At the end of July, Duncan Roy and Gus Barton, the two coaches of On Shoulders of Giants, fell painfully short in their attempt to break the world record of rowing around Britain in less than 41 days. After having completed nearly 1,500 miles whilst fundraising for charities, the guys had to give up because of severe weather conditions that made it impossible to go on, in addition to private and professional commitments each had in early August.

The silver lining was that our rowing team was finally able to spend a weekend with their technical and tactical coach who has rowed the Atlantic twice before. The aim for the first weekend with ‘Rowing Roy’ as he calls himself was to work on details on and off the water, such as optimizing rowing techniques, processes on the boat like man over board drills and maximizing the space and weight during the crossing. Naturally, day one included a lot of listening and Q&A’s with the coach who we interviewed only a week after he and Gus ended their world record attempt in Lymington, UK, the current training base of Justin and the team.

We also had exclusive access to listen in during the technical sessions on the boat with coach Duncan. If you want to know what happens when a massive shark attacks the rudder on the open ocean or how to use ballast water efficiently, listen to the full interview with 'Rowing Roy' here.