I completed my first two-hour rowing shift that first morning, which at the time was the longest row I had ever done. Afterwards the muscles in my back were sore, my hands were chafed and the biggest discomfort was my backside. In two hours my bum got very painful and in the two hours rest it barely had time to recover before I was back on shift again. As the sun was setting on that first day a pod of dolphins dropped by to say hello, no doubt thinking to themselves what the hell are you idiots doing out here?! They are such beautiful and graceful creatures; it was great to see them so early in our voyage and I took it as a good sign of things to come. As we pulled further away from the coast the waves were beginning to get bigger, nothing dangerous just rough enough to get the boat rocking and my stomach starting to rumble.
Our food for the entire crossing was dehydrated meals due to their light weight and each member brought their own snacks of what they enjoyed. The team had acquired some leftover meals for a cheaper price off another expedition team so variety was in short supply, the main meals consisting of chicken korma, spaghetti bolognaise and chilli con carne. Even though Jake was the nominated cook and offered to make me meals using hot water each day, I decided early on that I’d make my own meals with cold water. I did this for two reasons: it was more convenient to make my own food at any time instead of waiting for water to boil at meal times; I also realised that a nice hot meal is fantastic, however, if the gas burner was to break and I had to go from hot meals to cold meals the drop in morale would be monumental. So I decided to eat cold meals from the beginning and learn to love them, avoiding any possible scenario for morale loss on the high seas.
I chewed down a fairly average meal of chilli con carne just after sunset and settled into our tiny cabin for my first sleep at sea. Lying flat on my back the walls of the cabin were one foot either side of me, my feet touched the end and my head was at the entry, it was a tight fit. I had just dozed off when I woke up about to be sick, spinning over as quick as I could, reaching outside for the toilet bucket and grabbing it just in time to power spew inside it. Chilli really is a miserable meal on the way back up. Seasickness had kicked in and it was only minutes after I started to vomit that I heard Mel and Susannah doing the same. Mel was rowing with Jake as I continued to be sick for a few more minutes and then realised it was time for me to relieve Jake and start my next two hours of rowing.
The first night was a really tough time for me; apart from the discomfort of rowing itself, the seas had picked up causing small waves to break against the side of the boat, soaking us every few minutes. On top of that I’d be stopping to grab the bucket for a spew every twenty minutes. My body was tiring as I got more and more dehydrated from the seasickness and as soon as I finished my shift I’d drink as much water as I could and chew down a snack, knowing full well I’d be seeing it all again shortly. It was also bitterly cold. The others, coming from the UK, seemed to be used to the temperature but my last splash in the water was at 35 degrees Celsius in Thailand. I was wearing a big waterproof jacket and pants, beanie and gloves to keep myself from shivering. If there was ever a baptism of fire into ocean rowing, that first night was it. In the middle of the night at my lowest point, while staring at the bottom of the bucket, I thought to myself, ‘I don’t know if I can do this.’
The toughest rowing shift was from 12 to 2 am when all my body wanted to do was sleep but it was forced to row for another two hours. I caught myself falling asleep while rowing a few times. I would doze off and my rowing rhythm would fall out of sync with Mel’s or Susannah’s causing our oars to clash together startling me awake again. We staggered the rowing shifts between all of us so that an hour after I started my shift the girls would change and an hour after that Jake and I would be changing. This made sure that every hour there would be a fresh set of eyes on deck. On my 4 to 6 am shift the sun was starting to show itself on the horizon and as the light of a new day forced the darkness back into the depths of the ocean, morale was lifted.
We had some teething issues in those first two days and the auto tiller that was supposed to help keep us on a straight bearing decided to throw us into donuts every few hours. This would turn us side-on to the waves and give us a good soaking. Susannah battled through the user manual for a couple of hours and eventually remedied the problem. I was feeling better by midday on the second day and I could eat, drink and finally keep it all down. I had to do both in abundance to make up for the previous twenty-four hours of dehydration. Chris Martin sent us through our first transmission of weather updates and according to him we had done very well and covered 60 nautical miles our first day.
