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A pair of women broke the world record for the fastest row across the Pacific Ocean — by nine days.
Jessica Oliver, 32, and Charlotte Harris, 33, set out to compete in the World’s Toughest Row Pacific Challenge on June 8, 2024, from Monterey, California, with the goal of rowing 2,800 miles to Kauai, Hawaii.
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Thirty-seven days, 11 hours and 43 minutes later, Oliver and Harris arrived in Hawaii having broken the world record for fastest row by female pairs, the fastest row by overall pairs. They were the first team in the competition to row both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans successfully.
ALL-WOMEN ROWING TEAM BREAKS WORLD RECORD IN RACE ACROSS PACIFIC OCEAN: ‘BEST DECISION EVER’
Oliver, from Gloucestershire, England, spoke with Fox News Digital from Hawaii, just days after crossing the aquatic finish line, to discuss what led to the major milestone moment.
“We knew nothing about rowing. We knew nothing about the ocean,” she said about the pair’s experience prior to rowing the Atlantic Ocean a few years back. (See the video at the top of this article.)
Charlotte Harris and Jessica Oliver, pictured above, rowed from California to Hawaii in 37 days. (World’s Toughest Row)
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Oliver met Harris, who’s from Hampshire, England, while in school at Cardiff University in Wales.
The two were in the hockey club, and Oliver said they became best friends almost instantly.
“Do you know when you meet someone [and] you’re like, ‘We are kindred spirits?’”
Today, almost 15 years later, the Salesforce consultant by day said she and Harris are nearly tied at the hip and love to compete – just like the old days.
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“In 2020, we signed up for something called the Talisker Whiskey Atlantic Challenge, having never rowed before,” she said, adding, “Charlotte [Harris] worked for a company who sponsored it… and she said to me, ‘Do you want to do this challenge?’”
Oliver said the pair had just completed a boxing challenge together and were looking for another challenge to join in an effort to raise money for Shelter & Women’s Aid — a national campaign for homeless people.
The pair competed in the Atlantic Ocean rowing competition two years ago. (World’s Toughest Row)
For two years after, the pair campaigned and prepared for the challenge — rowing 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean from the Canary Islands to Antigua.
When the pair arrived 45 days later, they had beaten the world record for the fastest female row of the Atlantic.
Oliver said she and Harris were thrilled with their success and felt like they had checked the “adventure” box.
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She recalled, “Six months later, the race organizers opened up the Pacific Challenge, and we sat at our desks going, ‘It wasn’t that bad, was it? The Atlantic? We could do it again?’”
Oliver and Harris ultimately signed up to row the World’s Toughest Row Pacific Ocean Challenge and trained five to six days a week for two years leading up to the race.
Oliver said the pair went through a few different challenges they weren’t expecting along the way. (World’s Toughest Row)
Oliver said, however, that nothing could have prepared them for the experience they had rowing the Pacific Ocean.
“The first 500 miles off America is extremely challenging from a weather perspective,” she said, adding that the pair’s nearly 23-foot-long boat lost its automatic steering within the first week.
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Due to strong winds from Canada and roughly 13-feet-tall waves, Oliver said the training the pair had planned went out the window for the first period of time.
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Typically, she said, one person would row for two hours and then take a break and either sleep or eat inside one of the two cabins onboard for two hours — then repeat.
Oliver said she and Harris have been friends for 15 years — and they know each other to their core. (World’s Toughest Row)
She said this plan was ineffective for the majority of the row due to the uncertainty of the ocean and the race they were in with another team.
“By the end of it, when we were really neck and neck with the other female paddlers. We were rowing between 16 and 20 hours a day. It was just a case of going down and sleeping whenever you could,” she recalled.
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One of the scariest encounters, Oliver recalled, was when the pair nearly collided with what appeared to be an oil tanker.
While the rowers were attempting to fix their automatic steering, Oliver said their systems didn’t alert them about a large boat nearby — and they were shocked to look up and see the boat coming directly toward them.
