On December 12, 2025, Team Seneca Navy embarked on their 4,828-kilometre nonstop transatlantic race as participants in the World’s Toughest Row — one of the world’s most prestigious and demanding rowing races. But as Usain Bolt once remarked, “The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in determination.”
Fuelled by their strong determination to meet the challenge and to raise funds for youth-related projects in their communities, Anthony Carella, Moritz Marchart, Ryan Mulflur and David Ranney succeeded in rowing across the Atlantic, from San Sebastian de La Gomera, Spain, to Antigua in the Caribbean, over the course of 5 weeks.
The four-man team completed the race in precisely 35 days, 2 hours, and 45 minutes. The race, along with the entire years’-long experience of training and fundraising, with all its difficult conditions overcome and lessons learned, was instrumental in establishing an understanding in the teammates of the beauty of determination and common purpose. This has been an extraordinary journey for the young men, filled with achievement, resilience and discoveries, with memories to cherish for a lifetime and lessons learned along the way.
The adventure has also evoked a plethora of emotions. Spending time away from “normal” life led them to see life in a fresh light, they say — everything seemed calm and achievable, although there was always that element of missing their families.
“It was surreal to fall into the arms of our loved ones onshore at Nelson’s Dockyard” in Antigua, says Ranney. “The weight of three years of fundraising, logistics, physical training and mental preparation lifted off of us as our senses were overwhelmed with the steadiness of land, the smell of plants, and the sound of people.”
“I also learned that relationships are the key to success,” says Carella. “If it were not for the time and effort we put in as a team to understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses, I do not think we would have made it to the finish line in the manner that we did.”
Adds Mulfur, “Most importantly, I realized the row itself doesn’t make us great. It reveals what’s already there. Now the responsibility is to live in a way that’s worthy of that knowledge when nobody’s looking. The ocean showed me that the mind, body and spirit can adapt to almost anything.”
