by Julie Angus
Everything from their colour and sophisticated sensory system to their power of thermoregulation has been honed to perfection by the force of evolution. Sharks are two-toned, white on the bottom and grey on top, so that they blend into the brightness of the sky from below, and into the darkness of the ocean depths from above. Even when seen from the side, their colour division breaks up their outline. Unlike most fish, they are not completely cold-blooded; a complex circulatory system allows blood in certain vital regions to be warmer than the surrounding water temperatures, allowing them to move and react more quickly. They also have a sixth sense—as if sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell weren’t enough—allowing them to detect electromagnetic impulses at the unimaginably low level of half a billionth of a volt. In other words, they can sense the nervous system of any living creatures nearby. We had been running our solar-powered desalinator earlier, and I wondered if that electrical generation may have also attracted the shark.
Like pretty much everyone who watched Steven Spielberg’s movie Jaws, I am terrified by the great white’s powerful jaws and teeth. Unlike most animals, which possess only two rows of teeth, sharks have six—two on the top and four on the bottom. The extra rows come out at different stages of growth, some visible and others just beneath the surface, so that every six to eight weeks, a row is replaced. At any given time, a great white has about four hundred teeth in its mouth and uses eighty of those for biting. Each individual tooth is shaped like a miniature saw, serrated edges cutting through meat and bone as the shark shakes its head back and forth.
But not all the features that allowed sharks to flourish for hundreds of millions of years serve them well now. Slow maturation and a low birthrate limit the ability of shark populations to rebound from decreases they’ve faced from fishing and purposeful slaughter. In 2003 Canadian scientist Julia Baum published a study in the prestigious journal Science showing that the great white shark population in the North Atlantic had dropped 79 per cent since 1986. Since then there has been no sign of the population rebounding. Recovery will be difficult, if not impossible. Yet for the most part, sharks get little sympathy and fewer conservation campaigns than arguably cuter, or at least less toothy, species. Is it fear that prevents us from showing them comparable compassion? Perhaps. But what an impressive creature.
A STRONG CURRENT funnelled between the islands of Fuerteventura and Gran Canaria, propelling us forward. We could see the volcanic mountains rising from the sea during the day and the glittering city lights at night. After five weeks at sea, the allure of land was powerful. Promises of freshly brewed coffee, fruits, salads, and cold drinks lay just a few kilometres away. Even beyond these cravings, we had practical reasons for going ashore. We’d lost both our sea anchors and could probably find a replacement here. We could also replenish our food supply in case the journey ahead took longer than anticipated. But the risk of being blown into the rocks as we neared the harbour was too high. We also knew that, if we needed to, we could stretch our food supply by rationing. And, for the moment, our makeshift drogue seemed to be working just fine.
Although I knew our decision was the prudent choice, I felt a pang of anxiety as we pointed our bow towards the open ocean and away from the Canary Islands. It would be at least five thousand kilometres and many months before we saw land again, and there was no turning back. The aft winds and currents increased as we continued rowing west to the other side of the ocean.
AFTER PASSING THE Canary Islands, we began a more westerly course. Our plan was to head west on a southward curving trajectory to take full advantage of the prevailing currents and trade winds—light, steady winds that blow westward across the Atlantic. Our route was far from a direct great circle line, but it would allow us to avoid contrary conditions.
A great-circle route is the shortest distance between two points on the Earth. When this line is drawn on a Mercator projection it does not look straight, but curves north in the Northern Hemisphere and south below the equator. Thus, if we took the most direct route to Miami, we would follow a curve, first north of our destination, then slowly going down. The great circle route from Lisbon to Miami extends as far north as Nova Scotia’s latitude. Imagine pulling a piece of string tight between two points on a globe; the course the string naturally takes is the great circle route. An extreme example of the great circle concept is the most direct route from Adelaide, Australia, to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil—a course that would go over the South Pole. Or, to take an example from the Northern Hemisphere, the shortest route from Toronto to Bangkok is via the North Pole.
