Just getting to the starting line was a big achievement. Getting £130,000 of sponsorship, putting the team together and coordinating everything was so exhausting I thought: “Just get me on the boat for a rest!” Then I got on the boat and, of course, there was no rest!

On day two, the auto-helm, or our automatic steering, broke in the middle of the night. We were out in 30 knots of wind, 30 or 40 foot waves, all being seasick and had to contend with this vital piece of equipment breaking. It finally died a death on day six and we had to steer with our feet.

I’d never sailed before – and neither had three of the other girls. I’d learnt to flat-water row and trained for about a year. Completing the challenge was a massive achievement.

The most terrifying thing was going out into these 30, 40, 50-foot waves… honestly, they were just so scary I used to cry. But in the end, we got used to them and felt like we were on top of the world.

We didn’t see any other boats or wildlife until day 33. I was hand-pumping water, gazing out into the sea, when I saw a dolphin. Suddenly there were five swimming around the boat. It was the only time we stopped rowing – they were so beautiful.

On day 15 our water-maker caught fire and blew up after the hatch leaked. We had to hand-pump water for the remaining 30 days so we were one person down for the rest of the trip. Basically, in the first 15 days everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

We did two hours on, two hours off continuously. You never actually slept for more than 90 minutes at a time. You’d dread hearing “10 minutes”, which is what we used to scream to wake one another up. The sound of that still makes me cringe today!

Getting into Barbados was just amazing: the feeling of triumph over adversity, the sense of achievement, a mixture of relief, exhaustion, adrenaline… it was pure euphoria.

The thing that kept me going all the way across was the cause. I would see the [A21 Campaign and ECPAT UK] charity logos on the oars and that would keep me going. I’ve met victims of trafficking and heard their stories: anytime I was hurting, I would remember them and my pain would pale into insignificance.

We are just a bunch of ordinary girls who did this extraordinary thing because we were so passionate about the cause. We hope to inspire young people to see that they really can do anything – if we can do it, they can do it.