Burnham-on-Crouch's own 'Ocean Sheroes' - a team of four women, two in their forties and two in their twenties - will today (Monday, 31 May) begin their bid to set an ocean rowing world record - and help save the seas from plastic pollution at the same time.

The team will row out through San Francisco's famous Golden Gate Bridge into the Pacific today and then on to Hawaii.

The four women - Bella Collins, 28, Lily Lower, 27, Mary Sutherland, 41, and Purusha Gordon, 43 - known as 'P' - are also rowing to raise funds for the Seabin Project.

Bella, who grew up in Burnham-on-Crouch and took her first sailing steps from the town's waterfront, explained: "We want to show all women – and men – that you can overcome issues of self-esteem and doubt to achieve any challenge you set yourself.

"We all have full-time jobs and we want to inspire other women and men to set out to achieve their goals, to find themselves and be what they want to be."

The Seabin Project is renowned for its 'seabins' which collect waste from marina ports. The project also takes part in preventative activities including community activation, education programmes, data collection and scientific research.

Ultimately, the Seabin Project aims to promote a world where there isn't a need for Seabins at all. The team hopes to raise £60,000 for the project through the race.

Bella, Lily and Mary all come from Burnham-on-Crouch and joined up with Purusha, who lives in London, after she met Charlie Pitcher, founder of Burnham-based Rannoch Adventure, following an ocean rowing race at Hawaii.

Charlie connected Purusha with the others and they eventually decided to take on the ocean rowing race challenge together.

It has taken them two years to prepare for the race and on 12 February they packed off their boat, Fenris, to be shipped to San Francisco in readiness. Fenris, designed and built by Charlie Pitcher and Rannoch Adventure, is not a new boat, but re-conditioned - in line with the team's environmentally-friendly approach.

Bella said: "Rannoch Adventure helped us get Fenris ready. It's a perfectly good boat and we didn't want to needlessly create a new one, but to re-use one and make the most of it."

The race has only ever been completed by two all-women teams before and to beat the world record the Ocean Sheroes will need to reach the finish line in less than 50 days, eight hours and 15 minutes.

Bella completed a 2016 row across the Atlantic, but she knows nothing can be taken for granted in the challenge ahead. The training schedule has been made tougher by the pandemic, which Bella says "has been a huge curve ball every single month".

She added: "But what it has done is taught us about resilience."

Between lockdowns, the team was able to train on the River Crouch and outside that there has been much solitary gym training, too.

And, Bella said, the women make for a great team: "We're all very much individual characters and all different, but Lily and I are a bit like goody two shoes and do everything by the book, while Purusha and Mary push the limits a bit more.

"It works very well as we generally end up making decisions somewhere in the middle."

To find out more about the team's challenge or to donate to their Seabin Project cause you can visit the Ocean Sheroes website here.