“This boat is massive, we are tiny, and we don’t have any steering,” she recalled thinking while panicking in the moment.
The pair beat the previous female pair’s world record by nine days. (World’s Toughest Row)
Oliver said the oil tanker came within 30 feet of their rowboat — saying it was “so close to just completely obliterating us.”
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After the grueling 37 days of fighting to make it to the finish line, Oliver said crossing it was an “unbelievable” feeling.
She said, “We crossed the finish line, and it had been so stressful and had been quite traumatic, that we were like, “OK, we’ve done what we wanted.’”
Oliver said maybe they will try something a bit calmer for their next challenge.
“The real thing for us that was the cherry on top was actually winning the female class,” she explained, adding, “We beat all the teams of threes and fours, and we came second in the whole race only 24 hours behind a team of four military men.”
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As for what’s next for the pair, Oliver said maybe they will try something a bit calmer for their next challenge.
The average crossing time for all crew sizes across the Pacific Ocean is 62 days, according to World’s Toughest Row.
Southwest winds are pushing wildfire smoke from California into Northern Utah this week.
“We’re almost completely surrounded by wildfires,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Alex DeSmet.
Wildfires in Oregon and Idaho are also contributing to the hazy skies.
“It looks like that source will shift once the wind direction shifts,” DeSmet explained, “but the net effect is little change on the concentrations of smoke across northern Utah.”
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The wildfire smoke will likely remain through Wednesday.
(National Weather Service) On Monday Southwest winds push wildfire smoke from California across Northern Utah.
Later in the week and into the weekend the winds will be very light.
“The good news is that it would slow down the transport of additional smoke,” DeSmet said. But that also means the existing smoke could stay trapped in the Salt Lake Valley under a building inversion.
Ozone production is also contributing to the poor air quality. For the next few days, DeSmet says he will be limiting time outside. People who are sensitive to air quality should do the same.
Alma Powell, a civic leader and widow of retired Gen. Colin L. Powell, the first Black national security adviser, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and secretary of state, died July 28 at a hospital in Alexandria, Va. She was 86.
Peggy Cifrino, former chief aide to Colin Powell, who died in 2021 at 84, confirmed the death but did not provide the cause. She moved to Alexandria from her longtime home in McLean, Va., two years ago.
In a career mostly as a military spouse, Mrs. Powell also was a children’s book author and served on the board of America’s Promise Alliance, which focuses on civic engagement, education and workforce development.
Shemarried Powell, then a lieutenant in the Army, shortly before he left for his first deployment to Vietnam in 1962. Her husband rose to the rank of general, becoming the first Black national security adviser in 1987 and the youngest and first Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1989.
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He retired from the military in 1993, was appointed secretary of state by President George W. Bush in 2001 and spent four often-beleaguered years in that job amid the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
The Powells moved more than 20 times during Colin Powell’s decades of active-duty service, and Mrs. Powell took a leading role helping other military families prepare for similar adjustments with their families. She was also a member of the Arlington Ladies, a group that attend funerals of service members at Arlington National Cemetery.
After her husband reentered civilian life, Mrs. Powell began to focus her energies more on education issues and improving children’s lives.
The couple were key to launching America’s Promise Alliance in 1997, and Mrs. Powell held several positions on its board, including her most recent post of chair emeritus. She also wrote two children’s books to support the mission of the organization, called “America’s Promise” and “My Little Red Wagon,” aimed at encouraging children to give back to their communities, according to publisher HarperCollins.
From 1989 to 2000, she was chair of the National Council of the Best Friends Foundation, which aims to improve the lives of young girls.
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Mrs. Powell, who was appointed to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts board during Bill Clinton’s presidency, was also picked to be on an advisory board for historically Black colleges and universities in 2010 by President Barack Obama. She sat on many other boards and won service awards.
Alma Vivian Johnson, the eldest of two daughters, was born in Birmingham, Ala., on Oct. 27, 1937. Her father was the principal of one of Birmingham’s Black high schools, and her mother ran a day care, according to the obituary sent by Cifrino.
