12 March 2018

“I was going about my day at the gym when this crazy lady, who was looking at my heart rate monitor, came up to me and said ‘I’m going to row the Atlantic next year, do you want to join me?”

Holly and Phil interview the Atlantic Ladies on This Morning

This was the story Atlantic rower and SaTH Midwife Sharon Magrath told Philip Schofield and Holly Willoughby on This Morning when asked how she ended up joining Dianne Carrington and Elaine Theaker in the crew that rowed over 3,000 miles in 60 days.

The 54-year-old, who returned to Shropshire this week, continued: “My jaw just dropped and I said yeah.”

The three ladies, commonly known as the Atlantic Ladies, appeared on the popular ITV1 television show on Tuesday morning and told stories of threats to their life, supermoons and sore bottoms.

The ladies crossed the Atlantic, from Tenerife to Antigua, in 60 days but faced their biggest challenge in the last 24-hours when they capsized twice in the space of 30 minutes—when Sharon was on the oars.

When asked how they’d have reacted if the ‘scariest moment of their lives’ had happened earlier into the challenge, Sharon replied: “We would have been terrified, we were terrified, we don’t know how we would have continued.”

There were other challenges too, Sharon and her friends told ITV1 viewers.

“Bum sores were a big problem, we had to dry them out in the air to remove the sea salt as it would act like a cheese grater,” they reminisced.

“Sleep deprivation, a lack of interaction with people and eating was also difficult.”

But there was also many, many highlights during the trip of a life-time.

“The supermoon was amazing, as were the dolphins and the green back turtles, “ they enthused when asked about the best moments.

And the fun doesn’t stop now the row is complete. Plans for a musical out their Atlantic Crossing have been revealed.

They told Holly and Phillip: “We sang a lot along the way and made a few songs up too, so hopefully some of those will feature.”

The musical will be shown in Shrewsbury—the hometown of Elaine and Dianne (also a former SaTH employee) – and Abergavveny, the hometown of Elaine.

When asked at the end of the interview if they have any more major challenges planned, all three just laughed and remained very non-committal. Watch this space! But for now, well done once more from everyone at SaTH!