Wet sea-sprayed garments causes irritation and blistering when performing obsessive, compulsive tasks like rowing day and night across oceans . So Elin Haf Davies and her female row-mates, three blondes and a brunette, worked in the nude - weather permitting. One particularly wonderful day, somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean, the gals were all having a nice birthday suit swim when a cargo ship passed dangerously close. I visualize this scene whenever I stand on our balcony looking out to sea.
 
 
Until meeting Elin there wasn't anything more exhilarating for me than climbing aboard a ship and travelling across an ocean. It made me feel adventurous and kind of brave. A great many cruise ships work the summers in the Mediterranean, then spend the winters in the Caribbean. They have to get the boats from one sea to the other, and that's how Elenka and I found ourselves using them - as a means of travelling from A to B with a measure of luxury. 
 
 
But it was this fourth trans-oceanic journey where my bravery bubble burst. Elin, a guest lecturer on the Celebrity Reflection, is a Welshwoman. Prior to her first talk which was titled "Atlantic Adventures" or words to that effect, I told Elenka that I wasn't interested, we'd done so many of these crossings, how could this Great Britainer's adventures be greater than ours? 
Reluctantly, I went along to the lecture . Turns out Elin of Wales' Atlantic adventure was rowing a 24 foot boat across the bloody ocean with a friend. They took turns rowing, two hours at a time, 24 hours a day, for 77 days. She'd taken photos of her hands and arse. Even in nakedness not all of the blistering was preventable. I kept my mouth shut and couldn't wait to hear Elin's second lecture. This time it was the Indian Ocean. She and three other gals rowed from Australia to Africa. The four of them completed this much longer journey in about the same time as it took Elin and her other amiga to cross the Atlantic.  
 



Limited distribution - sent after our return to the New World