One Life One Chance

by Luke Richmond

  …

  We marked the end of stage three when we crossed the equator, thirty-seven days after leaving Lagos. Stage three had felt like it was never going to end, especially when the heat was really beating down, and I was positive someone was moving that invisible line just to spite us. We gathered around the navigation screen to watch our northern position count down to zero, meaning we were directly on top of the equator. We had covered 1000 nautical miles (1852 kilometres) in fifteen days and we were over the moon. Susannah had been saving some pita bread and Mel had been saving Nutella, peanut butter and jam for a celebratory picnic. The food was delicious and Jake pulled out a bottle of Captain Morgan rum to wash it all down. I decided not to partake in the rum since my track history with alcohol wasn’t good and I didn’t want to tempt the demons. To conclude our equator crossing ceremony Susannah produced a tin of sliced peaches that were the single greatest thing I had ever tasted in my life.

  Stage four was now upon us and our goal was to reach a point in the ocean 5 degrees south and 25 degrees west, roughly 420 nautical miles (780 kilometres) from our current position. We would be travelling through uncharted waters for ocean rowing and in an area of the ocean called the Doldrums. The Doldrums were famous in maritime history as areas of the ocean void of wind, current or waves and renowned for sending sailors crazy who got caught in her gentle embrace for weeks at a time. This meant no help from Mother Nature to push us along, just more human power under the baking equatorial sun.

  The night shifts had been relatively cool and we had encountered short, bursting monsoonal rains. The humid patch of ocean seemed to be an emerging point for weather systems that continue travelling north, gaining in size and intensity before crashing into the Caribbean, sometimes as devastating hurricanes. To avoid getting our cabin soaking wet during shift change, standard procedure became stripping down nude on deck and leaving all wet clothes outside. The person leaving the cabin would lay out a towel for the one entering to dry off straight away. The big downside of this system was that after having a glorious ninety-minute sleep I had to leave my cosy habitat, put on wet, cold clothes, and start rowing in the drizzling rain. Fifteen minutes after I started rowing however, my back and bum would hurt sufficiently to enable me to forget about how cold and miserable I was.

  One of the biggest things I’d come to realise about ocean rowing, and this is something we can relate back to everyday life, is that things can always be worse. Often we would be going along steady then the boat would be battered by side waves, causing my back and bum to burn from trying to stay on the rowing seat. Instead of getting frustrated I would tell myself ‘it can always be worse’. The next minute a headwind would build up slowing progress to a crawl and intensifying the effect of the side waves, ‘it can always be worse’. The auto tiller decided to throw a fit spinning us in circles with a headwind and side waves, ‘things can always be worse’. Then it was a rogue side wave towering up unseen in the dark and breaking directly on top of the boat rendering us sopping wet. With this new mantra I could control my frustration and just get on with the job knowing full well at any moment ‘things can always be worse’.

  Mid-morning on day forty-one Mother Nature was giving us another taste of her power. An increasing headwind had halted our progress south and instead forced us directly west at 3 knots. We had to do everything we could to keep heading south; if we didn’t get far enough south by the time we were near the coast of Brazil the trade winds and currents would sweep us north and we would not be able to make it to Recife or even Brazil. The wind was unrelenting and as the waves built up around us we were doing everything in our power to get some southerly movement. The sun was setting and the waves were breaking onto the deck, we pulled on our life jackets, personal locator beacons and clipped into the safety lines. It was going to be another rough night at the oars. The brutal conditions were holding strong and by the third night I was starting to take micro sleeps while rowing since we were all totally exhausted and begging for a break in the weather.

  That break came on the morning of day forty-four when conditions had calmed, giving us a chance to claw back the ground we had lost. The wind, waves and current were all trying to nudge us north-west but we were forging ahead south-west. I was trying to enjoy every moment of this adventure, knowing I would never be in this exact spot ever again, and I wanted to remember every little detail. After my rowing shifts at night I’d strip off my wet clothes and stand up at the front of the boat and stare at the stars. In calm conditions, the quiet sound of oars breaking the water and the Milky Way shining bright above me were the most beautiful moments.

  I opened another note from Elise that read:

  WHEN WE LOVE, WE ALWAYS STRIVE TO BECOME BETTER THAN WE ARE. WHEN WE STRIVE TO BECOME BETTER THAN WE ARE EVERYTHING AROUND US BECOMES BETTER TOO. YOU MAKE ME BETTER IN EVERY WAY. LOVE YOU BABY

  …

  Seven days after leaving the picnic at the equator we finished stage four and had notched up another 420 nautical miles (780 kilometres). Our aim was 5 degrees south and 25 west, however with the hammering we had taken from the weather we drifted to 26 degrees south 30 west. We reset our bearing in a straight shot towards Recife and with a more westerly bearing we were hoping for some assistance from the current to get us to land within a week. We set ourselves back into our routine after this little milestone and change of direction and focused on the final 600 nautical miles (1100 kilometres) to the beach and our waiting families. Elise would be waiting for me on arrival along with my parents, who were travelling all the way from Charters Towers, a tiny town in central Queensland, to the remote coast of Brazil. I couldn’t wait to see them and I spent many hours focused on our reunion to give me the strength to finish the job.