Taking the shortest route would have shaved thousands of kilometres off our crossing, but it might have made the journey impossible and turned us into the rowboat version of The Flying Dutchman—forever forced to row in a sea of opposing winds and currents. Miami is 6,700 kilometres from Lisbon, but we would row between 8,000 and 9,500 kilometres to connect these points. Our pilot charts—a comprehensive compilation of observations from thousands of ships’ logs—indicated favourable winds in a southern route. Although the weather had strayed significantly from the averages so far, we hoped it would be more typical from now on.
THE LAST OF the Canary Islands passed to our north, turning into distant blue forms that gradually sank into the sea. We had now diverged from major shipping lanes and rarely saw other vessels; once again, Colin and I were alone with the vast, watery expanse around us. Even though I had Colin to keep me company, the immense solitude was sometimes overwhelming, and I marvelled at those who embarked on long and difficult journeys alone.
Decades earlier John Fairfax had rowed from the Canary Islands to Miami all alone. Fairfax’s crossing of the Pacific Ocean with his girlfriend Sylvia in 1971 (when he was bitten by a shark) was actually his second major rowing voyage. In 1969 he left from Gran Canaria (the island we had just passed) and spent six months crossing to Miami in his rowboat, becoming the first to row the Atlantic Ocean from east to west.
His rowboat was much less sophisticated than ours. There was no sealed cabin to escape the foul weather; the waves sloshed right over his bed. Satellite telephone technology didn’t exist, and his means of communication was a shortwave radio that didn’t work most of the time. Even his freshwater drinking requirements were a logistical nightmare that included a complex still, a rain catchment system, and the odd passing freighter. His odds of completing the journey were probably just as high as his odds of never being found again.
Three years before John Fairfax’s attempt, two boats had tried to row across the Atlantic from the U.S. to Europe. One of the boats, Puffin, was manned by two journalists under contract from the London newspaper The People. Puffin was a custom-designed boat fairly well suited to the task, complete with independent flotation chambers, self-righting capabilities, and a small cabin. The other vessel, English Rose III, crewed by Englishmen John Ridgway and Chay Blyth, was much more primitive; the men didn’t have funds for anything more than a simple open dory.
The media closely followed what had become a race to be the first to row across the Atlantic Ocean in the twentieth century. Unfortunately the crew of Puffin succumbed to the forces of the ocean and were never seen again. In September 1966, the Canadian destroyer-escort Chaudière located an upturned vessel about 950 kilometres southeast of Newfoundland. It turned out to be Puffin, and the boat was retrieved from the water. Several items remained on board, including a ship’s log that revealed the crew was getting disheartened on their long voyage. But there was no clue as to what brought about their demise. The final entry on September 3 stated, “No rowing because of north-northwest winds of force two.” These light headwinds presumably intensified into a storm with the strength to capsize their vessel, and their water ballast may not have been sufficiently full to right it.
John Ridgway and Chay Blyth, however, fared better in their six-metre open dory. They departed from Cape Cod two weeks after the Puffin, using their military training to assist in a relentless schedule of non-stop rowing. Half t
he day the men would row in tandem, and the other twelve hours they rowed individually. Their vessel was in constant danger of being swamped, and they were often forced to bail frantically with buckets to keep the sea out. After ninety-two days rowing on the frigid North Atlantic, they finally reached the shores of Ireland, exhausted and emaciated.
The British media was frantic to capture the story, and two reporters died in their haste to reach Ridgway and Blyth (one fell off a boat and the other was caught in a plane crash). Their story made the front page of newspapers around the world, and the festivities went on for months. Even Queen Elizabeth II hosted a cocktail party for the triumphant rowers at Buckingham Palace.
John Ridgway is perhaps the best-known ocean rower in the world, and by great coincidence I had the pleasure of meeting him. The previous owners of our rowboat were brothers, Richard and Will Burchnall. Will is John Ridgway’s son-in-law, and the rowboat had been stored at Ridgway’s adventure retreat on the northwestern shores of Scotland.
