It’s been a tough inaugural Great Pacific Race. Many of the rowing teams had to turn around after just a few hours, and the US Coast Guard has had to do a tough rescue of the four-man Pacific Rowers team. One of the teams to have abandoned was Vancouver’s two-woman Row the Pacific Team. Leanne Zrum suffered tremendously from seasickness and dehydration and the duo decided to turn back. Rebecca Berger scrambled to find a replacement, and did, but they could not get out to sea fast enough to have support assured. Here’s Berger’s latest statement:The USCG has urged us not to continue with our intention to row from Monterey to Hawaii as part of the Great Pacific Race. In light of the rescues over the weekend, they feel increasingly that the conditions are not fit for the task.
Simply put, we’ve missed our window to get out of the bay with the coast guards blessing.
One option available to us would be to completely disassociate ourselves from the organized race and continue on as planned.
After giving it some thought, I made the very difficult decision to postpone the row at this time.
The Team ClearlyContacts.ca campaign has been a long and fruitful one with the support of so many generous, inspiring people, and organizations. The set backs of the past few weeks are a lot to process and “recalculating” has been a challenge in itself.
The Great Pacific Race is an amazing event with potential to become a bi-annual success. I do not want to do anything to jeopardize the future of the event or the future of the sport.
I’d like to thank Lia Ditton for stepping in to replace Leanne Zrum at such short notice. In the five days we worked together I learned a lot and the Honey Badger is a better boat for having her onboard for such a short time.
We wish Berger and all other rowers good luck in the future.
