One Life One Chance

by Luke Richmond

  I’m not sure what I yelled out, something along the lines of ‘for fuck’s sake’ definitely showing my disappointment in the mistake. We turned 180 degrees, taking us back onto the original bearing. Before turning around three of us were killing ourselves to get 1.5 knots of speed but as soon as we turned, Jake and Mel alone could hit 4 knots with the wind and current in our favour again.

  Back on track, only 2 nautical miles to go and I put on my last clean shirt that had the Row2Rio team logo on the front. We had no idea what the landing area was like, the speedboat hadn’t checked it out for us beforehand and I doubted that the rest of our families were going to be there. Our weatherman Chris told us there should be moorings at the location and it was close to a bar, if this was a sand bar or an actual bar we had no idea; we were hoping for the latter. As we were a few hundred metres off what looked to be a small fishing village that had a small beach and moorings close by I noticed a few people running along the shore back towards the small buildings we were aiming for.

  I could tell it was Elise immediately by her run and as I gave her a big wave, she jumped in the air waving back and then continued her run. I could also make out my mum walking back as well, unable to run, she was making her best speed. I thought to myself, ‘It looks like we have people waiting for us after all.’ I was beyond excited. The speedboat had pulled up on a small section of beach next to a concrete boat ramp. As we entered the river mouth to follow in behind them our boat was moving too fast with the wind and incoming tide behind us, we sped past the boat ramp on our right, towards some moored boats that we would smash into if we didn’t do something quickly. I yelled to Susannah ‘Swing her around,’ as she was manning the steering ropes and I jumped into the third rowing seat as the boat came about 180 degrees and lined up to the boat ramp. The three of us heaved against the wind and tide, halting our course towards the boats and started inching back towards the boat ramp. It was an epic manoeuvre which culminated in a precision landing in between the speedboat and the concrete boat ramp. We had made it to land, and guess what? Directly in front of an actual bar!

  We were absolutely exhausted and bursting with emotions. I climbed out of the boat and placed my feet into the shallow water and onto the soft sand below, stumbling immediately, and luckily my dad was there to catch me and hold me up. I crushed him with a bear hug with tears streaming down my face. All I can remember saying to him was ‘Bloody hell that was hard mate.’ It was then I saw Elise crouched in the sand with her head in her hands crying, she told me later that at that moment she was scared to come and hug me because she couldn’t believe I was actually there. Stumbling over to her we hugged and didn’t separate for a long time. We were both crying and overwhelmed by the moment. Once we broke apart she kissed me and said, ‘Go and get your mum,’ who was still walking towards us 50 metres away.

  I let Elise go, and doing my best to walk, zigzagged and stumbled my way towards Mum, who was already crying when I pulled her in tight for a big hug. We walked together back to the boat, Mum supporting my fragile body, to the rest of the family, friends and media who were all waiting to meet us. Mel’s dad Roger shoved a beer into my hand and said, ‘Well done!’ I said, ‘Thanks mate,’ as I took my first mouthful of beer in over two months and muttered, ‘It was bloody tough, Roger, bloody tough.’

  We had rowed 3500 nautical miles (over 6400 kilometres) in fifty-four days, ten hours and forty-five minutes from Portugal to Brazil, pioneering a new route across the Atlantic and setting two world records. It was by far the toughest adventure I had ever done and took a monumental team effort to complete. The celebrations continued on the tiny beach of a remote fishing village, surrounded by shantytown and jungle, on the coast of Brazil. Eventually, as the sun was setting, Roger and Elise set off some fireworks and we all cheered one more time. Looking around at the local villagers I wondered what they must have thought of us. Rowing from one continent to the next just to have a beer with them and set off fireworks – they must have thought we were all totally insane, and I’d have to agree.

  The boat was going to be towed back to the safe harbour of Recife the following morning by the speedboat driver. Family, friends and the newly arrived rowers loaded into a bus and we all drove back along the coast to Recife together. The families had brought us fresh fruit, cold water, fresh bread, sliced meats and olives. I was devouring everything as we bounced along the back country roads heading south towards the city. It felt so strange to be in a vehicle with so many people after spending such a long time in the ocean with only the four of us. Arriving back at the hotel it was another round of hugs from everybody and Elise and I went upstairs to our room.

