Rowing: Antarctic oarsman throws in the towel

Oliver Hicks is abandoning his bid to row round Antarctica. Photo / Amos Chapple

A British adventurer given 200,000 pounds ($504,000) by sponsors, including Google and Virgin, to build a state-of-the-art rowboat plans to land in New Zealand, abandoning his bid to row round Antarctica.

Oliver Hicks has been rowing for 83 days since leaving Tasmania and has not reached Stewart Island, where he planned to turn east and make the long haul across the Southern Ocean to South America.

He said on his website that progress had been too slow, partly because of the poor performance of his expensive boat, The Flying Carrot.

"It is with a heavy heart that I must tell you that we will be suspending the global row in New Zealand," he said.

"'The main reason is our incredibly poor progress.

"Now it still remains to make a safe landfall in NZ in the next few weeks before we can look at the way forward after what we will treat as a very useful sea trial."

He was about 300km west of Stewart Island after taking 80-plus days to row 3000km even though the straight-line distance from Tasmania to New Zealand is half that.

His original plan to row round Antarctica set a target of about 500 days' rowing, averaging 48km a day, with a winter layover from July to October on South Georgia beyond the Falkland Islands.

That voyage would take 22 months, but Hicks said that if he kept rowing at his current pace it would take five years.

"This poor progress is down to problems with the boat."

He was also concerned that this was the worst year on record for drift ice coming out of the Ross Sea and that icebergs more than 5km long were being reported.

His slow progress also meant he could not make even his fallback site for a winter break, Tierra del Fuego, at the tip of South America by July and "it is not recommend to winter in the deep south in any vessel - let alone a wee red rowing boat".

"It would be belligerence and folly to continue regardless into the deep south in our current state," he said.

"I am making for NZ where we will have a beer and then go back to the drawing board."

Hicks is unlikely to relaunch his record bid from New Zealand - he had to switch his January 25 launch from here to Tasmania at the last minute because maritime safety officials threatened to seize his boat.

Maritime New Zealand warned in January the plan posed an extreme risk to his safety and would jeopardise people involved in any rescue attempt.

Four years ago Hicks, then aged 23, became the first person to row solo eastbound across the North Atlantic - a 124-day trip in a secondhand boat - and remains the youngest to have rowed across any ocean.

- NZPA