Consultant Beth Murphy completes world record Atlantic crossing
When Jess Smiles and Beth Murphy embarked on a cross-Atlantic voyage from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean, they were just aiming to give “a good showing” against the other teams participating in the World’s Toughest Row. But somewhere in the middle of the ocean, the pair realised they were on the brink of making history.
“We were very focussed on rowing our best” said Murphy, a principal consultant at sustainability advisory ERM. “But about half way across we realised that not only were we leading the women’s race, but we were on track for the world record. Naturally we started pushing even harder!”
The World’s Toughest Row is an annual race, which sees rowing teams cross the Atlantic ocean from La Gomera, in the Canary Islands, to Antigua. The 2025 edition saw an international field of 43 teams, including 9 all-women teams, make the 3,000-mile crossing.
In the end, Murphy and Smiles – who were rowing in support of surf-therapy charity The Wave Project – completed the journey in an astonishing 38 days, 12 hours and 18 minutes. That was more than enough to win the race – but even more incredibly, it surpassed the previous women’s pairs world record by almost a full week.
While both are experienced club rowers, neither Murphy nor Smiles have competed in ocean rowing, sailing or other sea sports before. But while other teams opted to hire trainers to boost their fitness, and weather routers to help them find the best wind and currents, the duo opted to make the journey unsupported – and somehow surpassed that professional help.
It is still not entirely clear to Murphy and Smiles exactly what was the X-factor in their golden passage – but it may at least partially relate to the route they picked. According to Murphy, the pair made “a brave early decision to row further south than the rest of the race fleet”. While this meant “we actually rowed more miles than any other leading boat”, it may have helped them to pick up “some better winds to compensate for the longer distance”.
Smiles offered another possibility. While it “would be easy to say we got lucky with the wind and the waves,” she noted that “everyone had pretty much the same conditions so there must have been something else going on”. Possibly, while the duo lacked ocean experience, “being good technical rowers – albeit on British rivers” made the difference.
Either way, the successful row saw them surpass a 40-day ‘Holy Grail’ for women in cross-Atlantic rowing, likened by some to the four minute mile in running that was famously breached in 1954. In the end, Smiles and Murphy crossed the finish line in Antigua 36 hours inside this barrier.
Rowing through the day and night, with maximum three hour breaks for sleep, they had planned to stop only for wildlife. Other boats had close encounters with whales, dolphins and turtles, but the pair saw almost nothing – leading race director Carsten Olsen to joke that, “They were clearly too fast for the whales.”