  I was still very unstable on my legs and I was bouncing off the walls and running into tables everywhere I went. Once inside the room the first thing I wanted was a shower. Stripping off my clothes I walked into the bathroom and was stopped cold by what I saw in the mirror. Staring back at me was a broken man, a shell of his former self. I had a large red, brown and grey beard covering a gaunt face and sunken eyes. My body had wasted away, losing 14 kilograms (31 pounds) on the voyage, of mostly muscle tissue. My right leg was swollen, I had red rashes everywhere and my bum, that was now no more than two large flaps of skin, looked like it had contracted the plague. It was like a stranger was staring back at me, until I smiled. I moved in close, inches from the glass to focus on the blue in my eyes. I said to myself ‘Well done.’

  The warm water flowing over my fragile body was an amazing feeling. I washed myself three times with soaps and body wash to peel back the layers of salt, filth and dead skin. Getting out I looked like a drowned skinny rat and my skin glowed red from the heat of the shower. I was guzzling the cold fresh water from the fridge, not needing to worry about rationing anymore, and giving my body the much needed hydration. Elise and I curled up in bed and I wanted nothing more than to sleep for days and recover. I awoke every few hours not knowing where I was and taking a few moments to remember we had finished the row and I could go back to sleep. My body ached and my knee was pounding after I had gotten up to take a painkiller and stumbled over, crashing into the table and making a hell of a racket. Elise woke up and we both laughed at my inability to walk in a straight line.

  The following morning, after a very rough sleep, I was planning to sit at the hotel breakfast buffet and graze for hours, however, before we went downstairs I wanted Elise to see the videos I had made for her on the row. I tried to downplay the videos saying to her, ‘Hey why don’t you watch a few of these videos I made.’ She had no idea they were about her and as she lay down to watch I suggested she put in her headphones to get the best volume out of the laptop. She started to watch the series of twelve videos I made at different times of the journey. Each video was a different reason why I was in love with her and after the first one I could see the tears starting to well up in her eyes. The final video was the one I had made while treading water away from the boat at the equator. In the video I say ‘I need you to do one thing for me, turn around and look at me right now.’ It took a moment to register but she looked up from the laptop and turned around to face me. I stood there holding a sign that read ‘Will you marry me.’ Elise burst into tears, overwhelmed by the emotion of the moment. We came together and held each other tight when she answered my question with ‘A thousand times yes.’ At that point my heart had never been so full.

  CHAPTER 15

  MAGIC BACKPACKS

  …

  I was sitting alone in my room, watching and listening to the great Alan Watts on YouTube explaining the meaning of life. His famous quote ‘What would you do if money was no object?’ resonated with me as I watched clips of people climbing, riding bikes, surfing and living life to the extreme. A clip of a person BASE jumping into a cave flashed across the screen and it blew me away. It was magical footage of a jumper leaping into the Cave of Swallows in Mexico, a renowned cave big enough for this type of stunt. The sequence of flying through the air wearing nothing but a small ba
ckpack struck me as total freedom. I said to myself in that moment, I will be doing that one day.

  Months had passed when I saw some videos from Dylan ‘Jimmy’ James, an old Army buddy, pop up on my Facebook feed. He was leaping from a cliff top in a place called Moab wearing nothing but a little backpack. He was BASE jumping, and I immediately sent him a message about how awesome I thought it was and asked how I could get myself to that level. He replied to me the following day and said that to even be thinking about getting into BASE, I had to go and get my full skydiving licence and complete at least 100 jumps. This was a substantial hurdle to overcome. I had never skydived before, the course was $4000 and to accrue 100 jumps it would be thousands more and loads of time. I placed the idea on the shelf for later and forgot about it.

  It was six months later, while Elise and I were travelling around the South Island of New Zealand after selling the gym, that the road to BASE jumping entered my mind again. She had bought me a tandem skydive for my birthday and it was such an incredible experience that we bought ourselves another one the following day. The second jump was from 20,000 feet over the magnificent Franz Josef Glacier surrounded by mountains. It blew us away and from that moment we said we should definitely get our skydiving A licence so we could jump solo.