We each had jobs to do on board during the hours of rest. Mel and Susannah were in charge of navigation and communication, Jake was the boat’s cook and prepared hot drinks when we were in need of a morale boost and I was in charge of the water. During one of my rest periods I fired up the water maker to refill all of our bottles. It was a remarkable piece of technology, pumping in the sea water, forcing out the salt and leaving us with beautiful fresh water at the end. It was a temperamental machine but when given a little love it produced 32 litres of water for us in ninety minutes. With the amount of energy we were all expending and with the number of calories we needed to consume of the dehydrated food, fresh water was the number one crucial element we had to have every single day and I was more than happy to take on my job.
While resting in the tiny cabin, getting ready for my second night at sea, I could feel the boat moving underneath me in all directions as we were shoved and pushed by the waves. I could feel the team rowing and the pull forward through the waves when their oars were working together and a strong stroke connected with the sea. The echo and noise of waves crashing against the fibreglass sounded much more ferocious than they actually were. When I crawled out to begin my shift and gazed out at the endless water as far as the eye could see, it took my breath away. We truly live on an amazing planet and it was in that moment, while exposed and vulnerable in the middle of the ocean, I started to really appreciate its power and majesty.
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My first rogue wave experience occurred on the fourth night. Mel and I were on shift and we had turned off the navigation lights to enjoy the stars and save our battery power. We relied on pure solar power out there to run all the electronics and the water maker so conservation was key to avoiding flat batteries on cloudy days. We were leaving the lights on when we could see other ships on our radar, enormous cargo ships were passing by at night and the last thing we wanted was to have a collision with one of those. I doubt the cargo ship’s captain’s coffee would even ripple as they ploughed over the top of us in the middle of the night, so we had to be on guard at all times.
I had settled into two hours of misery when I heard the rumble of a big breaking wave, a split second before it slammed us side-on and swept the deck with its power. I managed to grab the safety line just in time but Mel was swept out of her seat and was just able to hang on to the side of the boat, stopping her from being taken overboard. We were told before departure that this scenario was going to be a common occurrence, so while on deck we were wearing our life jackets with personal locator beacons for possible rescue. We also had an ankle leash to attach to our foot plate when it was really rough and another safety line attached to the boat. The rogue wave definitely rattled both of us, and for the rest of our shift any rumble from the ocean had us grabbing the safety lines with lightning speed.
We were averaging over 60 nautical miles per day, which was a great number to be hitting so early on in the row, granted we had the wind and waves assisting us over the previous five days and I was quietly hoping for the wind to keep nudging us along for as long as possible. Our bodies were slowly adapting to the twelve hours a day of rowing and I knew that as we adapted to the task and started to get strong we could influence the miles a lot more with our effort. The marine life was everywhere and in abundance, we were sighting turtles, dolphins, fish and birds almost daily. It was always a nice break
from the monotony of rowing.
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Our voyage was going to cover almost 3500 nautical miles (6000 kilometres) by the time we hoped to reach the Brazilian coastline. That figure was simply too huge to comprehend so we broke our voyage into stages. Stage one was to make it from Lagos to the Canary Islands, situated off the coast of the Western Sahara, 650 nautical miles (1200 kilometres) away, and at the speed we were travelling it was going to take around ten days. I made a calendar on the roof of our cabin with masking tape and a felt pen. Every morning after my last night shift of rowing I’d cross off the day before and write up the miles we had travelled in the last twenty-four hours. Apart from keeping my mind occupied, this also gave me targets to hit and it made me push harder on the rowing to beat the previous day’s total.
