Atlantic 06 Welcome Home Parties
To welcome home Stu and Ed from their amazing voyage and to celebrate their achievements two parties were held in Manchester and London. Podcast Voices of course were there in force to show their support for the events organised by WAYN and I took the opportunity to entertain the attendees with a mix of music and highlights from the Podcasts.
Stuart Turnbull and Edward Bayliss succesfully rowed unsupported across the 3000 miles of the Atlantic Ocean in the Memory of Zayed, their 20 foot long plywood boat. They did all this in 63 days and encountered some truly horrendous weather conditions and extreme hunger along the way with only the strength of their own bodies to drive them on. Stu and Eds title charity was Cancer Research and they managed to raise over £200,000 for the charity during the challenge. Podcast Voices followed their progress and created the first podcast of its kind by bringing updates directly from the boat via satellite phone.
The podcasts were enjoyed by tens of thousands of listeners and subscribers through WAYN, iTunes and various podcast directories.
You can check out the podcast series in its entirety here.
The first leg of the celebrations took place in Manchester on Friday 30th March at a plush nightclub venue called Pure. It is situated in the Printworks and from the outside could be mistaken for a smallish bar, but once inside, I was lead through a maze of stairs and hallways into the Blue Room part of the venue where the custom made DJ booth was ready and waiting.
Playing a cool mix of soulful and funky house music interspersed with highlights from the podcasts the party was intimate, but a good warm up for the big one in London the next day.
After checking out the rest of the club until about 2am we headed across the Pennines to Leeds where our accomodation for the night was for a few hours rest.
After a little sleep we hit the road once more heading down the M1 from Leeds to London for the second leg of the celebrations to be held at the exclusive Kensington Roof Gardens in London. The club, owned by Richard Branson, is a classy place on the sixth floor of a tower block with an outdoor area of neatly designed rooftop gardens with the city skyline forming an impressive backdrop.
This party was the big one with Stu and Ed presenting Cancer Research representatives with a cheque and showing once more their highly moving video documentary of the challenge. Watching the video truly brough it home just how much the boys had been through and it was great to see so many people turning out to support them.
Another DJ set from me interspersed with more podcast highlights followed and went down really well as the party goers let their hair down and the roof gardens was transformed into a pumping club for the rest of the night.
It was clear that Stu and Ed were real celebrities that night and were constantly surrounded by a groups of well wishers who were lapping up their incredible stories and anecdotes from the remarkable challenge that was Atlantic 06.
Once again, on behalf of the boys and all invlolved, a big thanks to all those who downloaded and subscribed to the podcast and helped Stu and Ed through their challenge to raise so much money for Cancer Research.
You can see my photos from the weekend here
Stay tuned….