  The clinching moment came when we were climbing at a famous place in Thailand called Tonsai, a beach known around the world as the limestone climbing mecca. While I was relaxing after a long day on the cliffs and enjoying a coconut, up above me some guys BASE jumped off the towering cliff and landed on the beach in front of me. It was one of the most incredible things I had ever seen and I was envious of their ability and what they must be feeling. That was the moment I decided it was time to get started and become a BASE jumper.

  After plenty of research into where to complete the skydiving course, it just so happened that the cheapest place we could get it done was in Toogoolawah, Queensland, one of the states I had grown up in.

  We arrived in Toogoolawah shortly after returning from Brazil and the Atlantic row, taking a few weeks to visit family, sponsors and do some much needed resting and eating. By the time we arrived for skydiving we were raring to go and checked ourselves into some very cheap accommodation right alongside the drop zone. The town itself was tiny and located in rural Queensland, where agriculture was the main economy and city folk rarely visit. The drop zone was a few kilometres out of town, a green grass landing area next to a small dirt runway. Eucalyptus trees lined the airstrip scenting the fresh air and large groups of kangaroos were feeding on the grass. It was a picturesque scene bathed in the Australian sun and made me feel like I was home, back in the outback as a boy.

  We paid for the full course up-front, not knowing that most people do it stage by stage and took weeks if not months to complete it, and the next morning we were drinking coffee, waiting for the instructors to arrive. The instructors were fantastic, I could tell that they had done these courses a thousand times before yet they made it fun, energetic and made sure we knew our safety drills perfectly before they took us into the sky. Elise’s instructor’s name was Wado and mine was Belgy. Belgy, as the name suggests, came from Belgium and had 18,000 skydives. He was a pro. The Accelerated Free Fall course is ten stages, meaning you have ten jumps to do and you must complete all of the drills and sequences correctly to pass.

  We spent the first half of the day going through theory, mainly all of the safety procedures to go with the malfunctions that can occur while skydiving. It was a lot to take in before our first jump, however, it was important and all made sense to us. Even though skydiving seems dangerous, it is one of the safest sports to get into. Deaths are rare considering how many jumps get completed each day and you always have a reserve parachute if your first one fails to open.

  We threw ourselves into the course and thought about nothing else. Elise and I are both competitive, especially with each other, so it became a challenge to see who could complete the course the best and secure the bragging rights. The first jump was a tandem, which we had done before, then we were jumping solo with the instructor jumping next to us for safety. Jumping out of a plane is an amazing feeling and free fall is absolutely exhilarating.

  I sat in the plane waiting for the pilot to get to the required altitude and my palms began to sweat. I was nervous to a point but not panicking. All that was going through my mind was the sequence of drills I needed to complete and what actions to take if something went wrong. My goggles fogged up and I had to continually pull them from my face to let the cool air clear them. When the door opened I was blasted by the crisp air as the other jumpers started to depart one by one. I watched as they exited the door and disappeared out of sight with amazing speed, then it was my turn. I shuffled to the door, placed my hands on the frame and moved my feet into position. I lifted my head and focused on the horizon. I looked at Belgy, who gave me the nod to go ahead, and out I went.

  I pushed out and I was in free fall. The first few seconds of acceleration were exhilarating, I was holding my breath and had a sinking feeling in my stomach. I could hear the air getting louder as my speed increased to terminal velocity. I arched my body and settled into a belly-down, flat flying position. I was stable and took in the amazing view from 10,000 feet above the earth. Belgy flew in front of me and we started to go through the drills I needed to do for this jump. I completed some turns, some practice pulls and was given the thumbs up. I checked my altimeter and I was at 5000 feet and it was time for me to pull. I reached behind to my lower back, located my pilot chute and pitched it out trying not to compromise my body position. The pilot chute pulled out the parachute and in a split second I went from terminal free fall to hanging under my canopy.

