The storm of last week is starting to seem like a distant memory for Matteo now. After a couple of days and nights in the cabin Matteo was pleased to get rowing again. In the cabin the temperature reached 45 degrees, luckily Matteo was able to catch up on some sleep ready for the challenge ahead.

Over the last few days his daily average has been increasing. He has even ventured in to the calmer waters to clean the underside of the boat. Over the weekend he was joined by some more dolphins and still reports seeing sea birds, this is impressive given he is 1500km from the nearest land (Cape Verde).

This week Matteo is hoping to get to a key milestone, the half way marker. Officially the half way point in the race is classified as longitude of 40 degrees West. Another way of measuring the half way point is when Matteo has less than half of the straight line distance left to row, this would be when he has less than 1277nm to row. As Matteo is not rowing the most direct route due to weather and currents he will not actually know where the half way point in his crossing is until he has finished so he will celebrate when he has crossed 40 degrees West.

Here are some facts from Matteo’s time at sea so far:

Matteo has cleaned the bottom of the boat twice, this means two dips in the sea (he remains attached to the boat with a safety line at all times and has a ladder to get out of the water).Despite the cold weather back home, its about 30C and higher for Matteo so he has used 15 bottles of suncream so far. Matteo will have eaten 155 freeze dried meals combined with snacks Matteo will have consumed approximately 186,000 calories since he left (This is the equivalent to 366 Big Mac’s or 1,476 glasses of wine – in 30 days!)

However he is expected to have burnt nearly 250,000 calories through all the rowing to date.