crew member adam kreek, an olympic gold medalist, filed this report early on. >> the last few days havewe've had really snotty water, gnarly water, getting really seasick. >> reporter: and the storms continued. some nights lightning turned the pitch black into broad daylight. the progress was slow. the living conditions beyond uncomfortable. adam gave a tour below decks on the 29-foot craft. >> you can see right now i'm in our main sleeping cabin that's 8 feet by 5 feet. normally two of us will sleep here at any given time. also within the cabin we've got our electrical panel, and below the deck we've got a bunch of scientific instrumentation where we measure a lot of different parameters of the ocean. >> reporter: and then only four days out, they were shaken by their first real crisis. >> we got hit by a pretty big wave today and it snapped an oar in two. it knocked the [ bleep ] out of us. >> reporter: a broken oar. they could only carry one set of spares so if any more broke this would be a big problem. on top of the weather, the power supply was malfunctioning, so their ability to

olympic gold medalist adam kreek was missing his pregnant wife and young son. >> i yearned for land moreuld out here. >> reporter: then one day, back home in british columbia, his wife rebecca received a happy surprise on her computer. >> it's this awesome video that adam was able to send near the end of him talking to jefferson saying, hi, jefferson, it's daddy. what did you do today? then pause. then jefferson would watch it over and over and over and answer him. he'd be like, i went to day care. >> i was wondering, have you been to the park recently? >> yeah. >> have you been playing with your lego and tinker toys? spending lots of time outside? >> reporter: a father and son interacting with each other separated by days of lag time and thousands of miles. >> i look forward to hearing back from you. i love you lots and i'm going to give you a big squeeze when i see you in miami. then we're going to go see the elephants at the miami zoo. >> yeah. >> love you a ton. >> reporter: in the early morning hours of april 6th, 2013, day 73 in the expedition, land based coordinator greg spooner g