If you hang around long enough with ocean rowers, and find that youve developed a taste for expedition rowing (albeit in events you can fit into a weekend), sooner or later youre going to come to the conclusion that, if your piggy bank can cope, theres really no good reason NOT to row an ocean yourself. And so it was that my husband and I set off from the Canary Islands in our tiger-striped boat, and landed in Barbados nearly 11 weeks later. Along the way, wed lost a rudder, been brought another, seen dolphins for 30 seconds, enjoyed eating biltong in bed (only one of us), listened to all seven Harry Potter books, and been reminded almost every day that ocean rowing is much more about the ocean than it is about rowing.
Event: Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge 2011
Where: La Gomera (Canary Islands) to Barbados
Distance: 2,549 nautical miles (as the storm petrel flies)
Duration: 75 days, 1 hour and 29 minutes
Boat type: 23 plywood ocean rowing boat Dream It Do It
Number of crews in the event: 17 started, 12 finished
Event Organiser: The race is now organised by Atlantic Campaigns
We were last in our race, but were eternally relieved to have finished. A famous solo ocean rower, Gerald dAboville once said "You do not conquer the ocean rather, it lets you pass." Spot on.
Heating up Christmas lunch. The best meal of the trip.
But whilst our row was slow (as it turned out, we decided we couldnt really be bothered with the 2 hours on/2 hours off routine that is the quickest way to get across, given our only objective was to get to the other side, still happily married), our expedition blog proved to be very popular – not least because the supporters of all the other crews found them,selves suffering from ocean rowing-supporting withdrawal symptoms once their crews had finished (the fastest two finished in just over 40 days).
The links below point to some of the better postings from our original blog. Please bear in mind that it was written whilst at sea, which explains some of the bad spelling (our Land Team Communications Manager did her best to sort this out, but she was working with some pretty awful material) as well as the deranged humour.
Day 9: Wildlife at sea
Day 14: Making tea at sea
Day 17: On salt
Day 18: Outbreak of OARS in SW London
Day 25: A day at the sales
Day 29: The catch
Day 32: The Atlantic Ocean plc
Day 40: Ocean strategy
Day 44: Im just going to have a quick shower
Day 52: Wildlife action
Day 69: The sounds of the sea
Day 72: How would you like your ocean?
Barbados is a very nice place.
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Time is slipping by here in La Cruz but weve been making progress getting the boat ready to head south. The dinghy has been packed up and the outboard motor serviced and secured on its traveling bracket. All systems energized and tested, fresh water tanks filled, the hull bottom scrubbed and weather updates downloaded. Speaking of weather, we are expecting wind and bigger surf than normal in the next couple of days, then possibly some rain next week. Until now the weather has been a continuous string of perfectly blue skies, temps in the 80s and refreshing breezes off the bay. Were ready to leave and expect to be out of Banderas Bay by Monday...or Tuesday....maybe Wednesday.
One of the most interesting aspects of our life here in La Cruz is that cruising people and boats arrive and depart daily, most are headed south, some north, and some are gathering here for what is called the Pacific Puddlejump. Then there is the contingent for whom Banderas Bay is the destination. The Puddlejump is organized by Latitude 38 magazine. It is a group of boats that depart from points on the west coast, headed for French Polynesia. A large contingent of which get together and sail from Banderas Bay to the Marquesas Islands. At around 2,900 miles, this is the most convenient jump from North America to the easternmost outpost of French Polynesia. There are currently 77 boats registered in the fleet, ranging from 33 to 65 feet long. There are other boats making roughly the same trip at roughly the same time, but choose to travel alone instead of with a group. Either way, it sounds like a lot of fun.
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When I set off to cox most of 90 nautical miles across the Irish sea (my first ever rowing expedition) my idea of a long outing was less than 2 hours, and on a river. But somewhere along the way, after the fabulous sunrise, the sight of the Welsh coast after a night of rowing out of sight of land, and then the arrival on it made me realise the incredible sense of achievement you could feel, despite being second last in a race (and Im normally a bad loser).
