After 81 gruelling days travelling 3 000 miles from the Canaries, sports psychologist Dr Karen Weekes was given a champion’s welcome as the first Irish woman to row solo across the Atlantic when she arrived in the Bridgetown Shallow Draught just before 7 last night.
The tuk band was out-voiced by over three dozen singing and screaming Irish visitors who had taken the much more comfortable journey to Barbados to welcome their compatriot.
Among the group was Weekes’ sister Lynda Weekes, who travelled out on the media boat and screamed her delight for the entire final mile of the journey.
“This is incredible. It was an amazing crossing which I expected would have been about 70 days, with me personally looking for 64. But the trade winds never came in and I was battling the north-east trade winds and I have slept an hour and a half in the last three days and I have been rowing non-stop the last three days,” Weekes told Weekend Sport. (KB)
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