By DARREL MAGER and NZPA
As relationships deteriorated in their small rowing boat during a record-shattering transatlantic crossing in 1997, Rob Hamill feared his partner, Phil Stubbs, would kill him.
Things got so bad during their 41 days at seas for the 3000-nautical mile race that they were barely on speaking terms.
"I really had fears for my life at some stages," Waikato man Hamill said on Holmes last night, describing revelations in his book on the crossing, The Naked Rower, which goes on sale today.
"It may have been paranoia, but I wondered whether Phil was going to throw me overboard at one stage. That's how bad things got."
Stubbs, an Auckland policeman, died when the light plane he was flying dived into a West Auckland beach in December 1998.
The two did not speak to each other for three days when they were about three-quarters of the way from Tenerife to Barbados.
Hamill, from the Waikato, told the Herald he had great trouble talking to anyone about his feelings after the crossing, but found putting them down in writing "therapeutic."
"It's not a case of me having a go at Phil just because he's dead now and can't have a go back at me, and I didn't do it to sell books," he said.
"It's me being honest about how I felt. For all I know, Phil may have feared that I was going to kill him."
He said the duo had been patching up their rocky relationship, and were on the way to being "best mates" when Stubbs died.
Rower feared mate would kill
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