Next to the calendar I stuck a picture of Elise and underneath wrote three phrases that have come to give me great comfort and strength: ‘Be grateful’, ‘You deserve this’ and ‘Thank you for allowing me to suffer’. These words were told to me by my good friend and mentor Ken Ware. I first met Ken out in Emerald, central Queensland, while I was working in the mines. He owned and operated a health and fitness centre in town and I was training there twice a day. He is the founder of NeuroPhysics Therapy, which is a program designed to trigger the human system to resolve many of its issues without the use of drugs, surgery or manipulation. He is a former Mr Universe and current Australian powerlifting record holder who has gone on to lecture at some of the biggest non-linear science conferences in the world, where his results and findings still stun the scientific community. His programs have helped literally thousands of people remedy a wide variety of disorders. From easing pain and restoring movement to getting spinal patients out of wheelchairs and walking again. He has been a pillar of guidance and a supporter of mine for over a decade. Out in the middle of the ocean when my hands went numb from rowing, I’d use his NeuroPhysics tremor therapy to dissipate the pain and adapt to the environment. It is truly amazing stuff.
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It was the morning of day six when personal catastrophe struck. To go to the toilet on our floating paradise we had no option but to use a plastic bucket within arm’s reach of each other. Due to the constant instability of the boat the bucket had to be placed in the centre back section of the rowing deck so as not to cause the boat to tilt to one side during use. I scooped up some salt water into the bottom of the bucket to act as ballast and help keep it from sliding around during the rougher than average morning swell. I was due on my first shift of the day fifteen minutes later and was in the middle of my morning ritual of eating, drinking and using the toilet before I started. I had completed my use of the bucket and was pulling up my pants and preparing to empty its contents overboard when a wave hit us side-on sending the bucket and myself skidding onto the deck. I swore out loud as the bucket’s contents emptied onto the deck and the gravity of the clean-up job sunk in. As I was picking up my waste with my hands, I first thought about the last time I was covered in my own filth all those years ago in London, then I thought about the people at home drinking their flat whites and starting their normal days. I envied them for a brief moment as I looked at what was in my hands, but as I lifted my head to the amazing sunrise I didn’t want to be anywhere else. Jake, after being woken up by my swearing, and who was always the gentleman, offered to give me a hand. I declined, chuckled to myself and wondered, if I had said yes, would he have actually helped me?
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Our first close encounter with another vessel occurred late into our seventh night. We had been making good progress when the auto tiller decided to throw a fit and send us into donuts again. This usually wouldn’t have caused great concern except that at the same time, our AIS (automatic identification system) alarm, which warned us if we were in close proximity to other boats, started going off. Scanning the horizon we immediately noticed a mass of lights in the darkness, and not knowing what was out there, we read the description on the AIS. A 180-metre-long cargo ship was coming directly at us and was within half a mile of our location. The ship’s crew, who would have been alerted by their own AIS, switched on a huge spotlight and started to scan the water, searching for us – on their system we would register as an 8-metre sailing vessel, not an ocean rowing boat. We switched on all of our lights and tried to raise the ship on a VHF radio and, on making contact with the ship, told them that we are unable to alter our course as we were a row boat. Moments later the ship altered its course to pass us on our right side and the collision was averted.
The following morning brought with it 4- to 6-metre seas and our first taste of the awesome power of the sea. The waves were big and could toss our little boat in any direction they chose so we were lucky that the waves were coming from behind us and not from the side. If a 6-metre swell caught us side-on we would be capsized for sure. A wave swept through and picked up the back of the boat, which forced us to surf down the face of the wave before it spat us out over the top. We were gaining twice to three times our average speed, reaching up to 11 knots in the ten seconds of surfing as each swell rolled through. It was a tense, scary yet exciting day and once again, the power of Mother Nature was helping us tally up some easy miles. We covered 85 nautical miles that day, our biggest total so far.
The night of day nine was a surreal experience for me as we battled rough seas throughout the entire night. I sat in my rowing position and everything was pitch-black, with not a star in the sky due to the cloud cover and the drizzling rain. The wind was howling, the surf was crashing around me and I was getting launched left, right, up and down with the ferocity of the waves. It was like being blindfolded on a roller-coaster, not knowing what turn is coming up next. The toll on the body and mind was immense and I fought to stay alert and not be thrown overboard by a rogue wave when it swept the deck. On top of that, every few minutes an oar jumped out of my hand and slammed into my shins, knee or hip, as if to jolt me back to reality saying ‘stay awake this isn’t over yet’. Welcome to the Atlantic rowing roller-coaster, and it was in those dark moments that I’d ask myself the hardest questions and in answering them dictate my future.
