Four Mums in a Boat by Janette Benaddi Helen Butters Niki Doeg & Frances Davies

Author:Janette Benaddi, Helen Butters, Niki Doeg & Frances Davies
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin (UK) Ltd
Published: 2017-09-16T04:00:00+00:00

The Final Countdown

‘Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.’

OG MANDINO

There is nothing like rowing a sea to make everyone realise you’re serious about rowing an ocean. When we finally got back to the UK, the reaction to our North Sea record was extraordinary. ‘We weren’t just four women who were thinking about doing something. We’d actually done something,’ said Helen. ‘And it did raise our profile.’

We went from doing small amounts of local newspaper press to Look North, Calendar and then finally BBC Breakfast. We were so excited about being on the show. This would be a game-changer for us and the charities we were supporting. And we couldn’t believe that out of all the crews who were now preparing to row the Talisker Challenge, they had picked us to interview. Niki had received an email the day before asking us if we were free. It was apparently Women’s Sport Week and fortuitously we were women, doing sport, and we were available, which is often all that is important when you are doing media interviews, apparently! We leapt onto the train and stayed the night in MediaCityUK in our own rooms – which made an extremely pleasant change from the hovels we were used to – and barely slept the whole night.

The next morning, in hair and make-up, dressed in our Yorkshire Rows tracksuits and trainers, we decided who would talk about what so that we didn’t end gabbling over each other in our enthusiasm. Firstly, Frances would explain how it all began, Niki would add that we had husbands and children so were good at compromising, Janette would say she was skipper and Helen would talk about rowing the North Sea and how violently sick she was.

It was over in a flash. They used some dynamic footage of the Talisker race with some seriously dramatic music, which frankly looked terrifying, and some photos of us in our onesies, which were equally terrifying and not something any of us were particularly keen on seeing again. But we didn’t make fools of ourselves. The presenters, Naga Munchetty and Bill Turnbull, were extremely charming. We talked about wanting to inspire our children, to get mothers to think of themselves in a different way and challenge their perceptions, to break out of their comfort zones and stretch themselves, and suddenly it all felt very real. Not only that, but the phone did begin to ring. At last. After a period of truly struggling to get anywhere in terms of sponsorship or offers of help, the wind had changed.

‘I think people didn’t want to back what they thought was a sure-fire loser,’ explained Frances. ‘And we had no track record of anything. No one for one minute thought we were plausible. We were some women who had a dream, an idea, a plan that had been hatched after a few glasses of wine and that was it. We’d sent out so many emails and so many letters and had received very little in return.

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