I’m delighted to report that I am back functioning at maximum capacity after a really difficult and painful few days that saw me reduced to the role of passenger.

I’d been suffering a lot of discomfort and pain around my stump almost from day one of the row and I’d assumed that was because of the amount of tissue and muscle I’d lost from my backside when I was blown up.

While the lack of cushion on the bone definitely played a part in the excruciating pain I was in, it now seems there was another factor – left over shrapnel!

Five tiny little pieces of copper have been working their way out from inside the stump because of the pressure I’ve been putting on it and it seems they have now forced their way through the skin. The offending metal pieces, barely the size of a pin head, were left in my body after my leg was blown off and the process of them being forced out was not pleasant, but the fact they are now gone forever means I feel like a different person.

It’s meant an enormous reduction in the levels of pain I’m experiencing. On Christmas Day I dosed myself up on some pretty hard core painkillers and spent ages gazing in the mirror at my behind – not recommended – and picking away with a pair of tweezers to try and pull out the offending shrapnel. I also scrubbed the area pretty aggressively as well. To be honest I was pretty spaced out while I was doing it but it seems to have done the trick.

Yesterday was the first day in a long time I was able to pull my weight properly on the oars and I feel like I’ve been given a new lease of life. It’s so good to really feel like I’m playing my part in things rather than just being a big lump that the rest of the boys have to row across to Barbados.

It was incredibly demoralising to feel like a spare part and I’m really excited about the prospect of digging in properly now. As well as my own medical problems, we’ve experienced a really difficult few days of rowing. We were hit by a pretty intense tropical storm a couple of days ago which passed quickly but made rowing absolutely impossible for a few hours. It was like jungle rain just hosing you down, and everybody, and everything, got soaked as a result.

We’ve also had some technical problems with the most important piece of kit on board – the precious water desalinater. If that packs in it could seriously impair our ability to get across. Alex phoned the manufacturers and it turned out to be a problem with the fuse.

It is working again now but the prospect of losing it has put the wind up us in a big way. We understand the Row4Freedom girls have been manually pumping their water for a while now after their desalinator got water in its electrics. Hand pumping can only produce five litres of water every hour as opposed to 30 litres per hour when it is fully functional. We need 40 litres of water a day so you can do the maths to work out how detrimental that would be to our chances. Eight hours of hand pumping water is not a nice prospect! Fingers crossed we don’t end up having to do that.

All the best for now – I’ll be in touch. Rory.