Event: Celtic Challenge Where: The Irish Sea, between Arklow and Aberystwith Distance: 90 nautical miles Time: 15h 58mins Boat type: Pembrokeshire longboat Number of crews in the event: 14 or so Event Website: www.celtic-challenge.org.uk Why we finished up doing it A fellow member of Thames Valley Skiff Club was on holiday on the Welsh Coast, and got chatting in a pub one evening to members of Aberaeron Lonbgoat Rowing Club. Who finished up offering him use of one of their Pembrokeshire longboats, along with the services of a support crew, if he entered a team in the next years race. History doesnt recall how many pints later this exceptionally generous offer was made, although it cant have been TOO many, as he remembered, and took them up on it. How it works The race starts in Arklow, Ireland, and finished in Aberystwyth, Wales, so the course covers one of the wider bits of the Irish Sea. Each team comprises 12 competitors, who swap in and out of the fixed-seat, coxed rowing boat, which can be either a Celtic or a Pembrokeshire longboat. The Celtic ones were a bit longer, possibly narrower, and definitely faster.
Each team is supported by the yacht, which carries the remaining 7 members not in the race boat, as well as its own crew. A rib is used to swap competitors between the yacht and the longboat. Our team decided (largely through necessity – were quite a small club, and not all members were nutters) that theyd take me as a dedicated cox, along with 11 rowers, one of whom was a woman in her 50s, but tough as. She not only rowed as much as most of the guys, and more than some, but also made sandwiches almost continuously whilst not rowing. We decided wed change the crew every 1.5 hours, and I would cox 3 consecutive shifts, followed by 1 off. And repeat. And repeat again. And then again.
The start.
The race itself The race started at 4pm and ran overnight. This presented its own challenges, but the thinking is that the sea tends to be calmer at night, and there are also fewer ships about. So, after a sunny start, the field spread out, and we found ourselves to the back of it. The whole thing was way outside my experience, although other members of the team had done some sailing. However, the crew of our support yacht, Y Marchog, were clearly very experienced, and our navigation simply involved "following" them, ideally to one side and a bit in front, so that we werent in their wash. Which fine, until our fastest crew combination swapped in, which included a three-times Olympic oarsman, and some other blokes who were lesser mortals, but still good rowers. And we found that we were a fair chunk faster than the support yacht, struggling along a it was with 10 people on board a boat probably made for 4 at the most, laden with kit bags, and towing a rib.
Around 4am. This is probably my favourte expedition rowing photo ever.
Now even this was bearable the first time it happened, but by the time they came back for their 2nd shift, it was dark, and the process of bringing the rib alongside and transferring people across spun our boat around, and I quite lost my grasp of WHICH of the many little lights, representing other crews and their support boats, spread round the horizon I was meant to be following (quite why I didnt have a compass in my paw, Im not sure, and you would be quite justfied in rolling your eyes in horror at this lack of basic safety, though youll remember that wed thought wed be following the yacht..). Anyway, having decided I recognised a certain grouping of lights, and we set off. About 5 minutes later, the rib came roaring back, to explain that we were heading south towards France... Looking back at this now, Im just so embarrassed. We were unbelievably lucky with the conditions: somewhere around midnight the sea settled into that oily calmness you only rarely get, with barely a breath of wind. Deck the halls with boughs of holly Somewhere around 1.30am, about 3.5 hours into my second 4.5 hour stint, the lateness of the hour, combined with the fresh air and the fact that I was just sitting there steering, all caught up with me and I nodded off. Probably only for about 10 seconds, but I was quickly woken by the shouts of one of the crew who had spotted that the boat had swung round (it was interesting that the others hadnt actually noticed) because it had to be steered almost every stroke to remain heading in the right direction.
I was just so sleepy. I managed to unwrap a sweet from my pocket, despite wearing large waterproof mittens and needing to do the aforementioned continuous steering, but this only boosted my alertness for a few minutes. So I resorted to singing christmas carols to quietly to myself, on the basis that its quite hard to fall asleep whilst singing, and these were the only songs I could remember enough words to in my addled state.
