In Memory of Alisdair

Hello and Happy New Year.
I hope you have recovered from the festivities and you are more or less back to normality.
Liz is continuing to amaze me with her resilience and tenacity, she is a phenomenal woman.

Unfortunately, I have some extremely sad news to pass on this week, regarding one of the teams in the race.
Aussie Old Salts, a crew of four Australian men, have been transferred onto a vessel heading for land. This followed a cardiac incident where, despite the crew's best efforts, they were unable to revive their skipper, Commander Alisdair Putt. 

Alisdair was a former ASIO agent, and reserve naval officer, the crew included a Royal Australian Navy Submariner, a Royal Australian Navy legal officer, and a retired Australian Special Forces soldier. 

Our thoughts are with the crew, family and loved ones at this devastatingly sad time.

The World's Toughest Row safety officers, organised the evacuation and passed on the tragic news to the families. They then called each team on the water individually. 

I spoke to Liz last night and she was, as you can imagine, shocked by the news. At the start of the race, she helped untie Aussie Old Salts lines from the dock, and Alisdair called out to her as they rowed away “ Make us proud Liz”

She will continue to do just that.

Fair Winds and Following seas.

Louise

Liz would like to personally add;
On Friday night at 22h utc myself and the rest of the fleet stowed our oars and dimmed our lights, suspended racing for 10 minutes whilst looking into an amazing starry sky and raising a toast (green tea and honey for me) to Alisdair and the crew of Aussie Old Salts.
I can say in that moment, I felt very small, alone and far far away.  I am grateful that the crew are together and they have each other for support in this time.