From Launch to Launch

How it all began

It all started when, on the first anniversary of Dad’s death, we were all in the kitchen at home and Henry announced that he had something to say. My heart leapt. The last surprise we’d had was a very bad one. “James and I are going to row the Atlantic ocean in memory of Dad and for Suicide&Co”, he said. Tumbleweed. Mum and I were stunned. After a few seconds we told them what an incredible idea that was and how brave, but we would be staying firmly onshore. We’d manage the fundraising process and get them to the start but we certainly weren’t coming onboard for the crossing.

The next few weeks and months were filled with initial meetings with Suicide&Co to discuss the Ash Family Row fundraising strategy. I was doing what I do best, furiously taking notes and trying to absorb what an enormous feat the boys were undertaking. The Ash Family Row is the charity’s biggest ever fundraising project so we needed to be strategic and have a plan from the start (I’ve lost count of the number of excel spreadsheets we now have). As time went by I thought to myself, why am I not in this boat? Plenty of women have rowed the Atlantic, both solos and teams, and so I decided to do my due diligence and speak to some women who’d done it. Without fail, every single person I spoke to said that I had to do it. It was, for them, an other worldly experience and they’d do it again in a heartbeat. I relayed the good news to my brothers and mum that I was also joining the team! It was time to persuade Mum. We wanted her to come to the decision herself, but we were also secretly praying she’d say yes. The prospect of our entire family on a boat rowing the Atlantic in Dad’s memory was so awesome, but we would respect her decision had she said no. Fast forward a few more weeks and Mum decided that she’d much rather be on the boat with her three children than watching us on an app for 2 months at sea. And there we had it! We were a four person team and we entered into the World’s Toughest Row Atlantic 2027 with team name Not About Us (more on that later). 

Launching the campaign

We then set about preparing for our launch day on 10 October 2025, World Mental Health Day. Our amazing website was created thanks to creative types far more tech-y than us who gave their time pro bono to come up with brands and concepts. We went to Suicide&Co’s offices to tell our story on film for the website. In a desperate attempt to escape our corporate personas, we were blown around on Aldeburgh beach trying to take the perfect headshots and appear like we were a boat-y family and really knew what we were doing at sea. We filmed ourselves in wooden rowing boats on a lake where I called the rudder an udder. All in all a great start…

After what felt like an eternity of keeping this secret from family and friends, we reached 10 October 2025. We’d pre-written content to post across all socials and, together with the charity, were ready to hit go. What happened next I can only describe as nothing short of a miracle. Our phones went wild and donations flooded in. We watched our JustGiving page shoot up in minutes. We were completely overwhelmed by people’s support. The disbelief that we were attempting to cross the Atlantic in a rowing boat was also quite alarming…like I say, not a boat-y family. 

Someone asked me today, “have you had a day off since launching the row?”. My answer to her was no. It occupies our every waking moment, which is pretty challenging when trying to lead our normal lives at the same time. But, as Henry (our captain and whose idea this initially was) so rightly said, if this was easy everyone would do it. 

A question we are asked repeatedly is “how’s the training going?”. It is a fair question and don’t get me wrong, to row an ocean you need to be fit. But it is SO much more than that. Our primary reason for doing this challenge is to raise funds for Suicide&Co, without which we would not have been able to navigate the months after Dad died. It is Not About Us. It is about the work of this incredible charity, to open up the conversation about suicide loss and show and encourage others that it is possible to emerge out of very dark times and achieve great things.

Fundraising

So, on the topic of fundraising, we really would not be where we are, 7 months into our campaign, without the support, encouragement and expertise of Amelia, Eve and their team at Suicide&Co. We always look forward to our fortnightly Zoom meetings with them to discuss corporate sponsorship, public donations and events. It’s not all serious either. Having worked in the corporate world in a previous life, you’d have thought Amelia (CEO and co-founder of Suicide&Co) would have a grasp of corporate names…but after many reminders that the following is incorrect, apparently James works at RBS (not RBC) and my previous employer is Pinsent Mintsents (not Pinsent Masons). Seriously though, she’s an inspiration. She and her team are 100% committed to helping us hit our current fundraising target (and they’re encouraging us to raise it). They helped build our corporate deck which has secured thousands of pounds in corporate sponsorship already. They’ve come up with our “concept” image to announce corporate sponsors on socials. Their finance team is helping us track funds. They are co-hosting fundraising events with us and I am always blown away by Amelia’s ability to speak from the heart at these events about her own personal story and how the charity was born. We have a WhatsApp group with them which is my most active WhatsApp group by far. Amelia asked us the other day whether we talk to anyone else…chat elsewhere is limited I have to say (sorry friends and family!). 