In 1957 she received a bachelor’s degree in speech and drama at Fisk University, a historically Black college in Nashville. She returned to her hometown and briefly hosted an afternoon radio show that played music and discussed household tips.
She soon relocated to Boston, where she studied speech pathology and audiology at Emerson College and worked for the Boston Guild for the Hard of Hearing by providing hearing tests, fitting veterans with hearing aids and teaching the deaf to read lips, according to the family obit. She was set up on a blind date with Colin Powell in 1961.
She was reluctant to go out with a soldier and told The Washington Post she purposefully overdid her makeup and put on an unflattering dress. But when she met him, the general wrote in his memoir, she decided he looked “like a little lost twelve-year-old” and changed both her mind and her dress. Colin Powell, meanwhile, wrote that he was “mesmerized by a pair of luminous eyes, an unusual shade of green.”
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They married the next year, at the First Congregational Church in her hometown, and she did not complete her graduate education.
Survivors include three children, Michael, Linda and Annemarie; four grandchildren; and a great-grandson. Michael Powell, a lobbyist, served as Federal Communications Commission chairman under President George W. Bush.
Mrs. Powell supported her husband throughout his military career, but she was opposed to him running for president, The Post reported, and despite entreaties from leaders of both parties, he said he was unenthusiastic about campaigning for high office. He also acknowledged his wife’s struggle with clinical depression in 1995 after the diagnosis became public amid heated discussion of his political prospects.
Depression, he said in 1995, “is very easily controlled with proper medication, just as my blood pressure is sometimes under control with proper medication. … When the story broke, we confirmed it immediately, and I hope that people who read that story who think they might be suffering from depression make a beeline to the doctor.”
The Post’s Bob Woodward asked the former general a few months before his death, “Who was the greatest man, woman or person you have ever known?”
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“It’s Alma Powell,” he said. “She was with me the whole time. We’ve been married 58 years. And she put up with a lot. She took care of the kids when I was, you know, running around. And she was always there for me and she’d tell me, ‘That’s not a good idea.’ She was usually right.”
The Ancient and Honorable Order of E Clampus Vitus is a fraternal organization founded in the 1800s, in part as a mockery of other societies of the day. The way music artists today consider they’ve “made it” when Weird Al parodies their songs, being lampooned by the Order of E Clampus has evolved into a badge of honor.
There’s a method to the madness of these self-described “Clampers,” who also are dedicated to the study and preservation of the heritage of the American West. The group itself says it’s not sure if it’s a “historical drinking society” or a “drinking historical society.”
Whatever they’re drinking, the Lander-based Wyoming chapter of the organization — South Pass 1867 — will do something entirely serious Saturday when it dedicates the cemetery at the historic ghost town of Gebo. Many of those graves hold children who died in the coal mining town.
While dedicated to rejecting rational thought, the Clampers’ mission to preserve history is a serious one, said local Vice President Ben Jackson.
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“We really want to highlight and preserve to the best of our ability the sites of historical significance throughout the state of Wyoming,” Jackson said. “In this way, no matter what the condition of the sites may be as the years progress, there’s at least some type of marker that talks about what happened at these sites.”
The ’67ers, as they call themselves, do not want future generations to forget what the hard-working men and women went through in Wyoming’s early decades.
When people visit sites the society dedicates, the plaques highlight the trials and tribulations these early pioneers endured and overcome, such as the people of the coal mining town of Gebo.
Gebo, A Distant Memory
Gebo was once a thriving coal camp in the sagebrush with more than 2,000 miners and their families.
Located north of Thermopolis, this town was built by the Owl Creek Coal Co., and its heyday was in the 1910s and 1920s. It had a hospital, the largest high school in the region, a tennis court, company store, boarding houses, paved streets, sidewalks and company housing.
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The coal miners formed bands, baseball teams and held boxing matches. Its popular Labor Day celebrations were attended by thousands of people from around the Big Horn Basin.
