Being called professional adventurers and getting asked to write for magazines!!!...

Story for Much Better Adventures:




We are the two man team Christian Howard and Tom Dignum, individually we are a Pensions Administrator and School Residence coordinator from Cambridge but together we are the Oar Raisers. In November this year (2011)
we intend to row the Atlantic from Gran Canaria to Barbados completely unsupported and alone. This means everything we need we take with us, we are expecting the crossing to take 60 days or less.

Unlike most organised Ocean Rowing events that have a governing body or official coordinator our challenge is solely reliant on hard work, team work and our knowledge of survival and each other. Why do it?.. Many reasons but it is our objective to raise money and awareness for Parkinson’s Disease, that said we are adventurers and if we can help a cause in someway whilst being that then we will. The Oar Raisers was set up last year with the idea of using not just rowing but all manner of endurance disciplines to help raise money and awareness.

It occurred to us that adventures we read about as kids, Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Shackleton and Edmund Hilary etc had explored it all and that with the recent surge of celebrity expeditions something on this scale had become unachievable for an average man. Thinking that we had to prove ourselves to each other first we set about planning a training regime and pushed each others physical limits. Realising we could physically rely on each other we began to figure out ways of getting things donated from kit to costs and decided to put a corporate proposal together and approach as many people as possible, it worked and we got some of our cost paid for but more importantly we were offered the use of fully sea worthy boat.

It should never be felt that because it has already been done it shouldn’t be done again. Whilst the Atlantic has been rowed successfully in the past it has also been attempted unsuccessfully and claimed the lives of nearly a third of all those that have tried. The point we want people never to forget is that they are capable and they can achieve anything they want to with the right drive and attitude. Adventure need not be a wealthy persons playground, it’s about getting organised, making decisions and survival.

We are excited about our voyage and hope others will be inspired to do the same or similar, by cutting out middle men and organisers you can do things cheaper and more efficiently without sacrificing safety. The World is a big outdoor playground and we spend most of our lives locked in offices, chained to desks. No matter how many times something is done, no matter how much is explored or uncovered you cannot know the experience unless you do it.


The discovery of oneself and figuring out how you react under different pressures presents you in a new light, confronting your fears, embracing the emotions and going into the eye of storm is one thing but coming out unscathed is another.

The greatest adventure lies not in landscapes and horizons but in the eyes of your team mates. Trusting each other to make the right decisions, depending on each other to pull through, improvising, adapting and overcoming everything together.