The brothers did not row across the Atlantic Ocean as they’d planned and instead put the boat up for sale. They had bought it two years earlier from another British man who, along with a friend, had rowed across the Atlantic from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean. Before them, another team of two men had taken the boat across the Atlantic on a similar route. When I’d been close to finalizing the boat purchase, I travelled to Scotland to inspect the vessel. I flew from Vancouver to London to Inverness, where I rented a stick-shift car and drove on the wrong side of the road until it narrowed into a single lane. The landscape was nothing more than weathered granite with heather huddled into the folds. Old stone crofter’s cabins, their roofs sagging, hinted at the resilience of the people who inhabited this wild region. I finally reached Cape Adventure International, a cluster of buildings perched near the water in a sheltered bay. The sea was deep blue, almost black, against a Scottish milky-blue sky.
Will Burchnall led me over pastoral fields and low stone walls to see our future rowboat. Ondine, or Manpower as she was then named, sat on the side of a gravel road, looking like a broken-down vehicle left to rot on the front lawn of a dishevelled home. I knew that she was nine years old and had been sitting unused for two years, but I somehow envisioned a boat selling for thirty-two thousand dollars would look a little more, well, valuable. I stepped into the boat, crawled inside the cabin, and lay down, imagining what it would be like to be on the ocean in this small vessel.
After I thoroughly inspected Ondine, Will took me across the bay in a small motorboat to John Ridgway’s water-access-only home. A fit older man walked down to the wharf to greet us, and I suddenly realized I was looking at Ridgway himself.
In his late sixties, John looked like he could still row across an ocean, and indeed, he has continued to be physically active since his days rowing across the Atlantic. As we walked the grounds around his home, the adventurer described his years of sailing the world and exploring the Amazon.
Finally we reached a large wooden shed. John placed his bony hand on the latch and twisted. The door swung open; inside was his old rowboat, English Rose III. It looked no different from the old dories used in Newfoundland for fishing, and I couldn’t believe that this little open boat had made it across the Atlantic. I looked up at John with a renewed respect.
“We started with more than a dozen oars,” he said with a chuckle, as he pointed to those that remained.
The shafts of the oars looked as though they had been whittled away by a hungry beaver. During their ninety-two-day non-stop row, John and his partner had had no cabin to shelter them from the elements when they slept; they wrapped themselves in blankets and oilskins and lay on the sodden floor.
I couldn’t imagine crossing an ocean in that boat.
“This boat wasn’t our first choice, but we couldn’t afford the one we wanted to use,” John said, as if reading my mind.
When John had planned this trip, he was a twenty-six-year-old paratrooper without sponsors or money to buy a boat. His bank gave him an overdraft; the military allowed him unpaid leave, and forty-six days before his departure, he found a partner in fellow paratrooper Chay Blyth. When they left, the coast guard estimated they had a 95 per cent chance of dying. But despite pessimistic predictions, they reached the far shores of the Atlantic Ocean just three months later.
“We’re all made pretty much the same,” John said. He tapped his index finger to his temple. “It’s what’s in here that counts.” He paused a moment. “And whatever happens, never give up.”
At the time I was just thrilled that this accomplished explorer was supportive of my journey, but since then I’ve thought back frequently to just how true those words were. The biggest challenge on this trip wasn’t mustering the physical strength to tackle big waves or continue rowing past the point of exhaustion. It was simply to keep going. To control my fear, doubts, and pessimism, and to continue forward, dealing with the challenges as they arose.
ON OUR THIRTY-FIFTH day at sea, I woke up to discover we had company. A storm petrel had decided our boat made a convenient resting spot and was asleep on the bristle brush we used to tackle the barnacles.
