A pair of women have broken the world record for the fastest rowing across the Pacific Ocean by nine days.
Jessica Oliver, 32, and Charlotte Harris, 33, set out to compete in the World's Toughest Row Pacific Challenge on June 8, 2024, from Monterey, California, with the goal of rowing 2,800 miles to Kauai, Hawaii.
Thirty-seven days, 11 hours and 43 minutes later, Oliver and Harris arrived in Hawaii having broken the world record for the fastest women's pair row, the fastest pair row overall, and were the first team in the competition to successfully row across both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
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Oliver, from Gloucestershire, England, spoke to Fox News Digital from Hawaii just days after crossing the aquatic finish line to discuss what led up to that momentous moment.
“We didn't know anything about rowing. We didn't know anything about the ocean,” he said of the couple's experience before rowing in the Atlantic Ocean a few years ago.
Charlotte Harris and Jessica Oliver, pictured above, rowed from California to Hawaii in 37 days. (The hardest queue in the world)
Oliver met Harris, originally from Hampshire, England, while studying at Cardiff University in Wales.
The two were in the hockey club and Oliver said they became best friends almost instantly.
“You know when you meet someone? [and] “Are you thinking, 'We're soulmates'?”
Today, nearly 15 years later, the Salesforce consultant says she and Harris are almost as thick as thieves and love to compete, just like in the old days.
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“In 2020, we signed up for something called the Talisker Whiskey Atlantic Challenge, having never rowed before,” he said, adding: “Charlotte [Harris] I worked for a company that sponsored it… and they said, 'Do you want to do this challenge?'”
Oliver said the pair had just completed a boxing challenge together and were looking for another challenge to join in an effort to raise money for Shelter & Women's Aid, a national campaign for homeless people.
The couple competed in the rowing competition in the Atlantic Ocean two years ago. (The hardest queue in the world)
Over the next two years, the couple campaigned and prepared for the challenge: rowing 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean from the Canary Islands to Antigua.
When the pair arrived 45 days later, they had broken the world record for the fastest women's rowing across the Atlantic.
Oliver said she and Harris were thrilled with their success and felt they had ticked the “adventure” box.
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She recalls: “Six months later, the race organisers launched the Pacific Challenge and we sat at our desks and thought: 'It wasn't so bad, was it? The Atlantic? Could we do it again?'”
Oliver and Harris eventually signed up to row in the World's Toughest Row Pacific Ocean Challenge and trained five to six days a week for two years leading up to the race.
Oliver said the couple went through some different challenges they didn't expect along the way. (The hardest queue in the world)
Oliver said, however, that nothing could have prepared them for the experience they had rowing in the Pacific Ocean.
“The first 500 miles off America are extremely challenging from a weather perspective,” he said, adding that the nearly 23-foot-long boat the pair were traveling on lost its automatic steering during the first week.
Due to strong Canadian winds and waves about 13 feet high, Oliver said the training the couple had planned went out the window during the first period of time.
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Typically, he said, a person would paddle for two hours and then take a break and sleep or eat inside one of two cabins on board for two hours, then repeat.
Oliver said she and Harris have been friends for 15 years and know each other very well. (The hardest queue in the world)
He said this plan was ineffective for most of the paddle due to the uncertainty of the ocean and the race they were in with another team.
“In the end, we were actually tied with the other rowers. We were rowing between 16 and 20 hours a day. It was just a matter of going down to sleep when we could,” she recalls.
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One of the scariest encounters, Oliver recalled, was when the pair nearly collided with what appeared to be an oil tanker.
As the rowers tried to fix their automatic steering, Oliver said their systems did not alert them to a large ship nearby, and they were shocked to look up and see the boat coming straight toward them.
“This ship is huge, we are tiny and we have no direction,” he recalled thinking as he panicked at the time.
The pair broke the previous female pair's world record by nine days. (The hardest queue in the world)
Oliver said the tanker came within 30 feet of his rowboat and was “so close to completely destroying us.”
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After 37 grueling days of fighting to reach the finish line, Oliver said crossing it was an “incredible” feeling.
She said: “We crossed the finish line and it had been so stressful and quite traumatic, we thought: 'OK, we've done what we wanted to do.'”
Oliver said they might try something a little calmer for their next challenge.
“The best thing for us was winning the women's category,” she explained, adding: “We beat all the teams of three and four, and came second in the entire race, just 24 hours behind a team of four soldiers.”
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As for what's next for the couple, Oliver said they might try something a little calmer for their next challenge.
The average voyage time for crews of all sizes across the Pacific Ocean is 62 days, according to World's Toughest Row.
