Ocean Rowing Society International
Ocean Rowing Society International (ORSI) (prior to 2006 known as ORS), is the governing body for international ocean rowing and official adjudicator of ocean rowing records for Guinness World Records. ORSI was founded in 1983 in California by ocean rower Peter Bird and Kenneth F.Crutchlow FRGS. Current coordinators of ORSI are Tatiana Rezvaya-Crutchlow and Chris Martin, and Fiann Paul. History The Ocean Rowing Society (from 2006 – International) was founded in 1983 by Kenneth Frank Crutchlow, with support of an ocean rower Peter Bird. The reason, that urged them to do it, was a letter from a French journalist, asking if there existed a list of British ocean rowers. He was writing about the row of French Gerard d'Aboville and wondered how to compare it to the achievements of the other ocean rowers. The main goal of the Society was and still is to keep record of all attempts to row across the oceans. In 1983, after almost 90 years since the first ocean row in history, there had been only 32 attempts to row an ocean, and only 14 of them had been successful. The Ocean Rowing Society completed full and accurate information about all and each of them, to verify and to classify every row in the pre-Internet era. And since then, ORS has been the only body that keeps records of all events in the field of ocean rowing activity. The Ocean Rowing Society Int. is an official adjudicator of ocean rowing records for the Guinness World Records. D. H. Clarke from Guinness World Records in 1964 pioneered recording of ocean rows. He handed over to Kenneth Crutchlow all his notes that laid the basis for the statistics. And ocean rowers Geoff Allum and Mike Nestor, who provided ORS with their records and numerous cuttings from press articles, and helped with the compiling of the first list of the statistics. In 2000 Tom Lynch, an American Director of ORS, handed over the maintenance of the website to Ukrainian Theodore Rezvoy, who has designed website's current interface and created logo of ORS, placing there a saying in Latin. It expresses the inner motto of this extreme adventure: "Nosce Te Ipsum" – Know Thyself. "Know yourself, test yourself, challenge yourself and succeed – the greatest victory for an individual, that's what all this is about." In 2001 Tatiana Rezvaya-Crutchlow, became and still is the Editor-in-Chief of the ORS website. She is in charge of maintaining and updating the general statistics, as well as compiling its various options, selected by the aspect of the route, category, class, age, gender, country, duration, etc. In 1980 Kenneth for the first time used ARGOS satellite beacons to track the row of Peter Bird across the Pacific Ocean from Russian Far East to San Francisco; and hence, after launching the website, ORS became the first to start monitoring and tracking rowers at sea, listing positions, plotting charts and posting them – along with the press articles, news and other information about and from rowers