'We had to dodge flying fish' - British rowers

Two British rowers have described facing waves "as big as palm trees" and flying fish during their record-breaking race across the Atlantic Ocean.

Beth Murphy and Jess Smiles, both 30, rowed some 3,000 miles (4,800km) from La Gomera, in the Canary Islands, to Antigua.

They crossed the finish line in 38 days, 12 hours and 18 minutes, on 21 January - smashing the women's world record.

"We're not sailors," said Murphy, from Dorking in Surrey.

"We [had] no experience of doing this kind of thing at all.

"But what we do have is we're quite headstrong and we have rowed at club level," she said.

"We knew we wanted to take on this challenge."

Murphy, an environment consultant, told BBC Radio Surrey they saw huge waves the size of palm trees during their voyage.

She said day and night they had to dodge an "awful lot" of flying fish.

"It's almost like a fun game, though," Murphy continued.

She said the pair did not initially set themselves the challenge of breaking the world record.

Instead, Murphy said they realised halfway through the contest - called the World's Toughest Row - they had a "real chance" of beating the record and decided to go for it.

When asked by the BBC if they were ever scared while out in the Atlantic during the night, Smiles said "definitely for the first week".

But she said she got used to it and it became "quite enjoyable...apart from one night where the waves were very, very high and we almost had a bit of a knockdown.

"That was probably the scariest point," she said.

Smiles, who is from North Devon, told the BBC she was already missing life on the water after only two days of being on land.

"I could definitely see myself doing another ocean rowing challenge," she said.

"There is [the] Pacific as well."

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