Atlantic rowers’ perfect secret mid-ocean engagement and keeping the beak after a terrifying blue marlin attack
- Ed Raymont and Victoria Mico Egea say ‘yes’ and keep it from their crewmates for two weeks on their tiny boat
- The four rowers finish the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge in 45 days – and with a marlin’s snout embedded in their cabin
Rowing an ocean is a life-changing experience for anyone, but for one pair in particular it was momentous. Ed Raymont and Victoria Mico Egea shared a mid-ocean secret, even from their Generation Gap crewmates.
The four were rowing in the 5,000km Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge (TWAC) when Mico Egea, the first Spanish woman to row any ocean, turned to Raymont and popped a question.
“We were in this night, the perfect sky, stars, not a cloud,” she said. “It would be a cool thing to do it in the Atlantic. So, I turn around and I had a cable tie from my headphones – I said ‘Shall we get married?’ and handed him the cable tie. He said “yes, yes” and we kissed. Perfect, excellent.”
Teammates Roger Staniforth and his daughter, Brittany, were fast asleep in the cabin, unaware of the magical moment outside. “We didn’t tell our crew mates or anything. We sat on it for two weeks,” she said.
“In the boat, it’s eight metres by one-and-a-half metres, your conversations are overheard. You have nothing that belongs to you. But that night, when they were sleeping, they didn’t hear. No one in the entire world heard anything. It was a really nice, exclusive thing. And we could talk about it, have little conversations, but only at night.”