As the coal mines closed, the miners and their families scattered across America. Some found work in mines in other states such as Virginia while others couldn’t bear to leave Wyoming.
They moved their families into neighboring towns of Lucerne, Worland and Thermopolis. The company homes were sold and moved out of Gebo, the mines closed up and only a handful of families remained until the last person moved out in the 1980s.
In the 1970s, the BLM bulldozed the remaining abandoned buildings, leaving behind foundations, relics of the mine and a small cemetery.
E Clampus Vitus will host its public dedication at this cemetery. Many of the small graves holding children have captured their imagination and hearts.
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“You go out there and you look at these headstones and you see these infants that died very close to the day they were born,” Jackson said. “It makes you wonder, ‘My God, what happened to these babies?’ Then you find out that it was either the Spanish flu or the diphtheria that ran through there like wildfire, and there’s nothing out there that talks about that. Their story will be lost if we don’t do something.”
When Jackson first proposed the site as an E Clampus project, many of the members, most based in Fremont County, had not even heard of Gebo. He took them to the deserted mining town in March and showed them around.
Once they stepped back into time, touring the sage and hills that once teemed with people, the members didn’t need any more convincing. The Clampers were determined to put up a marker in memory of the town and the people who once eked out their livings underground.
Remember All Of Wyoming
It’s part of the Wyoming chapter’s goal to branch out to put up markers around the state.
“We’ve done a tremendous amount of work up in the South Pass and Atlantic City area,” Jackson said. “But now we’re looking to branch out into other areas of the state. Next year, we are planning on dedicating the Irma Hotel at Cody.”
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The chapter also wants to expand membership and open new chapters throughout the Cowboy State. The goal is to continue preserving the history of Wyoming.
“We were originally started by miners for miners and to take care of the widows and orphans of miners that died in the mines, whether it be the gold mines or the coal mines,” Jackson said. “Obviously, that has gone by the wayside. We are now a fraternal order that’s dedicated to the preservation of sites of historical significance that is predominantly centered around the Gold Rush era.”
E Clampus Vitus was founded in the 1800s in West Virginia and brought to California during the Gold Rush. It exploded in the mining camps and brought levity into the lives of those hard-working miners.
“It was started by miners who couldn’t get into the other fraternal orders of the day such as the Freemasons and the Odd Fellows due to their social status,” Jackson said. “Those guys would look down their noses at the miners due to their rowdy nature. So, the minors wanted to start their own order and social club, if you will. E Clampus Vitus was born out of that, and they had a lot of fun with it.”
The miners would mock the other orders by making up strange rules and over-exaggerating their traditions. Members of this new society of fun-loving miners had been known to pull such antics as pinning can lids to their vests and walking in town parades.
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They would march alongside the other societies that would be decked out in all their fancy regalia.
In an ironic twist, as the order became more popular, the movers and shakers of the 1800s decided to join to get the votes of the miners. E Clampus Vitus grew to include governors, doctors, lawyers and senators. Famous Clampers include Ronald Reagan and Samuel Clemens.
“Mark Twain actually heard of the famous frog jump of Calaveras County at a ECV meeting,” Jackson said. “There’s just a lot of history and accomplishments in our society. Another example is that the first mention of the gold strike in California was from a telegram written by a brother clamper.”
As Jackson and his fellow clampers continue to preserve Wyoming’s history, you can bet they will be doing it with a smile and lots of humor.
The public presentation of the Gebo coal camp new marker begins at 11a.m. Saturday at the Gebo Cemetery.
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To reach the ghost town and cemetery, drive south from Worland or north from Thermopolis on U.S. Highway 20 until you hit the town of Kirby.
Turn west onto Sand Draw Road (Hot Springs County Road 18). When you hit a Y in the road after about 1.3 miles, bear left onto Hot Springs County Road 30.
Continue for another 1.3 miles until you hit the cemetery.
Contact Jackie Dorothy at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com
The South Pass 1867 chapter of the Ancient and Honorable Order of E Clampus Vitus based in Lander, Wyoming. (Courtesy Photo)
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.
