The Real Risk? Never Setting Sail.

Grant 'Axe' Rawlinson during his record-breaking human-powered crossing of the Tasman Sea, March 2025.

Welcome to the first post of Exploratory Tales – a new twice-monthly series where we dive deep into the strategies, mindsets, and real-world lessons that drive exceptional team building, leadership, and high performance. We’ll be publishing this here (our blog), LinkedIn channel and emailed directly to our existing audience, so make sure that you get this in the format of your choice, by navigating through the relevant links.

What does it take to push beyond your limits—to truly step into the unknown?
Recently, Grant ‘Axe’ Rawlinson, our Head of IP Design and Delivery, completed his most daring human-powered expedition yet: a record-breaking crossing of the infamous Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand. Alongside teammate Luke Richmond, the duo rowed 2,500km in twenty-two days, four hours, and forty minutes—smashing the previous record by over nine days.

But this wasn’t just a feat of endurance. It was the culmination of a 14-year journey.

Axe’s bold vision was to connect Singapore and New Zealand completely by human power—a journey spanning over 12,000km through treacherous seas and unforgiving terrain. From rowing 78 days from Singapore to Darwin, to cycling across the vast Australian outback, to three failed Tasman crossings filled with storms, capsizes, injury, and doubt—this was no straight path to success.

He failed. And failed again. And again. And yet he never gave up.

On his fourth attempt, everything changed. With refined equipment, better planning, stronger partnerships, and the hard-earned wisdom from past setbacks, he crossed—and broke the record.

So what made the difference? What shifted between attempt one and attempt four?

We’ll explore that in Part 2—where Axe shares the exact mindset and strategies that made the difference not just at sea, but that any leader or team can use to navigate complexity, build resilience, and succeed under pressure.

Ready to learn how perseverance, not perfection, builds stronger humans and more powerful teams?

👉 Stay tuned for Part 2.