NHS is now under severe pressure from the Covid pandemic and winter season.
However, two married doctors will be taking on the 40-day challenge of rowing 3,000 miles across Atlantic from Antigua in a charity effort.
Charlie Fleury (31), and Adam Baker (31) set off on December 12 from Canary Islands, along with 9 other couples in the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge.
Their experience will be used to research the different effects of ultra-endurance sports events on men and women.
A charity rowing challenge of 3,000 nautical miles from Antigua to the Atlantic is a 40-day effort by two married doctors.
These doctors are part of the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital’s accident and emergency section.
Due to their obligations during the pandemic they were obliged to delay the trip by one year. On December 19, there were 30, Covid inpatients out of 2,556 at the hospital.
Miss Fleury said ahead of their adventure, in which they hope to raise £100,000: ‘The Covid pandemic pushed the race back a year for us as we stepped up our work in A&E. It has been incredibly hard to keep momentum going despite being so mentally fatigued with work pressures, but what good practice to prepare for this ultra-endurance challenge.’
Miss Fleury had the idea for the challenge after camping on a frozen lake in Norway as part of her master’s course in extreme medicine at Exeter University.
These doctors are part of the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital’s accident and emergency section.
After her initial seasickness, she persuaded her husband to participate. Mr Baker said he was ‘looking forward to pushing through our perceived mental barriers and taking on the extremes of the ocean’.
He added: ‘We will be so remote and constantly exposed to the elements. This will also enable us to look at the female and male trends in exactly the same race conditions and learn more about this area of research where there are huge gaps in real-time data.’
The couple, whose previous longest row together was just five days, hope to raise cash for various organisations including Devon Air Ambulance, the RD&E charity which supports the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust, the RNLI and mental health charity Mind.
Their boat – named Percy – consists of a sleeping cabin about a third of the size of a telephone box. Miss Fleury, Mr Baker and Miss Fleury were trained on how to use a manual water pumps in case their electric pumps fail.
She convinced her husband, despite the fact that he had suffered seasickness in the past, to join. Mr Baker said he was ‘looking forward to pushing through our perceived mental barriers and taking on the extremes of the ocean’