Julie Bennett, a 1982 Glen Lake graduate, will attempt to row from Monterey, California, to Kauai, Hawaii, in 2026. She is asking for your help.
“I want to take my hometown with me on that boat,” she said.
The 50-day rowing journey will traverse 2,800 miles with a team of four women in the ‘World’s Toughest Row.’
Their motto is “moar than us,” otherwise known as “Moar” instead of “Oar.”
“We chose that name because we are taking more than us on the trip with us,” Bennett said. “I want to take my hometown with me on that boat. I wanna take the people from Leelanau. We are bringing our friends and family because you can’t survive without that.”
Bennett will also bring her mother, who passed away in October 2024.
Bennett is currently a teacher in the Grand Rapids area at NorthPointe Christian elementary. She has spent 37 years in education and her first job was teaching fifth grade at Glen Lake Schools. Julie has been married for 37 years to Rick Bennett and they have two sons Nicholas and Stephen Bennett.
Julie has been rowing since 2010 and held the women’s midwest 1,000-meter title for two years. She has competed at the national level and won a bronze medal in the women’s US Masters Nationals 2,000-meter race held in Oklahoma. She also holds a level II coaching certification for rowing (sweep and scull). She’s even participated in an educator marine boot Camp on Parris Island, South Carolina where she got to experience what it was like being a Marine for five days.
The biggest hurdle is raising money.
The team’s boat cost about $60,000, and each participant has to raise upwards of $40,000 for total cost. The boat is 28 feet long and five feet wide. Every rower is on the oars every two hours for two hours and the team rows for 12 hours of the day.
The event will occur from the first week of June through mid to late July, waiting for perfect conditions.
According to Bennett, the race occurs when the ocean currents and winds are the best conditions for rowers.
Originally from Empire, Bennett will spend 100% of the time for 50 days on a customized row boat with four other women traversing the world’s deepest ocean. One is from Michigan, and participants are also from Minnesota and Maine.
“We are fundraising right now. We’re looking at our training program to build our base strength and a nutrition program because we must feed our body correctly,” Bennett said.
This is the fourth “World’s toughest Row” on the Pacific, with over 20 years of marathon rows on the Atlantic Ocean. Before the sanctioned row, just 82 people in 33 boats had successfully rowed to one of the Hawaiian islands from mainland USA. Of the 33 crews to have completed the voyage, 11 were all female, 18 all male and just 4 mixed gender. The fastest female team to row this route was Latitude 35 who completed the row in 34 days, 14 hours, 20 minutes. The average crossing time for all crew sizes is 62 days.
They will practice by spending three to five days on the boat together, training through drills and learning the navigation system. The team will take turns rowing from the moment of launch until they reach their destination.
Bennett commonly trains with local rowing clubs and will visit Leelanau in the summer for training for the epic voyage.
Monies raised for the “Moar Than Us” campaign will help with costs of the voyage along with donations to The Eating disorder foundation; Wounded Warrior Project; RAINN; and American Cancer Society.
In addition to being a multinational team, Moar than us is aptly named because members believe the mission is about something greater than themselves.
Donate to her cause: www. moarthanus.org; www.facebook. com/profile. php?id=61567938343948