I made it through to my 2nd 1.5 hour break, and as soon I was on the yacht, crawled onto the huge pile of kitbags in the focsle, and immediately fell asleep, with my nose about 2" from the ceiling. Bliss.
Nearly there Back in the coxing seat, the Welsh coastline soon appeared as a thin grey line on the horizon, though we still had plenty of miles to go. The final crew to swap in wasnt quite the personnel I was expecting, but those that leapt on board explained that they were the only ones left capable of doing another shift - someone had succumbed to seasickness, another was suffering from the flare-up of an injury. A third was totally exhausted. After a while, we realised that this particular combination were all experienced rover rowers, and so we entertained ourselves for 20 minutes by talking ourselves through the landmarks of the so-called Championship Course on the Tideway between Chiswick and Putney. It was so realistic that we could almost smell the burger van at the end, although the aroma as we finally made our way into Aberystwyth harbour was slightly different.
Not sure why we seem to be heading for a cliff at this point?
By now, it was about 8am, and the other competitors, all from Welsh and Irish clubs, showed us the way to the sailing club bar. lacking their prowess (I am only a little cox after all) I sat down in the corner and fell asleep. A little later someone woke me and we went out onto the deck to eat some bacon sarnies, Which were great, and I went asleep in the sun. Several of us then elected to get back to Aberaeron on the yacht, motoring gently down the coast, and chatting to the crew. The weather was delightful and I nodded off again. I then fell asleep yet again in the holiday cottage whilst various friends and other halves cooked supper, and finally in the pub, before eventually being allowed to go to bed - bliss! As with many challenges, its the things you dont expect to be hard that often are, and my abiding memory of the Celtic Challenge was the struggle with sleep deprivation.
Its a cracker of an event, but to do it you need to be with one of the local clubs, because this is a treacherous piece of water, requiring local, or other serious sailing knowledge and decent equipment. We were lucky, and you shouldnt rely on luck with the sea.
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When it comes to challenges of any kind, the enormity of the challenge is depends on the individual as well as what it actually involves. If youre rowing an ocean, the challenge is pretty much built in: theres no such thing as "taster" ocean. That said, the Pacific Ocean is a heck of a lot bigger than the others: I mean, you can position a globe so that its all you can see. But when my friend John Beeden, who already had an extremely fast (53 days) solo crossing of the Atlantic under his belt, was planning his Pacific crossing, he deliberately sought a route that was proper hard.
How to make a hard thing harder First of all, he decided to row mainland to mainland, rather than make use of any offshore islands that still technically constitute an ocean crossing (my own Atlantic row, for instance, was from the Canary Islands to Barbados – not a mainland in sight). This may sound like just a couple of hundred miles more, but the extra distance isnt just any couple of hundred miles. Continents sit on shelves (please bear in mind I dont even have an O-level in geography), or something like that. This makes the edge of the ocean thats on top of the shelf relatively shallow. The wavelength of waves coming in from deep water gets shorter when it gets shallower (I DO have an O-level in physics). And short waves are a pain to row in. Its bad enough near islands and their small shelves, Proper mainlands are way worse. And then there are the onshore currents and winds, which can be either permanently unhelpful or swirly and unpredictable. Not sure which is better. Or worse.
Then, he decided to do it across the Equator. Again, this might sound a bit arbitrary, but it meant that he would have to get through the "Inter Tropical Convergence Zone" (ITCZ – remember that, it will come up later), commonly known as the doldrums, that spans the Equator, and features crazy currents and wild winds as well as really extreme heat.
And thats why John set off from San Francisco on the West Coast of the United States on 2 June 2015, around my bedtime, bound for Cairns, on the West Coast of Australia, 7,020 statute miles away as the crow flies, with not a chance of taking that direct route.
"Go."
What happened? In the fine tradition of The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy which reduced all of the detailed reports, graphs, and data that Ford Prefect submitted about the planet Earth to "mostly harmless", Ill summarise: he made it. 208 days later, after travelling 8,829 statute miles, landing on 27 December, exactly where he intended, albeit somewhat later.
