Heledd's Atlantic Rowing Challenge: An Update from Merched Y Mor

Heledd's Atlantic Rowing Challenge: An Update from Merched Y Mor

Merched Y Mor, a crew of four women, including our very own Quality Assurance Manager Heledd, will be the first all-female crew of four to take on The World’s Toughest Row, The Atlantic Challenge. The challenge consists of rowing a gruelling 3000 miles, completely unsupported, from La Gomera in the Canary Islands to Antigua in the Caribbean. Heledd updated us on how things are going as the countdown to raceday begins.

We signed up for this race in 2022 – three years ago - and at the time, the race seemed so far away. Now the countdown is on, with just ten months to go! We will be flying out to La Gomera at the end of November, where our ocean rowing boat (she will have been shipped out in October) will be waiting for us. The race starts on the 12^{th of} December, 2025, which means a very different way of spending Christmas this year, as we don’t anticipate arriving in Antigua until the end of January 2026!

The last three years have been very, very busy. Alongside working for Calon as the Quality Assurance Manager, I have been busy beavering away during the evenings and at weekends with my crew mates (Denise, Helen and Liz) preparing for this epic challenge.

Three years ago, we had a target of £125,000 to raise and I’m pleased to say that after lots of hard work and amazing community support, we are now well on our way to reaching that target.

That’s not to say we’re high and dry, we still have a lot of work to do over the next few months to ensure we have enough funds to make it to the start line, so the fundraising isn’t over quite yet…

To prepare for such a huge challenge, not all our training has been on the water. We have been preparing our bodies physically and mentally and have been studying for our mandatory training courses, which we have all now completed. The courses have included Sea Survival, Essential Seamanship & Navigation, VHF and First Aid at Sea. We’ve also been spending time focussing on strength and conditioning as well as ensuring our emotional well-being is strong and focussed.

Resilience and a Positive Mental Attitude are going to be key to our success.

Calon Cymru has been amazingly supportive of our adventure and has very kindly sponsored us, which we will be forever grateful for. We bought our ocean rowing boat (Cariad) in April last year and she proudly wears Calon’s logo on her side, which means that Calon Cymru will be with us every stroke we take.

Our aim in rowing across the Atlantic is not only to raise money for four incredible charities (Sea Trust Wales, RNLI, Popham Kidney Support and Action for Children) but to spread a message of inspiration, in particular to girls and women, that anything you set your mind to is possible. The four of us are very ordinary women, holding down full-time jobs, caring for families and dealing with life in general, but we believe that we can achieve the extraordinary, so we’re going for it!

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