So Friday 7^thOctober and the fundraiser dinner has finally come and gone, and what an unbelievable night it was!

In all honesty the night was a lot of work to plan and prepare for, especially in the week leading up to it. Whilst I always had more important things to worry about like sorting equipment and getting the boat ready, our projection for the night was over £10k so I was happy putting the work in viewing it as working on a main sponsor for the row.

201 people filled the Mountbatten room in the RAC, Pall Mall and was a huge mix of friends and family along with companies and business contacts there to support the row. The boat was also in the Club for the weekend, a massive asset, so when everyone arrived the first thing they saw was the boat! Getting the boat ready did prove fairly stressful, none of the work asked to be done on the boat had been done 2 days before and with the boat being lifted in at 0330 Friday morning, myself and Tom Crump were up until 0030 polishing and cleaning!

The night went perfectly and made up for all the work put in and the manic week that had gone before! The original guest speaker, Lewis Pugh, cancelled a week before the dinner citing family reasons and was flying back to South Africa...a real blow to the evening! Fortunately enough I was able to find someone else who turned out to provide brilliant entertainment and was a huge asset to the evening. Ed Stafford completed a walk the length of the Amazon River last year which took him 860 days. An incredible achievement and the first person to do so, Ed kept everyone hugely entertained and provided us with a very humorous talk!

With the reception, dinner and Ed’s talk over it was now down to the business end of the evening. The girls did a fantastic job of selling raffle tickets to tables throughout the meal and were all very popular. With the main raffle prize a new Felt F95 road bike there was a lot of interest! But before that came the auction, led by Nick Bonham who proved to be a huge asset to the whole evening. A very kind man, who, having worked for the family named Bonhams for over 30 years as an auctioneer, was exceptional. Each lot went for at least what we were hoping for with most going for way above. Nick even put in the last lot himself, a room for 2 people in his house in Barbados for when I arrive next year, with the proceeds going to Mind. Absolutely fantastic.

The feedback from the evening has been very kind and positive, everyone telling me how much they enjoyed themselves. This was fairly evident as after the evening had finished a lot of people stayed around and the bar wasn’t even open!

Also from the night I have subsequently had new sponsors come on board which is really exciting and who are really keen to make this the best they can for me and them. I will post more on that once I have more finalised.

So overall on the night we made over £20,000 which considering out projection is truly amazing. Although I said it on the night I would like to once again thank everyone who was there, everyone who helped and everyone who donated brilliant items to auction and who bought them!

I've uploaded photos of the night to the photo gallery so please take a look!