I met Rob Chatwin two weeks to the day before his interview with Chay Blyth and his acceptance of a place on the BT Global Challenge. Rob and I had just started work with the same firm and have been together ever since. During that time both his and my perceptions of how this year away could affect him and us have changed and they don't ever seem to have borne any correlation.

During the first two years of his training, Rob would broach the subject occasionally. However, I would usually brush it aside saying, 'well, we don't know what will happen to us a year from now, let alone two, it's not worth thinking about.'

In the last 12 months of his training, when Rob began to spend more time sailing and talk more enthusiastically about the training and the people, I began to think more seriously about what it meant to us. I became quite selfish really. It seemed to me that he preferred to go away for a year than spend it with me.

Only towards the end I started to plan what I would do whilst he was away. This made it much easier to deal with. In the last week before sailing, Rob would ring from Southampton saying that he hadn't really thought how difficult it would be for him to be away for so long. I, on the other hand, was quite ready for him to go. I couldn't understand how I had spent 11 months dreading him going, and he had only just decided that perhaps it wasn't such a good idea.

Rob has been away almost 6 months now. I have missed him desperately but I have also become far more self-confident and learned about myself during that period. I still think he is mad to have done this but I am incredibly proud of him.

It's good to know that I miss him because I love him, not because I can't cope without him.

Lucy Dixon
Girlfriend of Rob Chatwin, crew member on Motorola