Student completes Europe to South America solo row after 97 days at sea

A 21-year-old student is believed to have become the youngest person and first woman to row solo and unsupported from mainland Europe to mainland South America.

Zara Lachlan, from Cambridge, set off from Lagos on the Portuguese Algarve on October 27 last year and 97 days later reached French Guiana after a 3,600 nautical-mile journey.

Ms Lachlan, who will join the Army in September as a technical officer, having completed a physics degree at Loughborough University, overcame a cut leg, an injured arm and a broken finger, a capsized boat and broken equipment.

“But then it really snuck up on me, because French Guiana is actually very flat, and I didn’t see it until I was about five miles offshore.

“And then all of a sudden I was just here, and obviously it feels nice to be done.

“Nobody knew I was coming in, but I got clapped by lots of fishermen from Brazil. I think everybody was just a little bit more confused what on Earth I was doing.”

She said she missed beating the solo row speed record for the journey by 19 hours.

She carried 800kg of supplies in her boat, including 5,500kcal of meals and snacks per day.

After a difficult start in which she said she was “going around in circles”, Ms Lachlan said she “enjoyed every single day, even the really tough ones”.

She said she smashed the screen of her primary phone on day 40, preventing her from listening to any music during her journey.

“I rowed for 16 hours a day with literally only the sound of the water, which most of the time is really nice, but sometimes I think my brain could really use some kind of stimulation,” she said during her challenge.

Ms Lachlan said: “I learned to be a lot easier on myself because I’ve always been somebody that, especially when it comes to myself, looks at the outcome and the results over the effort you put in.

“So if you want something, you work hard for it, and if you don’t get it, it is because you didn’t work hard enough for it.

“But then with this, having weather which you can’t control and which a lot of the time you’re not stronger than, I really had to change how I viewed progress each day.”

Ms Lachlan will now head back to university, where she said she will carry on her “normal rowing training” before graduating in the summer.

During her challenge she has been raising money for the Team Forces Foundation, which supports the armed forces community through sport and adventure, and the charity Women in Sport.

“Thank you to Team Forces because they were one of the charities I was raising money for, but they were also my biggest sponsor and I wouldn’t have been able to do any of it without them,” she said.

To find out more about Ms Lachlan’s fundraising, visit: www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/zara-lachlan-atlantic-solo-row.