18 Hours a Day: How Does He Actually Rest?

It's the question everyone asks first: if you're rowing solo, unsupported, across the Atlantic — when do you sleep?

The honest answer, from Marc's 2024/25 crossing, is: not much, and never for long.

The routine

Marc rowed an average of 18 hours a day. That left roughly one hour off the oars for food, water, and washing — and whatever was left for sleep. Rather than one solid block of rest, he slept in short bursts of around 40 minutes at a time, drifting in and out of deep sleep between rowing shifts.

There's no version of this that sounds comfortable. It isn't meant to. It's what unsupported ocean rowing actually requires — there's no crew to hand the oars to, no scheduled downtime built into the race.

Hygiene wasn't optional

Saltwater is brutal on skin that never fully dries. A daily wash was non-negotiable, not for comfort but to manage the damage — Marc developed bleeding welts from constant salt exposure and friction. By day five, he'd stopped wearing trousers entirely and rowed the rest of the crossing without them, purely to reduce the chafing.

How he made 4,980km feel manageable

Perhaps the most useful detail from the whole crossing: Marc didn't think about the row as one continuous 4,980km distance. He tracked progress in 500-metre splits, using a laminated chart that converted elapsed time into speed. That turned an overwhelming, open-ended ocean into a series of small, trackable goals — row this split, check the number, row the next one.

It's a small mental trick with a big effect. Instead of measuring the whole crossing against how far there was left to go, he measured each stretch against itself — and let 43 days of small wins add up to one finish line.

Why it matters going into 2027

Rest, hygiene, and pacing sound like the unglamorous side of an ocean row — but they're arguably as important as physical strength or boat-handling skill. Marc has already proven this exact routine works over 43 days at sea. Expect the same disciplined approach as he builds back toward December 2027.