Rowing: Women rowers simply oarsome!

After rowing 3000 nautical miles, most of it stark naked, all our girl rowers wanted was to slip into cocktail frocks and feel feminine again, writes SUZANNE McFADDEN.

Two slinky cocktail dresses were waiting in Barbados when Jude Ellis and Steph Brown finished rowing the 3000 miles across the Atlantic. After rowing stark naked for most of their 51 days at sea, the two New Zealand women were itching to slip into the elegant gowns. They wanted to feel feminine again. They wanted to wear them to the dock at Port St Charles every time another crew finished, because they had a statement to make.

"We want to show the other guys that we are real women. And that a couple of chicks beat them!" crowed Ellis.

Ellis and Brown earned their right to boast when they were the fourth boat home in the Transatlantic Challenge. They arrived at the Caribbean island at dawn on Tuesday morning, welcomed by a haka, led by Brown's boyfriend Steve Westlake, who had won the race with Matt Goodman a week earlier.

The only all-women crew in the race, Ellis and Brown beat 30 other rowboats crewed by men. Some of them are not expected to finish until February.

Two Belgian brothers, both Olympic rowers, finished less than a day ahead of the women's crew, but the men were blithering wrecks when they crossed the finish line - half-starving and unable to even stand up. They admitted to having been driven the entire race by the fear of being beaten by "two girls".

In contrast, Ellis and Brown were yahooing, singing and cracking jokes when their Atlantic adventure finally came to an end. And that was the way it had been for more than seven weeks, and almost 3000 nautical miles, on the high seas.

Before the race began in October, Brown - an English-born multisport athlete and school teacher and Ellis a former women's rugby player and New Zealand rower - had a goal to finish in the top 10. "Secretly, I knew we would beat some boys," admitted Ellis. "But never this many!"

It was important to both women that they were not seen as two muscular, unfeminine, mid-30s athletes - so important that they stopped before they reached the finish line and shaved their legs. They pride themselves on being female and having just become the first all-women's crew to row one of the world's oceans.

It is hard to compare this couple's feat with any other sporting endeavour, but apparently fewer people have rowed the Atlantic than have climbed Mt Everest. The race record-holder, fellow New Zealander Rob Hamill, rates their performance as one of the outstanding achievements by any New Zealander "and indeed, by any women in world sport."

"In women's sport I find it difficult to compare their performance to any other sporting success our country has ever achieved," he says. "If anyone has any analogies that relate to a fourth-placed women's crew racing 35 men's crews in one of the most physically demanding sports known, please let me know."

Maybe it helps to understand what these two extraordinary women have just put themselves through. They have spent seven weeks in a boat just seven metres long, with nothing to look at but each other and an infinite expanse of blue.

They were terrorised by rough seas, which drove them both back into their tiny cabin for 12 hours straight - the only time they stopped rowing - and were then frustrated by a teasing headwind which refused to help them, sometimes nudging them backwards. Every two hours, at the end of a shift, they lay their heads on greasy pillows ringing with sweat, and forced down the loathed freeze-dried meals (a lot of which they threw overboard).

Their skin peeled off like "bark from a tree", and their shoes literally fell off their feet from wear and tear - even though they had nowhere to walk.

They felt the might of the Atlantic, breaking two oars in the first two days, and Brown was knocked off her seat by a rogue wave. She then suffered the humiliation of chafing her backside raw and having to phone a doctor in Hamilton for emergency advice.

Despite their best intentions there was no room for modesty. Their toilet was "bucket and chuck-it" and they eventually had to give up on conditioning their hair.

They carved their way through Ellis' chocolate rations early in the piece - she caught Brown "stealing" chocolate bars out of her bag while she was sleeping. For some reason, the afghan biscuits tasted like apoxy resin.

They kept sane by eating jet plane lollies whenever there was something to celebrate, like making it to the 20th parallel - the halfway point of the race. They used their satellite phone to ring their friends, family and workmates in New Zealand and England every day, a luxury that the winners of the last race, Hamill and the late Phil Stubbs, never had. And they laughed at everything. Their friends and workmates say both women have a wicked sense of humour, which would have carried them through the toughest times.

Ellis admitted there were more hilarious times than hellish - but the pair had their difficult moments. Before the race began, both women were struggling to get along and each secretly worried that they would clash on the boat, where there was nowhere to hide.

"In hindsight I can see why. I was coming up to Auckland for eight weekends in a row, because I couldn't afford to quit my job in Wellington," said Ellis, who works in coaching development for the Hillary Commission. "I was very tired and stressed, and trying to get to know this chick. It was just like an arranged marriage.

"We were really struggling in that build-up time. I was worried that we couldn't cope with each other for 50 days at sea, and she was thinking the same. But we both thought about it a lot, and when we finally got out there, everything was really primo.

"Well, we had our moments, but they were fleeting. We'd stand in the middle of the boat and it would be all gone just like that.

"The last few days were the most testing. We were starting to irritate each other, but we both recognised it, so we just concentrated on finishing."

Brown and Ellis did not even know each other before this campaign. Their partnership came about when Brown, who was living in Auckland with Westlake, went looking for a rowing partner. An adventure freak, she had come to New Zealand to be a whitewater rafting guide. She also worked as a heli-ski guide, a college lecturer, a camera operator and a pharmaceuticals rep.

Steve Westlake, the national single sculls rowing champion, had decided to do this race with Phil Stubbs, before he was killed in a plane crash in 1998. He then joined forces with Hamill, leaving one race boat free.

Steph Brown, 34, had never rowed before - but as her friend, Paralympian Gavin Foulsham, says: "Stevie is never one to turn down a challenge; she's not afraid to take a risk." When she asked Hamill if he knew of anyone "half-mad enough" to row the Atlantic with her, he suggested Ellis.

Ellis has an abundance of natural sporting talent. She won six gold medals at the 1993 national rowing championships, before giving the sport away and taking up rugby, playing lock for the New Zealand women's rugby team for three seasons. Then she returned to rowing and a place on the New Zealand women's eight trying to qualify for the Sydney Olympics.

"Before she went back to rowing she was a great party girl - always the last one to bed," said her Hillary Commission workmate Sue Chalmers. "Her idea of training was pushing people down Courtney Place in a shopping trolley.

"Then when she got serious she gave up the beers and was always the first person to go home. She's so committed, so focused."

It took Ellis a while to return Brown's answerphone messages, but over a pizza, she agreed to give the Atlantic crossing a go.

Back on land, the pair feel a little in limbo. "There's a feeling of satisfaction, but we don't really know if people back at home know what we've done," said Ellis.

"It wasn't easy. But then again, we keep hearing these hard-luck stories from the others still out there, saying it's so hard and so scary, and the water tastes bad. And we're like, hello? Sure there were frightening times, when huge waves were coming at us, but we just got on with it and rowed.

"Some guy came up to me when we got to shore and asked to see my hands. He said, 'You haven't rowed the Atlantic, you've got no blisters.' I wanted to say, 'Come a little closer, mate, and say that ... "'

Brown is already planning to tackle next year's Coast to Coast (she finished fifth in 1999), but Ellis reckons her sporting days are now fulfilled.

"Would I do this again? ABSOLUTELY NOT!" she screamed down the phone.

"We joked about it all the time, though - things like, 'Next time we do this, we'll take disposable pillowcases'.

"The thing is, it's all worth it when you get here. What an experience! We've just rowed a whole ocean, and we did it in style.

"I can sit here, look out at that ocean and say, 'I just rowed that bugger!"'