Having now arrived back in Estonia, the Rowtalia crew of Kait Kaarel Puss, Arnold Rein Tatuns, Karl Jürgenstein and Andres Käosaar said the feeling of swaying subsided after a day or two on dry land.

"It's true that when I was walking in daylight, everything was clear, but when I woke up at night to go to the toilet, I was still rocking around in the same way (as at sea), like a wild carousel," Puss told ERR.

"Maybe we need to recover a little bit," said Tatuns. "We all need a little break from the sea."

He explained that although they ate plenty of food during the trip, the physical strain was so intense that the body didn't have enough time to sufficiently recover. "Whether it's your hands that are falling apart or the skin on your backside that you rub back and forth for 12 hours in damp conditions, it just wears you out."

According to Karl Jürgenstein, it felt great to be back in Estonia after the journey.

"Setting foot in my homeland was something special. The cold that greeted us, which is something we never experienced while at sea and we missed. So, that was really pleasant," Jürgenstein said. "It's very comfortable to sit on the couch, but I still don't really want to sit on a hard bench, my butt is still a little sore."

"The ocean pretty much turned our taste buds upside down," said Jürgenstein. "When we were preparing and training in the Baltic Sea, we had dry food and everyone had their preferences. But on the ocean, the order of preference was practically reversed," he said, adding that his new favorite food is dried mango.

Andres Käosaar said that when he got back to Estonia, he didn't even want to put on a sweater, so he could enjoy the crispness of the winter.

"So, I could feel the Estonian cold on my skin," he said, emphasizing that even though the trip is over, his joints and fingers are still stiff. "Even my shoulder is stiff, and it still feels a little sensitive," Käosaar said.

"There were a couple of times when I was rowing the boat at night, and everything was black. There was the kind of starry sky that is hard to see anywhere else, and waves that you sometimes can't even see coming. You're rowing there with your rowing partner in silence and in rhythm, and you're just thinking that you are like this little nutshell in the middle of the ocean. The nearest person is a couple of hundred kilometers away, and you just start laughing, thinking how idiotic this is. It's completely crazy, why would anyone do something like this?" said Käosaar.

No matter how you describe the experience, he said, unless you have done it yourself, there's no way you can completely understand it.

---

Follow ERR News on Facebook and Twitter and never miss an update!