As one of their sponsors, we are delighted to report that the Forget Me Knot crew of 3 have successfully crossed 7,000km of open Atlantic ocean in 65 days! Rowing 24hrs in all weather and high seas, the expedition was gruelling (read their blogs here )- but not in comparison to the daily challenges faced by many dementia carers. Leading the team was Johnnie Ball whose dad died three years ago, following a 15-year battle with dementia.  Having seen the pain dementia brings to families, Johnnie and two friends decided to embark on a mission to raise awareness and funding to help others facing a similar ordeal. 

Comments Johnnie: “The Dementia UK Admiral Nurse programme and helpline does incredible work to support families impacted by dementia.  By training and deploying highly specialised dementia nurses they fill the gaps which the NHS do not cover.  The Admiral Nurses provide care, support, advice and hope for tens of thousands of families across the UK.  But some families are not reached due to lack of funds of awareness.  To further increase the amazing impact of this charity, our goals were clear:

• Raise awareness for Dementia UK and the Admiral Nurse programme
• Raise a significant amount of funding for Dementia UK

Thanks to the support of all our sponsors we achieved our goals.”  

The campaign had great publicity, with a weekly slot on BBC 5Live Breakfast Show (5.9M listeners according to the BBC); almost 100,000 views on Ladbible and online coverage in the Metro (a follow up article is being written), WalesOnline (here and here), The South Wales Argus as well as print coverage in the South Wales Echo and Western Mail.  Johnnie emphasises that this type of publicity is critical to ensure those impacted by dementia are aware of the support that Dementia UK can offer and how it can help them.

Funds are still coming in and they estimate reaching £40-50k in clear funds for Dementia UK.  This kind of figure will pay for the running costs of a brand new Admiral Nurse service for around 40 weeks; or an Admiral Nurse to answer evening calls for almost 1.5 years on the Dementia Helpline.

Celebrating their result, the crew – Johnnie, Stef and Dirk commented: “We and Dementia UK are thrilled with this result.  It will mean thousands more people with dementia and their families will be reached by Dementia UK services.  In running a major campaign such as this it is all about the snowball effect of awareness and belief in the campaign.  Every time a new sponsor puts their name to the campaign and contributes to the cause the snowball gets a little bigger and rolls a little faster.”

Oceanographic data collection

All charitable funds will be donated to Dementia UK but as part of the expedition the crew also undertook oceanographic data collection in collaboration with the conservation and marine mammal research institution, SeaSearch, based in South Africa.  In close collaboration with SeaSearch and their technology partners they prototyped a new hydrophone technology to record underwater marine mammal communications, such as whale song and dolphin chatter. They say this will be used to better understand migration patterns and populations of marine mammals in these rarely surveyed parts of the ocean.

As the Forget Me Knot boat drifted silently across remote stretches of the Atlantic ocean, they were perfectly placed to make underwater recordings, recording 4-6-hours per day whenever conditions allowed. They believe that the project will be significant in improving researchers’ understanding of marine mammal activity in the deep ocean. The project also offers novel methodology that can be used by future ocean rowing crews or potentially expanded to sailing vessels – all fantastic opportunities to expand ocean conservation data sets.

Well done, we are delighted to have been a sponsor!

https://www.forgetmeknotcampaign.com/