  It was a sense of adrenaline-fuelled relief when the canopy opened safely and I was flying over the landing zone. I loosened my chest strap to get comfortable and removed my goggles. I located the place I was going to land, checked the wind sock to see how strong the wind was, what direction it was blowing and began to make my approach. I set up my dog-leg pattern just like I was shown before the jump and lined up nicely with the grassy landing area. I came in and when I was almost about to touch down I flared my canopy to take off the speed and level me out. This time however I left it too late and landed hard, getting propelled into a front somersault and eating the dirt. I stood up and dusted myself off, pride hurt but otherwise unharmed. Elise landed perfectly close by and I had to concede this round to her. My instant reaction was to get back up there and go again.

  The accelerated free-fall course literally flew by and we were completing our final stage by the end of the week. It had all gone perfectly, a few crashes and a small amount of blood spilled, however we didn’t need to repeat any stages, we had passed them all first time. Once we had passed we were awarded our A licence and ordered to buy a box of beer for the instructors. Apparently this is drop zone tradition so we happily obliged. The course gave me a total of 15 jumps and I needed to have 100 before Jimmy would take me BASE jumping, so immediately after completing the course I was straight back up in the air to practise my skills and get up some jump numbers.

  Skydiving is unbelievably fun but to say it is a cheap sport would be a straight-out lie. Even after the initial cost of the course a skydive rig will cost a few thousand dollars and then every jump completed will cost between twenty and forty dollars depending on where you are in the world. It definitely adds up quickly, as I was finding out trying to get as many jumps in as I could in a short space of time. At the end of the day though Elise and I are not into the traditional lifestyle and would much rather spend our money on fun and adventure than a mortgage and car repayments.

  During our time at Toogoolawah I was making plans with Jimmy for a BASE jumping trip to America. I was slowly getting my skydive numbers up and I would be ready by the end of the year for BASE, or so I thought. I needed to find a BASE rig but due to my size and weight there was nothing second-hand we could find that would fit me so I went ahead and orde
red a custom-made rig from Apex BASE, one of the best manufacturers on the market. If I’m going to get into a sport that has a high death rate I’m going to give myself the best chance of survival with the best equipment. After sorting out the rig we agreed on a date to arrive in Salt Lake City and from there we would drive to Idaho and the Perrine Bridge, a place where it’s legal to BASE jump all year round.

  Before we knew it, Elise and I were stepping off the plane in Salt Lake City, Utah ready for two months of BASE jumping, climbing, trekking and whatever other adventures we could get into. We hired a big Ram 1500 Dodge truck for the entire trip and picked up Jimmy from the airport later that same night. Jimmy had been BASE jumping for three years and had over 300 jumps, mainly from cliffs in the States, Australia and Europe. He also had a few hundred skydives before he started getting into BASE. We were best friends who grew up serving in the Army together. There was no-one I’d trust more to teach me a sport that has one of the highest death rates in the extreme sporting world.

  Salt Lake City has a population of just over a million people and is surrounded by beautiful mountains on one side and the great salt lake on the other. I had a good friend living in Salt Lake, Dean, who was on the trip to West Papua with me when we were held in the container at the mine. He owns and operates World Wide Trekking and hooked us up with a ski villa up at Snowbird resort in Little Cottonwood Canyon for the duration of our stay. He also fitted us out with all the camping gear we were going to need for our two-month tour, saving us a small fortune. We spent a few days enjoying the canyon, skydiving at the local drop zone, and learning how to pack my BASE rig.

  We departed Salt Lake and drove across the state border into Idaho and on to Twin Falls, a small town on the Snake River. The river winds through a steep, jagged canyon that appeared out of nowhere. One minute I was talking to Jimmy about something trivial and he said, ‘Get ready.’ I said, ‘For what?’ just as the land dropped away into a breathtaking gorge and we drove across the Perrine Bridge towering 150 metres from the water below. The next morning I’d be doing my first jump off the centre of this bridge and I was instantly nervous. Jimmy pulled over at a view point next to the bridge and we walked out to the centre, the exact spot I would be climbing over the rail and jumping from the next day. My hands were sweating again and I was scared. I’ve never been one to hide my fear and I said to Jimmy, ‘Mate, I’m shitting myself.’ He said, ‘Good, that’s going to keep you safe.’ We walked the landing area and talked about the approach as Elise watched on in silence, not wanting to interrupt our conversation at such a crucial time, although I knew she would be as nervous as I was.