LOCAL AUTHOR AND ADVENTURER, CHARLIE WILKINS, HAS ROWED ACROSS THE ATLANTIC OCEAN 3194 miles to date and less than a 100 miles to go. The boat is called The Big Blue and it was designed specifically to shave three days off the current world record. Their skipper is Angela Madsen, a 50 year old grandmother of three and the first paraplegic woman to row 3000 miles across the Atlantic and has broken numerous records since then. http://vimeo.com/18995549 The Roc Expedition crew is composed of 16 unique individuals from a 21 year old student from Guelph Ontario, to 69 year old Tom Butscher (former Canadian Ice skating champion) from Toronto Island who will become the oldest man to have rowed across the Atlantic. The team will not break the new record established by Sarah G earlier this month but they will accomplish plenty of firsts: the first Georgian, the first Australian woman, the first catamaran to cross the ocean unassisted, the largest group of Canadian ocean rowers and the first award winning writer, Thunder Bay’s Charlie Wilkins. There are 7 Canadian’s on board from: Thunder Bay, Toronto, Guelph, St. Joseph Island, and Montreal. The crew assembled in Agadir, Morocco at the end of December and they have spent 48 tumultuous days aboard their boat, Big Blue. What began as a record breaking row will end as the ultimate test of human endurance and stamina. The crew was buffeted by strong winds and waves that sent them off course and made rowing sometimes impossible. Fortunately no major injuries were sustained and the boat, the first of its kind has withstood everything the ocean could muster. They have observed the rules of the international Ocean Rowing Society which means the boat can only be powered by rowers, no sails, and no support boat following them. Filmmaker Kelly Saxberg and Director of Photography Damien Gilbert are in Barbados documenting the voyage. This spirit of adventure was captured in March 2010 Doc Challenge film “Life is but a Dream” the only Canadian finalist of 12 to play at Hot Docs. Doc Challenge begins again 3rd march 2011 – the day the boat is slated to arrive in Barbados. Meanwhile Dylan White, one of the young Canadian rowers on board, has documented the entire voyage. The boat was fully rigged with camera gear and sound equipment to be able to capture the story on the high seas. Additional information, the link to the live webcam that will record their arrival, as well as crew bios including photos, is available by visiting www.bigbluerow.com. Information about the rules for transatlantic crossings and progress reports on all of the boats attempting to make the crossing this year can be found at www.oceanrowing.com. Media enquiries can be made by contacting Kelly Saxberg directly in Barbados at 1 246 439 2822 or by local cell at : 1 246 829-3821 CREW Bio’s Angela Madsen is a 50 year old Grandmother of three from Long Beach, CA she competed in the 2008 Paralympics in Beijing, China. She is a 4 time World Championship Gold Medalist and a Level 3 Rowing Coach. She is now one of the First women to row across the Indian Ocean and the first disabled woman to row across 2 oceans. Charles Wilkins has written sixteen books, including Walk to New York, about his 2,200-km hike from Thunder Bay to New York City, The Circus at the Edge of the Earth, about his travels with the Great Wallenda Circus, and, most recently, In the Land of Long Fingernails: A Gravedigger’s Memoir, about the summer of 1969, during which he dug graves in a big corporate cemetery in the east end of Toronto. SYLVAIN is a 46 year old emergency physician from Quebec, Canada. He has completed 8 Ironmans, and started rowing in 2007. He will use the Expedition to fund raise for an open source project in Health informatics, a project that, he believes, has the potential to help community of practice in medicine to collaborate in creating tools that will improve the quality, the efficiency and security of the care provided to their patients. TOM lives on Toronto Island and was born in Zurich Switzerland. He raced bikes as an amateur and skated nationally and internationally for 8 years. “I started rowing in 2000 and I have crossed Lake Ontario 5 times, then I rowed the length, 340 km I am being told I am the only rower to go across and back non-stop 100 k in 12 hours.” DYLAN will use the row to fundraise in support of the empowerment and rights of Indigenous people all over the world. He completed a 8400km cycling trip in the summer of 2009, As the cinematographer on board, he will use HD cameras to document every step of the way. STEVE is a 55 year old maple syrup producer (and physician) will row with his son Nigel on the voyage. “I grew up on Toronto Island and spent most of my childhood fishing and messing about with sailboats. A high school dropout at 16, I experienced 8 years of the "real world" workforce before returning to university in Kinesiology followed by a degree