Ocean Rowing Society International
Ocean Rowing Society International (ORSI) (prior to 2006 known as ORS), is the governing body for international ocean rowing and official adjudicator of ocean rowing records for Guinness World Records. ORSI was founded in 1983 in California by ocean rower Peter Bird and Kenneth F.Crutchlow FRGS. Current coordinators of ORSI are Tatiana Rezvaya-Crutchlow and Chris Martin, and Fiann Paul. History The Ocean Rowing Society (from 2006 – International) was founded in 1983 by Kenneth Frank Crutchlow, with support of an ocean rower Peter Bird. The reason, that urged them to do it, was a letter from a French journalist, asking if there existed a list of British ocean rowers. He was writing about the row of French Gerard d'Aboville and wondered how to compare it to the achievements of the other ocean rowers. The main goal of the Society was and still is to keep record of all attempts to row across the oceans. In 1983, after almost 90 years since the first ocean row in history, there had been only 32 attempts to row an ocean, and only 14 of them had been successful. The Ocean Rowing Society completed full and accurate information about all and each of them,