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Stage one was complete, we had made it to the Canary Islands and covered 650 nautical miles (1200 kilometres). It had been a baptism under ocean fire and I was beginning to feel as if my body was adapting to the two hours on two hours off roster. Passing through the islands at the end of day ten the seas began to grow again and within an hour had grown to a massive dumping swell, making it too dangerous to be rowing. We threw out our drogue anchor, which is a small parachute on a long rope that’s pulled into the current and acts like an anchor. This little device kept us in line with the waves and prevented us getting flipped end over end. Once the drogue was tied off the girls both crawled into their cabin and Jake and I squeezed into ours.
With Jake and I both inside the cabin and the hatch shut the space becomes water- and air-tight and it gets hot and uncomfortable very quickly. Every so often we had to risk opening the hatch to let some fresh air circulate with a 50/50 chance of a blast of sea water rocketing through the small opening, soaking everything. My body was begging for sleep and even though it felt like we were inside a washing machine I dozed off. It was amazing how easily we could fall asleep when we really needed it; crammed up inside a tiny space with another human, hot and sweating, being battered in the enormous swell with no comforts at all, I slept like a baby.
The following morning as the sun broke over the horizon the waves had calmed down only marginally. I poked my head out of the hatch and noticed our position was in between two of the islands and fairly close to both. We decided as a team to try and get rowing again and get ourselves into deeper water away from the land, where the waves should be calmer. I heaved in our drogue anchor and on inspection noticed it had been shredded by the ferocity of the ocean overnight. We reset the tiller, Jake and Mel climbed into the rowing seats and we turned south with the wind and waves. The acceleration was
immediate and we were hurtling along at an average speed of 6–10 knots, triple our normal rowing speed. Huge breaking waves came up behind us and when we weren’t lucky enough to surf away from them they broke onto deck with incredible power. At one stage we were forced side-on to the swell as a wave broke on top of us. I watched through the cabin door as Jake’s oar snapped and the bracket that held it in place was shattered to pieces.
We were now in a very dangerous position sitting side-on to huge swell, as I scrambled over the deck fixing the bracket and unlashing a new oar for Jake. I thought that at any moment we were going to be capsized and going for a swim. It was the most scared I had been on board so far and I could see in the faces of the others they were feeling the same. While being battered by the waves I finished replacing the bracket and we were rowing again, narrowly escaping disaster. Ten minutes later it was my turn to go out on deck and row and I thought to myself that we were going to capsize for sure at some stage of my shift. So I pulled on my jacket, placed the emergency beacon around my neck and then proceeded to eat an entire tub of Nutella. If I was going to be hurled into the freezing Atlantic I was going in satisfied.
The seas were huge and at one time Mel and I were chest deep in white water after a breaking wave swallowed the boat, but we didn’t capsize. It was an adrenaline-fuelled ordeal not knowing what the next wave was going to bring and believing that at any second we were going to be broken to pieces in the ocean. I turned into a man possessed, rowing with such ferocity while trying to surf the waves that I was testing my physical limits to their extreme. We fought on for another hour but the speeds that the boat reached were literally out of control. Susannah had the idea to throw out the tattered drogue again in order to slow our speed and increase our stability. As soon as it came to full length in the ocean we were slowed down by half and the violence of the waves seemed to dissipate to a more manageable level. It was a great call from the captain, and for the first time in fifteen hours I could relax a little and we all laughed about how close we had come to disaster. In calming down I let my eyes wander over the horizon and the islands, it was then I noticed the white-capped volcano rising huge above the ocean as part of Tenerife island. The skies had cleared and this ancient, 3718-metre giant called El Teide stood watch over our progress. The summit was the highest point in Spain and it was one of the most incredible sites I had ever seen.
One Life One Chance Page 25