Seven months. In a 6m-long, 159cm-wide (at the widest point) boat. Thats a metre longer than my Volvo V70. And slightly narrower. And whilst I can pack a good deal of grocery shopping into the car, I dont think I could get 28 weekly shops into it. And thats just the toilet roll...
You can read about each of Johns incredibly arduous journey, including the 22 soul-destroying (well, it would be for most of us) days when he was blown backwards away from cairns including one ghastly stretch of eight solid days during which he lost 217 nautical miles (396 km), in his blog.
So when I caught up with John once hed started the process of "re-entry" to normal life (actually, he was on a business trip already), I made sure I didnt ask him to repeat any of the things hed taken so much care to write about, or ask the obvious ocean rowing questions like "What did you eat?", "Did you anchor when it was stormy?" and, of course, "How did you go to the toilet?", the answers to which will be familiar to the well-informed readers of this blog.
Instead, here are some insights into the mindset of a man who not only thought up this incredible challenge, but also achieved it.
Q. What were the standout memories? A. Crossing the equator was a big day, being only the second person to reach the equator from north America was a big deal. It also made me think I could get all the way. The other big memory is making it through the ITCZ which was such a difficult process, rowing 28 hour stints to break free of swirling currents, dealing with the heat and equatorial convections.
Q. How did you get through the sheer difficulty of it all? A. I think it was a day by day process, writing the blog actually was a good release, it cleared away the days negativity. There is a point in the blog at which I stopped looking at the trip as a whole and it became a daily challenge to get the best out of the individual day. I was a true example of living in the moment, the day, the hour, the mile, the stroke.
[I didnt ask John whether he had studied the recently-popular concept of mindfulness or whether he just worked this out for himself. I suspect the latter.]
Q. You’re a lean runner at the best of times, but by the end of the trip you had very serious muscle wastage, pretty much all over and especially on your bum. Do you think you will suffer any long-term physical side-effects from the trip? A. I lost 17lb, ending up about 10/11lb under my normal weight. I actually gained upper body weight but my legs (surprisingly) and behind changed substantially. Running has been difficult since I returned [Note: he went for his first run on 30 December. Im not sure if this is actually more incredible than his 209 days at sea] he and until I rebuild the muscle will remain so. I also managed to damage my Achilles tendon after 10 days or so, this is now healing well but holding me back. Long term I don’t expect any real issues.
"Plump" is not a word that the judges of the "Rear of the Year" award would use about Johns backside when he landed.
Q. How many pairs of shorts did you get through? [a question prompted by the saggy look of his shorts in the above picture] A. I only wore clothing for about three weeks, I then packed all my clothing away and just pulled out a shirt and shorts for the big finish. [Serves me right for asking.] I did wear through five sheep skin seat covers though. [Stop press: Mans bare bottom proved tougher than small flock of sheep.]
Q. Ginger Nuts were mentioned frequently in your blogs with enthusiasm and later wistfulness (when they were running out). How many packets did you eat? A. 82. [Respect.]
A true fan.
Q. I know your family and friends kept you informed about important stuff from the outside world by satellite phone message during the row [including F1 race reports from one of his daughters]. Have you had any instances of things being referred to since you’re back where you’ve gone “hey, WHAT?”? A. Not so much news but a lot has changed. Nearly everything I do on my laptop now has updated software layouts, and my online banking sites are totally different. It’s been a nightmare trying to do anything, updating and finding my way around new layouts and navigation.
And finally.. Wit amidst weariness The video below was shot as John was approaching Cairns harbour: a local journalist is interviewing him as he rowed. The bit I particularly love is where the journalist asks "How are your emotions?", a fairly reasonable question as someone approaches the completion of such an utterly epic and unprecedented challenge. In similar situation, interviewees might, with justification, use words like "overwhelming", "incredible", "fantastic". And what does John, a native of Sheffield, say? "Im from Yorkshire so Im not very emotional." Not only is it quite clearly true, but dont you just love his quick thinking to come up with that when hed only had seven hours sleep in the previous 90. Cracking, lad.
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