THEY were trained by former special forces troops and covered more than 100 miles a day, but nothing could have prepared a crew of record-breaking transatlantic rowers for a sustained onslaught by a school of flying fish.

Their boat, La Mondiale, was just 65 miles from the finish line in the Caribbean when hundreds of fish started leaping out of the sea and landing on deck.

“It was as if we were being attacked,” said one crew member, PJ Luard, this weekend. “They were hitting us on the face, on the crotch, anywhere - it was just incredible.

“It was during the night, so we shone a torch over the side and saw hundreds of these flying fish all around us. We’d encountered one or two of them on any given day before, but we assumed on this occasion that there was some kind of shark feeding frenzy going on directly beneath our boat.”

The bizarre encounter came close to the end of a gruelling journey that started in Mogan, Gran Canaria, on December 15 last year and ended at 8.40pm GMT last Thursday as La Mondiale arrived at Port St Charles, Barbados.

The 14-man British and Irish crew crossed the Atlantic in 33 days, seven hours and 30 minutes - shaving an impressive two days off the previous world record.

Remarkably, the 3,000-mile feat was carried out in a secondhand vessel, which set the previous record in 1992 when it was crewed by French rowers. It followed 60 unsuccessful attempts to steal the French crown.

Victory was all the more sweet because La Mondiale was competing against a high-tech multi-hulled American boat, which was left trailing behind after encountering technical problems.

Speaking from Barbados last night, Luard, 30, who runs a plumbing company in west London, revealed that the outcome could have been very different.

Just a few days after it set out from the Spanish island, the weather turned against the 53ft boat and forced the crew to drop anchor. They remained virtually stationary for the next three days.

“That was definitely the low point,” Luard said. “We had been preparing for this for a year and were desperate to get some decent rowing behind us. Now the record already seemed to be out of our reach. We were absolutely gutted.”

The crew, however, dug deep and were soon back on course. The men, whose ages ranged from 27 to 54, were paired up and rowed for two hours on and two hours off, snatching sleep in tiny cabins fore and aft. On their best day, they covered 117 miles, setting a new 24-hour ocean rowing record.

Leven Brown, 35, who skippered the crew and claims to be descended from Christopher Columbus, admitted that “tempers were frayed” during the crossing. But the rigorous selection process ensured that none of the crew came to fisticuffs.

“The most difficult thing has been looking after 14 competitive guys,” said Brown, from Edinburgh.

“We had 200 applicants for the boat. The British army ran courses and three ex-special forces soldiers helped with the training, which included sleep deprivation.”

A psychologist was also used to whittle down applicants. “We had to get rid of our planned second-in-command along the way because he did not pass muster,” Brown added.

“It’s too late 1,000 miles off shore to realise that you’ve chosen the wrong person.”

Brown was greeted in Port St Charles by Yvette Jelfs, his girlfriend, and their 15-month-old daughter, Constance.

Jelfs, who flew out to Barbados after following La Mondiale’s progress from home on the internet, said: “We’ve had a reception and not slept for a few days so Leven is absolutely exhausted. But now he’s back, he’ll have to do some babysitting.”

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