When I stepped onto the deck, the bird woke but didn’t move. It was sitting between the rowing tracks, definitely not a safe spot once I started rowing. I gently lifted the bird with the brush and relocated it to a safer place. It wasn’t scared as I cradled it in my hands, and I guessed this was a result of having no predators. I hoped an injury was not the cause of its prolonged rest. Storm petrels have evolved to ply the ocean skies for most of their lives, and their legs can barely support the weight of their bodies. As far as I know, they do not commonly land on boats.
Once I started rowing, the petrel realized that its peace had been permanently disrupted and that a return to slumber was impossible. It relinquished its bristle bed and began wandering around the deck, wings flapping in unsuccessful attempts at flight. The deck was too small and cluttered to provide an adequate runway.
Eventually I realized that without help, it would not succeed. I cupped my hands around its body and gently placed the bird on the gunwale. But instead of using this unencumbered space to take off, it promptly strolled onto the oar, scrabbled on the slippery surface, and fell into the water. Pumping its wings, the bird ran along the water’s surface for forty metres, but was unable to gain enough lift to fly. When it stopped, it floated low in the water, struggling. This creature was definitely not designed for swimming, and I hoped I hadn’t unwittingly aided in its demise. I steered the boat closer, hoping to provide some assistance. The bird tried a second time, pumping and flapping and running for perhaps fifty metres. Finally it lifted from the ocean’s surface to freedom, and disappeared into the distance.
Later that day we were visited by more petrels. They circled our boat, flying low, skimming the water’s surface, and tapping it rhythmically with their feet. Although we’d seen petrels before, this was the first time they’d tap-danced for us, and the biological purpose of this behaviour became a hot topic of conversation. Later research on the birds revealed little as to what purpose this pattering serves, apart from possibly helping to stabilize the creatures as they hover near the surface to feed. The petrels skimmed near the surface of the water, pattering and dipping their wingtips into the water as they scooped up copepods and other small crustaceans with their beaks.
It looked like they were walking on water, so we nicknamed them “Jesus birds.” Little did we know that our label was far from original. We later found out that “petrel” is a diminutive form of the name Peter, as in Saint Peter, the biblical apostle who walked on water (albeit briefly). We did not know that then, nor did we know that the “storm” in storm petrel came from the birds’ tendency to hide in the lee of ships when tempests approached and that they are considered harbingers of winds and waves.
ON OCTOBER 28, water and sky shared a steely grey hue. Before sunrise the ocean was a glassy calm, but by early morning a gentle ripple caresse
d its surface. By 10:00 AM scattered whitecaps dotted the sea and the waves increased to two metres in height. The winds were against us, increasing in speed until they blew from the west at thirty kilometres an hour.
I worked hard, lengthening my oar stroke, increasing the pace, pushing hard with my legs, and digging my oars into the water, but my efforts were in vain. We barely moved. The measly half-horsepower I could exert was nothing compared to the ocean’s forces. I thought of the millions of stationary rowing machines in gyms around the world and tried to console myself that I wasn’t the only person rowing on the spot. But when the gym rowers stop, they go relax in the sauna. If I stopped we just drifted backwards and lost precious ground.
I hated this. I wanted to quit, to cry uncle, to stomp my feet in a tantrum against the cruel gods of the sea. I wanted to moan to Colin about how much I loathed this, to wallow in my own dissatisfaction. But I didn’t. I kept my mouth shut and continued rowing, because it wouldn’t make a difference. The emotionless ocean bends for no one.
I was glad I had stopped myself from complaining to Colin; it would have darkened the mood on the boat. I tried to achieve inner peace with our situation, but all I could think about was how hard I was working and how little we were moving. It was hard to believe the end would ever be in sight. At this moment the journey was the antithesis of instant gratification. I forced myself to think ahead to the days when our row across the Atlantic Ocean would be a tale we would share with our grandchildren, when the storms and headwinds would be nothing but punctuation for a rich memory. After all, aren’t struggles, hardships, and failures ultimately overshadowed by success?