Bonnie Hancock

I reached out through about 10 degrees of separation.

I was put on to Sir Roger Battam.

He's one of the world's leading meteorologists.

He advises the super yacht captains, the sailors at the Olympics.

And he said, go clockwise.

There's the East Australian Current, which runs from the Great Barrier Reef down to Tasmania.

It pushes the warm water down.

He said, that'll give you a head start.

It's going to give you an advantage.

It's actually the current of Finding Nemo that the little turtles get in if that sounds familiar to anyone.

And it did.

By the time I got to Sydney, I was a week ahead of the record.

So it was following the East Australian current.

Could you feel that, that water under your skis?

Yeah, absolutely.

So as athletes, we talk about ease of paddling and it felt easy.

You know, I had the wind behind me that were northerly, thank goodness.

And my body was still conditioning at this stage.

You know, the furthest I'd paddled leading in was 20 kilometers in these sessions.

I didn't want to go in with niggles.