Miriam Payne rang in 2023 in rather more dramatic style than most: sitting alone in a rowing boat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, watching a shark circle her.
“I had been planning on getting into the water to clean the bottom of the boat. Then I saw it,” says Payne. “It was quite a friendly little thing though.”
The stand-off with the shark was worth it. Payne, 23, who “isn’t keen on deep water”, last week set a new race record as the fastest solo female to row the Atlantic in the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge. The physics graduate from Market Weighton, East Yorkshire, completed the 3,000-mile Atlantic crossing from the Canary Islands to Antigua in 59 days, 16 hours and 36 minutes,
