Battling dangerous sea conditions and mental obstacles, Steve Chetcuti tells Fiona Galea Debono he needed to row across the Atlantic Ocean to find closure.

Steve Chetcuti may have just become the second Maltese man to row across the Atlantic, but right now, his hardest challenge is crossing his hotel room in a straight line.

Speaking to Times of Malta from French Guiana after a 51-day gruelling voyage from Portugal, he was enjoying and appreciating the simple land pleasures of placing a drink on a table without it toppling over, sitting on a dry and immobile couch and the luxury of a private toilet after using a plastic bottle for almost two months.

A day after reaching land, the rower is attracting disdain as he wobbles across the street and holds onto walls, “looking drunk at 1pm”. And it is not surprising he still has his sea legs, having been bobbing up and down, cooped up in a nine-metre-long boat, less than two metres wide, with four other team members since March 1.

Chetcuti’s mission has been accomplished in more ways than one. He may have broken the world record for the fastest five-man team Atlantic crossing, reaching speeds of over 12 knots.

But more than anything, he feels he finally got closure over his brother Michael’s harsh death from a brain tumour three years ago, which had spurred him to embark on the challenge to honour his memory.

“It was a way of saying goodbye. I remember the day towards the end. I felt: ‘OK, you can go now’,” Chetcuti opened up.

“I have been wallowing in sadness since then, needing time alone to cry and question. Now, I feel that is over and I can move on… keeping him in my heart.”

Chetcuti also rowed to raise funds for three charities, including Hospice Malta. He had fixed a conservative, arbitrary target of €10,000 for each and reached about 65 per cent of his aim, meeting the mark for the local NGO, but admitting he had hoped for more, considering the magnitude of the challenge.

He may have broken the world record for the fastest five-man team Atlantic crossing

To sum it up in numbers, 800,000 strokes propelled Chetcuti along the 6,000-km crossing, dividing his days into 600 shifts and two-hour-long rests.

Chetcuti admits that, within 48 hours, he was overcome by the realisation of the “impossibility” of the mammoth task ahead, asking himself: “What did I do?”

At 50km into the voyage, the strong swimmer considered grabbing his bag and legging it back to shore. But a “mental fight”, positive thinking and deep breathing – the feat was more about that than physical fitness – kept him on the right tack.

For the next two months, he woke up every two hours, which made every day feel like six. And in the first three weeks, he rowed 12 hours a day on “zero” food, having completely lost his appetite.

Steve spent months training hard for the mission. INSET: With his brother Michael, who died two years ago, aged 51.

Little competitions with his fellow rower helped to keep the mind busy and break the monotony, but not much could be done to combat being constantly wet, moving from sauna to solarium and sleeping rolled in a ball in a minute, stifling, claustrophobic cabin with other crew members.

Chetcuti had never met them before the challenge and did not deny some tension and personality clashes among the strangers in the confined space.

Then there were the forces of nature to contend with and some hairy moments. Four-metre-high walls of water pounding a fibreglass boat like a sledgehammer made an excruciating sound and Chetcuti would hear the threatening rumble of the waves approaching until, one time, it capsized onto its side.

Being on sea anchor for almost three days in the most dangerous first third of the crossing until the angry waters calmed down was the most frustrating leg. The boat was going backwards, and the rowers were “just sitting like lemons” as it got slammed.

Twice he feared for his life, waking up wide-eyed and convinced he was going to die, feeling selfish he had left his wife and children without a husband and a father.

But on the plus side, diving into the “superbly clean” Atlantic Ocean to remove barnacles gave him as sense of freedom from the confines of the boat, although Chetcuti was disappointed at the lack of wildlife and whale sightings.

At his request, his family wrote him motivational letters, which he read in tears towards the end of the voyage, keeping the packet of envelopes close by.

His youngest daughter drew him a butterfly and he held that image in his mind when the going got tough.

Now, the family man “desperately” wants to be reunited with his wife and three daughters in Switzerland, where he has been living for 20 years, admitting he was away from them for too long.

He could only communicate with them in stutters a couple of times, and was eager to focus on quality family time, having spent the last two years prioritising training three hours a day.

“I missed my 12-year-old’s birthday yesterday,” he said, unable to leave the country until Sunday due to COVID-19 restrictions and killing time until then.

Itching to “go back to the wonderful normality of my life and do all the simple – great – things”, Chetcuti was, ironically, finding the complications of getting a plane home quite testing.

His family will meet a man who shed 20kg along the way and has a “disproportionate” head due to untamed hair and a bushy beard.

“I have no big plans for the future,” Chetcuti stated… until the “niggles” of his epic adventure are over.

Donations can still be made on www.crossrower.ch