The Atlantic Dash presents “The Spirit of the Dash” award
In partnership with Elliot Brown Watches – official timekeeper of the Atlantic Dash Ocean Rowing Regatta
What is The Spirit of The Dash award?
The name “Atlantic Dash” leads many people to believe this event is a race, but The Dash is not designed to be a race, it isn’t about being the fastest or the strongest. It is about the spirit of adventure. It is about everyone working together to achieve a common goal – to safely and successfully row across the Atlantic Ocean. It is about the sense of community for everyone involved in the event.
Because it’s not a race, there are no prizes for coming first, but that doesn’t mean there are no prizes at all!
Elliot Brown – the official timekeeper for the Atlantic Dash – is a watch company that has a long history of supporting the adventure community, as well as the organisations that look after this community in their time of need, such as Mountain Search and Rescue and the RNLI, both of which Elliot Brown have created bespoke watches for and donated a percentage of those watch sales to the cause.
Basically, they are a pretty awesome company. So awesome in fact, they wanted to somehow celebrate what taking part in the Atlantic Dash means. So we sat down together with them and came up with “The Spirit of the Dash” award.
The ethos behind the Atlantic Dash is taken from a poem called “The Dash” by Linda Ellis and one of the messages it delivers is one of living life to the fullest and helping others as you do. Because of this Elliot Brown wanted to award watches every year to the crew that most embodied these characteristics, not decided by us or them, but by all the crews taking part in The Dash that year.
So each year, when the crews have their first briefing in Lanzarote, we explain to them what the Spirit of the Dash represents and that the day before they set off across the Atlantic we will ask them to anonymously vote for which crew they think should receive the award. The crew who have the most votes will receive their watches a couple of hours before everybody pushes off to start their 3,200 mile ocean rowing challenge.
The people behind The Dash and Elliot Brown hope that receiving an award for basically being awesome, and the fact this award has been given to you by the very people that you have been living so closely alongside just before you all embark on one of the biggest adventures of your lives, will mean far more than just… being fast.