In the past 7 months we have hosted tennis tournaments, pub quizzes, charity dinners and online raffles. These things don’t just happen. They rely on others generously giving up their time to help us. We are so lucky to have these wonderful people in our lives who have been touched by our story and are willing to help. We have also been so moved by people who have hosted events in aid of our challenge without our involvement - fitness classes, fun runs, barista classes to name a few. It’s pretty emotional when you get a message on instagram saying someone has read our story and would like to help us hit our target. One lady in Yorkshire is collecting scrap metal to sell in order to raise money for us. It’s simply amazing. 

Learning on land

On to more practical things. A few weeks ago we spent 5 days in Burnham-On-Crouch on an RYA sea survival course - Navigation, Radio, Sea Safety and First Aid. This, along with a minimum of 120 hours training on the water in our boat, is compulsory and you cannot enter the race without completing it. And now we understand why. What are you going to do when a teammate hits their head on the ceiling of a cabin in a capsize (suggestion to sleep in scrum caps. That’s not a joke)? How do you treat a burn from the jet-boil (the bunsen burner thing (again, not a boat-y family) which will heat up all of our food at sea)? How do you read a nautical map when all of your batteries have gone and your systems are out? We are all now practising tying knots in front of the TV…We met two fantastic teams on that course. One duo who are rowing from Newfoundland to Southampton and whose biggest risk is icebergs. Luckily things have moved on since the Titanic. The other was 5 lads from Scotland who work on the offshore oil rigs. They didn’t find our afternoon in the swimming pool practising getting into life rafts too taxing (they frequently practise being turned upside down in a simulator under water and ejecting themselves from helicopter seats). They’re rowing the Atlantic this year and we hope to catch them in La Gomera in December before they set row (trying to think of the equivalent to “set sail” - doesn’t quite work does it?!)

Endless admin!

And the admin. Oh my gosh there is a lot. Just to give you a flavour, to date (and there will be more) we’ve had to sort boat insurance, boat purchase (obviously!), ordering kit for training rows (the list is lengthy - everything from life jackets to pee bottles), travel to and from Hartlepool (where we are training on the water) including driving the boat up from Essex, documentation for World’s Toughest Row (e.g. to prove that we’re doing our 120 hours we need to upload GPS tracking/images of rows), ordering food for training rows. Etcetera! We have a weekly family Zoom call to keep on top of everything. Sometimes the calls get a bit out of hand when, after an hour of talking about ocean rowing, we’ve lost the ability to concentrate:

Getting on the water

Before getting on the actual big scary ocean, we were advised to do a “Learn to row” course on the Thames. If we can balance in a scull then rowing in an ocean rowing boat would be a doddle, they said…How hard can river rowing be? The Oxford and Cambridge teams make it look so easy. Pah! The legs, body, arms, arms, body, legs thing is all very well on an erg, but when you’re trying to do it in unison, even on a relatively calm river, it all went a bit to s***. By the end of two days on the Thames there were marginally fewer oar clashes, but an increased number of blisters (both on bottoms and hands). 

So, from launching our campaign to launching our boat! She’s called Dolly Parton and this weekend we took her out of Hartlepool Marina for the first time. We learnt so much over the four days with our brilliant ocean rowing coach who imparted his knowledge and expertise (having safely crossed many oceans and seas himself), including the little known fact (little known for us anyway) that bananas at sea are bad luck. That’s the last time we’ll be bringing them on board for our mid-morning snack…

Having been out on the water in Dolly, experiencing everything from peeing in a bucket whilst being rocked around in waves to serious sea sickness, the enormity of our challenge has hit us hard. But we are determined to succeed, for Suicide&Co and for Dad.

Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts, for the support you have shown so far. It is literally unbelievable. I think Dad would be proud of you all. 

Until next time, when we might have become more boat-y and less sea sick…