Paramedic from Surrey setting off on 2,000 mile row around Great Britain
Kit Nelson and a team of five other will set off on a 2000 mile mission today (14th June) while gathering research to preserve marine environments and wildlife.
Kit Nelson, a paramedic from Surrey, is preparing to undertake an extraordinary endurance challenge with his team, Nautilus.
Nelson and five teammates will attempt to row 2,000 miles around the coast of Great Britain as part of the GB Row Challenge.
Scheduled to commence today (14th June), the team will start their journey from Tower Bridge, seeking to return to the same point after circumnavigating the entire British coastline.
Kit told us about how he made the decision to get involved
"I wish there was some good answer. You know, 'I've been doing this since' but no, I just woke up one day and decided to.
I remember reading about it online and then the next thing I know, I'm driving down to Portsmouth to meet Jim, who was the owner and operator of GB Row and a week after that, I'm in a team and here we are a year and a half later. So yeah, very spontaneous decision."
This venture is not just about testing physical and mental resilience, as the team will also gather research to help protect marine environments and wildlife.
Kit told us this was an aspect about the trip he was excited to be involved in
"We are looking at different water and audio samples, which will contain data on microplastics, eDNA, salinity, temperature, and acoustics. And we're going to give all this data to the University of Portsmouth, who will process it for us. It'll then be stored in the Crown Estate database.
"Fortunately, because the challenge has been going for a while now, we'll have a sort of year on year picture of how we're affecting our oceans, looking at pollution and, you know, all the wildlife contained within. And I can't imagine the picture is going to be great, to be honest.
But hopefully we can get all this data, put it in front of the right people and raise awareness where that may lead."
While achieving a world record is possible if they finish in less than 49 days, Nelson emphasises that the primary focus is on the journey and research rather than breaking records.
Adding to the challenge, the row will be entirely unsupported, meaning there will be no accompanying support boats or supply drops.
The Nautilus team will not touch land throughout the journey except in emergencies, amplifying the difficulty of their task.
Kit told us what part of the trip he was looking forward to the most
"The coastlines going to be changing the whole time, the views are changing the whole time, we get to see the most incredible sunrises and sunsets. yeah, waking up every sort of couple of hours and seeing something completely unexpected and something new is phenomenal."