A rower plucked from his overturned boat about 250 kilometres off the coast of Ireland says he and his partner are "incredibly lucky" to have been rescued.

Brian Conville of Dublin and Joseph Gagnon of Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, Que., left St. John's on June 13 in a bright green boat packed with supplies, with the goal of being the first two-person crew to row across the Atlantic Ocean, west to east, from St. John's to France.

An unfriendly ocean and nagging injuries forced them to shorten their trip, and they aimed for the Irish coast instead — but the Atlantic wouldn't allow for that either.

Around 5 a.m. Irish time Friday, when they were about 250 kilometres from Ireland, rough seas flipped their boat and flooded the cabin, leaving the pair clinging to the hull for hours until they were found by the Irish coast guard — a rescue they didn't know was coming.

[The beacon] activated itself when it went into the water, and that's what saved our lives, to be honest. - Brian Conville

"We realized that we were incredibly lucky, because when the boat turned over, our EPIRB [emergency position-indicating radio beacon], which is the beacon that you would generally press if you're in distress, I must have knocked it when the boat turned over. It got a knock somehow," Conville told CBC News on Saturday.

"It was quite violent when the boat turned over. I was thrown from side to side. I was tied on enough; that's the only reason I stayed with the boat. But the EPIRB disappeared, so it activated itself when it went into the water, and that's what saved our lives, to be honest. Without the EPIRB, we wouldn't be here today. We'd still be on the boat."

Gagnon, 20, and Conville, 25, left St. John's on June 13. (Mark Cumby/CBC)

Conville was rowing at the time. Gagnon was sleeping in the cabin, and didn't have enough time to grab his protective thermal suit before the boat flipped.

Didn't know coast guard was looking for them

The men spent several hours on the hull of the overturned boat, waiting for the seas to calm so they could retrieve their life raft from the flooded, overturned cabin, and figure out what to do next.

"We were formulating plans when we were sitting on the boat, to work out how to make communications to land," said Conville.

"The big thing for us at the time was to get the life raft, so we'd have a safe base."

By 2 p.m., the seas had calmed enough for the men to try to get any gear they could from the boat. "But at that point, we heard a noise in the background, like an engine, and it turned out to be a helicopter."

'Bittersweet' to come so close to goal

That helicopter was about a mile and a half away, sweeping the ocean, looking for the stranded men, who were then hauled up to the helicopter using a winch and taken to County Kerry in Ireland, where they spent Friday night recovering in a hospital in Tralee.

Conville said he's not sure whether they will try again. The priority right now is recovering and spending time with their families. He said he's not thinking too much about having come so close to their goal of reaching Ireland

"It's kind of a bittersweet thing, to be honest," he said. "In our opinion, we still rowed across the Atlantic. If it's between two to two-and-a-half thousand miles, it's a fairly impressive feat. We've got onto the continental shelf of Europe."

"But we don't do it for the records," he said. "We do it for the challenge, the personal challenge."