  With 400 nautical miles to go the conversations between the team began turning to food and everything we were going to eat when we got to land. I believe this conversation is timeless and would have been held by sailors in the 1800s. I’m sure the food of choice would have changed over the ages – I doubt the men of the trading fleets would have enjoyed my beloved Vegemite that Elise was ordered to bring me over from Australia. Fresh fruit and vegetables were high on the list and I could feel my body slowly breaking down and in desperate need of nourishment. I had sores everywhere, 60 per cent of my body was covered in prickly heat rash, my right knee was swollen and giving me a really tough time and my hands had reformed into one solid callous. Nothing forty-eight hours of sleep, a few fresh eggs and some carrots couldn’t remedy, I was sure.

  We had encountered the good, the bad and the ugly on this trip so far and on day forty-seven we had a combination of all three. The good being that we made great speed and progress towards Recife, the bad being that it came with a push from some massive waves over our right side leaving us drenched. The ugly was throughout the day when not rowing, having the choice of staying on deck and getting battered by waves, or getting in the cabin with the door shut to get soaked by your own sweat. I chose the deck option – it was the less uncomfortable choice for me.

  It was Sunday, day forty-eight with 320 nautical miles (600 kilometres) to go, and if the tailwind stayed strong for us I predicted a Friday morning breakfast of scrambled eggs, Vegemite on toast and fresh Brazilian coffee. We hadn’t had any sightings of cargo ships for weeks but as we got closer to the coast they were showing up on the horizon again. Every time I saw one I imagined a nice air conditioned cabin and a breakfast buffet, probably with the captain and I chatting over a coffee. As they disappeared out of sight I forgot the daydream and refocused my attention on the job at hand.

  We had been fighting our way south-west for over a week, a constant battering of strong winds and waves trying to push us north-west. Even though it had been brutally hard we managed to progress in the direction we were hoping for to reach Recife. We were within three to five days of finishing this monstrous journey and just when I thought the exhaustion and physical battle couldn’t get much tougher, it did. Late afternoon on
day forty-nine our auto tiller decided it had had enough and broke down. This device kept our bearing steady for us even when being pounded by big waves and when it wasn’t working we were at the mercy of the sea and got pushed in all directions. Susannah sprang to action and changed fuses, rewired circuits and created a bypass in the system, all in an effort to keep us on track. Nothing was working so we unpacked the spare auto tiller, this one slightly smaller, and we were immediately worried about its ability to stand up to the conditions. Once it was installed it seemed as though we were full-steam ahead, until in the middle of the night when it too broke down and wouldn’t start again.

  This left us with only one option, manual steering with two thin ropes attached to the tiller. Pull left you go left, pull right you go right – a very simple steering method. Manual steering in good weather isn’t such a hard task but when you’re trying to row hard on a tight bearing through tough conditions it’s a nightmare. Every time a wave hit the boat side-on we were forced off bearing and it took maximum effort of rowing on one side to bring her back on course; by that time the next wave had hit and the process repeated itself. This new development meant we were unable to stick to our bearing and had to aim off to the west. We had given ourselves a three-day goal to see if we could get to Recife on a more westerly heading, if not we were going to have to come up with a plan of action to get to the coast anyway and anywhere we could.

  …

  I ran out of my own food at the end of day fifty-one, successfully having eaten seventy-five days worth of snack bags, and meals. I had ten chilli con carne dehydrated dinners that were like the Alamo of starvation due to their disagreeable taste and heartburn after effects. I knew rations were going to be tight while aiming for three meals per day plus snacks but I couldn’t factor in how hard the intensity would be at some stages and how much food I’d need to keep me going. I’d easily lost 10 kilograms but I’d say it could be closer to 15 by the end of the trip. Now I was relying on the team to feed me some of their meals, which being so close to the finish line, they were happy to sacrifice. There were a couple of plans getting thrown around by the team for our final approach to the coast, one was to get as close as possible to Recife and if we got pushed too far north by the currents organise for a chartered boat to give us a tow the last 30–40 nautical miles. The other option was to make landfall anywhere we could, on any beach or into any creek that would allow it. I was all for option two and so was the team. We started this voyage under human power and we wanted to finish it the same way.

  Progress had been tough at best and soul destroying at worst and we decided to up the intensity of the rowing to get us on a solid bearing and to the finish line quicker. We had an extra rowing seat as a spare in our hull hatch the whole trip so we set it up with the spare oars as a third rowing position. We were doing two hours of rowing then two hours of rest, and we continued to do the same but after we finish our first two hours we moved to the third seat for some overtime, an extra thirty minutes each per shift. This left us with ninety minutes to get clean, eat and hopefully have a little sleep. It may not seem like much but with three people rowing it gave us more power and held a better bearing south, which would get us as close to Recife as possible. We were so close now I could taste the cold beer, and even though the next forty-eight hours of extra-time rowing would be hard, it would make the glory of arrival so much sweeter. I just hoped that wherever we ended up landing the locals were ready because I was going to set off every flare we had in celebration, it was going to be like a Sydney New Year’s Eve special in a backwater creek of Brazil.

