A year ago this month—on January 21, 2023, to be exact—locals Ben Towill and Charlie Layton rowed into the calm Caribbean waters of Antigua’s English Harbour. By now, you may have heard how Towill and Layton (aka “The Dreamboats”) rowed 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean over the course of 40 days—not only completing the Herculean feat, but securing first place in the Talisker Whiskey Atlantic Challenge, a competition dubbed “the world’s toughest row.”
What you may not know is that the duo’s success on the voyage was not only a product of their strength and preparation (they trained five to six days a week for two years), but also due to a shared commitment to levity and joy. At the mens’ feet during the row sat three bumper stickers, one of which read: “A happy boat is a fast boat” (see the sidebar for the other two). One morning that philosophy looked like Layton belting Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” at the top of his lungs. Other times, it was raving about their dehydrated pouched meals. “You can make that a joyful experience or you could make it like, ‘Oh my God, I have to eat that food again,’” says Towill, who is the CEO, director, and (along with his wife, Kate) founder of design and hospitality firm Basic Projects. “If you’re having fun in life and you’re choosing to find joy in the most challenging moments, then everything is easier.”
And there was no shortage of challenging moments throughout the row. They grappled with a broken rudder (thanks to a collision with a marlin), as well as a nerve-racking delay of their food supply before they departed (though the provisions eventually arrived just in the nick of time, they had already problem-solved by stocking up on nonperishables at a convenience store on the Canary Islands, where the row began). There was also a monstrous storm that led to their boat capsizing in the middle of the night.
“It was honestly a relief when it happened,” says Layton, who works as executive chef at Basic Kitchen. They’d been watching the storm grow and grow—their concern about capsizing increasing proportionately with the swells. Towill agrees, adding, “When things calm down and you’ve gone through that sort of capsize, it’s like, ‘Okay, wow, I feel really confident and relieved, because I faced a fear that I was sort of paralyzed by beforehand.’”
Fostering a friendly relationship with fear is among the pair’s top takeaways from the row, and one they say they’ve since applied to all aspects of their lives, from having difficult conversations to facing intimidating situations at work. “You don’t overcome fear, you just get braver to face it,” says Layton.
SET YOUR MIND
“We’ve got mantras coming up all over the place,” laughs Towill. Here are a few more phrases The Dreamboats relied on during their journey, which can help you approach goal-setting this year and beyond
■ Execution. Accountability. Enjoyment. This was Towill and Layton’s mutually agreed upon mission statement for the row, which they also had printed as a bumper sticker for their boat. “It revolved around a few things: having fun, going as fast as you could, and just giving it everything you had when it was your turn to row,” says Towill. “We’ve trained, we’ve rowed on Sunday evenings when you just want to be having dinner with your family. But we put that work in, and so we were going to deliver on those two years of training in those 40 days.”
■ Be where your feet are. This was the third phrase the pair had printed, reminding them to soak up the all-encompassing beauty and once-in-a-lifetime wonder of the trip when physical exhaustion set in or when their minds drifted to what they were missing on land (like Christmas morning with their families).
■ Don’t give something up; take something up. For Layton, preparing for the row prompted him to quit smoking (something he’d wanted to do for six years, he says), cut back on drinking, and lose about 70 pounds. “When you set such a big task, it’s like, ‘Okay, I want to do this to put a flag in my timeline of what I can achieve,’” he says. “And then you have to work backward from that. Let me tick off all the little goals I’ve been trying to do, because the bigger goal is where I’m heading.”
Look for a documentary about the duo’s epic journey to release this month; in the meantime watch the trailer HERE.
Dreamboats Trailer from Verity Films on Vimeo.
