitude and not go any further south and can still make progress to the west, then do that.

So we're going to dog it out for the next week or so. It's now our target for this week; we'll forget about the mileage on the GPS (Global Positioning System) and concentrate on our latitude. If we can crawl back even two miles north each day we could get back up to where we can row directly west again. We need to get above 17 degrees to give ourselves a bit of room to play with as we approach Antigua.

We're okay for food and water. At halfway we did an inventory and we have another 40-odd days left. But within the next two weeks the little luxury items that we had, the crackers, the baby wipes for cleaning, the powder for chafing, they'll run out.

So, while we'll dog it out for the week, it'll be harder on us. But it's what we want to do. We don't want to be towed in unless we have to be. So we'll give it a lash.

Even from a practical point of view, with family and friends coming out to meet us, it's Antigua they're coming to. They're not coming out to Barbados or Martinique or Guadeloupe. And coming back, the shipping routes back across the Atlantic are out of Antigua. And I can tell you now, I won't be rowing the bloody thing!

The shadow? Tori asked me did I notice anything last night. I said "No, did you?"

She said she'd got a tingle down the spine. I asked did she look around and she said she was too scared to look around.

She started talking to it last night. She was saying: "We're friends. We're on the same side here. You're here to help me, so I'm not going to turn around. So just stop it now. Stop!"

On Wednesday of last week we saw our first boat in 50-odd days. Tori was rowing and saw this sailboat on the horizon. We jumped on the radio and made contact, and even though it was so far away that we could barely make it out, it felt almost like you were talking to somebody face-to-face.

It was a Dutch family, with two young kids, sailing around the world. The father told us they were going to Guadeloupe, which is the island below Antigua, and asked us where we were going.

We're struggling with an answer at the moment!

(In an interview with Liam Gorman)

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