  I stared out at the horizon on day fifty-four, searching for the first sight of land with only 60 nautical miles to go. The first day of three people rowing was a shock to the system but we were hanging in there now that we had the finish line in our sights. Studying our charts of the coastline, we had our eyes set on a few different landing options. There was a beach and two different creeks, and depending on where we ended up along the coast, we would be aiming for one of those. Our final challenge would hit us on our last night shift, where there was a 20-nautical-mile section of really strong northerly current we would have to fight hard to get across to ensure we didn’t end up too far north up the coast. We were almost done, surely the body could last just one more day.

  We pushed hard through our last night trying to gain as many miles as we could so our arrival could be in daylight hours. The seas stayed friendly and with three of us rowing at different stages we managed to get through the predicted northerly currents without many miles lost to the north. Our new landing spot was a small beach at the mouth of a river 30 nautical miles north from our first target of Recife, we set the new bearing into the navigation system, set the steering ropes and made good progress towards it through the first half of the day. It was a hot day again so Jake and I had a shade towel up whenever the third rowing seat wasn’t being used and this gave us some respite from the heat when we ate our meals. I didn’t hold back on the food – if all went well we would not be needing the dehydrated rations that night. The music was blaring through the boat’s speakers and we were all in a celebratory mood as we moved closer and closer to the coast of Brazil.

  We were in the rowing zone as we counted down the miles and it wasn’t until I stood up after my 10 to 12 midday shift that I saw a thin blue line on the horizon. We were 13 nautical miles away from our destination and I could finally see the coast of South America. Feelings of success, happiness and ultimate safety overwhelmed me as I stared at the land in the distance. Jake was asleep under the shade towel and after a few shouts of ‘wake up’ his eyes were open and I told him, ‘I can see land buddy, we did it!’ He was up like a shot, the towel being ripped down in the process, and he locked his eyes on Brazil. Rowing came to a stop as well and we all exchanged hugs and high fives and stared off into the distance. On the breeze came the damp scent of the jungle and civilisation, and now anytime I wasn’t rowing I was staring at the land mass getting bigger and bigger on the horizon.

  Thirteen miles to go and we were all recharged after seeing how close we were to accomplishing our goal. Some local fisherman stopped by to see us, shouting something in Portuguese that we couldn’t understand and me shouting back in English to no reaction. Instead it was thumbs up and big waves before they sped off towards the coast. We were coming up on our last 5 nautical miles and the satellite phone was making a constant racket as calls and messages were going back and forth between us and our families waiting for our arrival. They were given the location of where we were hoping to arrive and Mel was chatting to her boyfriend Shaun and father Roger to do a reconnaissance for us and hopefully guide us in through any reefs or hazards.

  Shaun told us they were trying to hire a boat to come meet us and guide us the last few miles to safety but so far this was not confirmed so we continued to push hard on the oars, desperate to make it in before sundown. It was late afternoon as we saw another boat coming over for a visit, expecting more fisherman, we were blown away when we saw the faces of our families smiling and waving at us from a speedboat. I saw my dad perched up front in his OLOC Adventures T-shirt giving me the big thumbs up, bringing tears to my eyes immediately. Jake’s mum and girlfriend were on board, Mel’s boyfriend and the Brazilian media all crammed in together.

  The speedboat was getting bucked around by the waves and it wasn’t until that moment that I realised how rough the ocean was. We had grown so accustomed to the movement of the boat and had been in so many big seas that it was a great day for us with nice rowing conditions. For our family members though coming straight from land, it was brutal, and it was only a few minutes after we saw each other that people were hit by seasickness and spewing over the side of their boat. I laughed so hard when Jake’s mum started to vomit overboard. We had all been through the hell of seasickness and I thought it was great that the family were having a little taste of it!

  Mel asked Shaun to help guide us to the mouth of the river we were aimin
g for and he showed the driver of the speedboat where we were headed on a map. We followed them as they turned towards the coast, but for some reason we turned due south and off the bearing we had been following. Assuming that we had just missed the entrance slightly, we hooked into the rowing and followed. We went from having good rowing conditions and wind at our back to heading into strong wind and current as we tried to go south. It was a really tough slog, three of us going for it as hard as we could just to keep some forward momentum.

  After forty-five minutes of this new bearing Mel called Shaun on the phone to confirm we were going the right way, he replied that we were and we just had to get through this tough section and make it around the point of land that was still a ways off in the distance. We hooked in again, mustering all of our strength for this final push – the ocean wasn’t letting us out just yet – I was heaving with everything I had. It had been an hour and a half since we started following and we were close to breaking point. I was pouring sweat and snapping at Susannah and Mel asking, ‘Why the hell are we going south?’ It was at that point that the speedboat came back to us from up ahead and Shaun told us they were so sorry but they had been taking us in the wrong direction and we had to turn around.