Stage 6: St Brides Bay

After our successful return to full-on Cob 2 Cardiff row yesterday we suffered yet another blow - in the shape of a RIB that just didn't want to work anymore. You see, as part of our insurance for this challenge we need to have 2 support vehicles on the water with us at all times - its that or we just can't do it unfortunately! So 1 RIB down and we had to decide on yet more changes to our plans! But never fear, we're becoming pretty good at last minute adaptations to plans (or at least our challenge coordinator Gerry has!)

This morning we were up and out of our lovely Celtic Camping bunkhouse perched on a cliff overlooking the sea after 3 fantastic nights of duvets, cosy fireplaces & comfy mattresses (huge thanks again for the hospitality! Its back to camping again tonight...ouch!). The plan was to head to Porth Clais, a very small port at the North end of St Brides Bay. With only 1 RIB to accompany us we'd made the decision to have a day row around the bay using both boats (Glaslyn & Madog), keeping within 500 metres of the shore with our 1 RIB that was working - but still adding some miles on to our journey down to Cardiff - everyones happy!

It was lovely to have both boats out on the water & a couple of new rowers who had headed down to get in on the C2C action. The weather was fine, the cliffs were fantastic & conditions were consistently calm. Perfect. So perfect in fact that we took the liberty of popping into Solva to check out the Solva Boat Club (and its great selection of cakes!).

As far as a social row goes, today was excellent; the conditions perfect, scenery stunning & company great. But thats not why we're here & we can't express how frustrating its been for the rowers & organisers not to be bang on track with all those miles under our belts. Its what we came here to do!

But equally, we're not slap dash & we have huge respect for the sea & the safety of our rowers. We hope that you, our wonderful supporters will stick with us & pray for excellent sea conditions & a fixed RIB to wing us to Cardiff. And we've already been talking about coming back to complete any 'unfinished business'. We'll definitely be back!

But for now we're off to set up our tents & enjoy some of the beers our fab sponsor Lawrence has brought down from Purple Moose Brewery! Bye for now x