by Jesse Martin
Despite the frantic preparation, there was never any doubt I'd leave on 29 November. It was just a matter of what was not going to be done by the time I had to leave. As it was, most of the supplies were pretty much thrown on board. Luckily, all the major equipment had been fitted. If it hadn't, we'd have to decide whether I could mount it once I got going, or leave it behind. There were plenty of small things not done, but they were pretty minor. Really, all I needed was a pair of sails to leave. It was very easy to get caught up in trying to make everything perfect.
As it was, we had a week's grace. My original departure date had to be put back to 6 December, after Matthew asked if that was possible. It was not due to any pressure in getting the boat ready, but so that Mistral's corporate boat could be on hand to take the media out. Their boat was not available on 29 November. I was more than willing to oblige.
People ask me if the mad rush to get everything ready ever made me stop and think, this is not how I imagined it, or that it was not worth the effort. I had no conception or expectation of doubt. Even at the lowest point, when people were doubting us, when Mum and Dad were running themselves into the ground, or when I couldn't find a major sponsor, I never stopped to reconsider the trip. I'd made up my mind, and all those experiences were merely part of the process that would lead me to my goal. My attitude was, there was work to do, so let's get into it. I never concentrated on how much work there was to do.
Amid the preparation, John Hill decided I needed to get into shape. For a few weeks, every morning at 5.45 a.m., a car would toot its horn outside my house. I'd drag myself outside into the fiercely cold winter morning of the Dandenongs, wearing my gloves and beanie. John would be waiting enthusiastically to drive me the 5 to 6 kilometres to the service station halfway down the hill. He'd keep going off to work, but I had to turn around and run home.
I hated it. The first morning, I tackled the hill with some gusto, and actually ran the entire distance. After a while I'd mix some walking with my jogging. Eventually the walking was definitely beating the running.
Looking back, I'm not sure if I needed to be in peak physical condition, to the extent where I was running up mountains at dawn. My fitness developed over the trip. Plus, I wasn't able to keep up that regime for too long, as the demands of organising the trip soon overtook me. John actually admitted to me after the trip that the fitness sessions had little to do with fitness, but were designed to get me out of bed when I didn't want to and into the cold and wet of the morning to toughen me up. Looking at it that way, I suppose it helped.
The three things I am asked most about are power, communications and food for the trip. The food fascinated people, particularly kids. As I did the trip unassisted, I had to take every morsel of food and drink with me.
One of the most important people to come on board in that mad preparation stage was dietitian Jacinta Oxford. I met her through a family friend. Like all of us, she had no experience with round-the-world sailing, and so spent hours researching on the Internet what other solo sailors had eaten. She then presented me with a list of foods, which I said good or yuk to. From that, she developed a menu and calculated how much food I would need for at least ten months at sea. As I could not keep anything cold, all my food had to be non-perishable, such as fruit bars, long-life dairy products (I took 270 litres of milk—a litre every day for nine months) and freeze-dried meals.
Mum, Jacinta and I went to Campbell's Cash and Carry and, armed with a large trolley, like a manual forklift to move transport pallets, we started shopping. We bought everything in one go. It cost $7400, with all of it fitting into Mum's green Mazda. It was a strange feeling, looking inside the car at every meal I was going to have for ten months. I must admit it didn't seem like enough, but looking at the daily allocations, I knew I would be right.
The daily allocations were placed in individual bags, and placed into larger weekly bags. The menu was designed in four-week blocks, so that I'd rotate my meals month by month to get a spread of nutritious food. My favourite food changed with the menu changes. When I ran out of something I'd get a new favourite.
Some things I had a love—hate relationship with. I absolutely hated freeze-dried blueberry cheesecake to begin with. I threw all the packets up the front of the boat when I came across them in my daily bags. By the end of the trip I absolutely loved it. I found myself scrambling around the storage area of the boat desperately searching for the cheesecake I'd earlier discarded. It was a bit weird. I didn't like the muesli bars, which I'd been really looking forward to, because I ate too many at the start of the trip.
My favourite meals were freeze-dried sweet and sour pork, freeze-dried spaghetti, and spaghetti in a can with meat and vegetables. Topping the list was freshly cooked damper. I'd make it in a bowl, roll it around and flatten it like a pizza, then cook it in a frying pan. Pancakes were my favourite before I discovered damper.
I think I probably would have taken the same foods without a dietitian's advice, but her advice and planning gave me a balanced diet. Without the structure, I'd probably have eaten all my favourites in one go and saved the terrible stuff for last!
I must admit, however, that I did become a bit slack when it came to the menu plans. About a month into the trip I'd open a bag, take out what I liked and throw the rest into the storage area. I lived on those ‘discards’ during my last month. I took food to survive ten months at sea, yet I was out there for nearly eleven months. Some people thought I would starve. Things were getting pretty desperate, but I had another few weeks of food to go, even if I was down to eating cereal without milk for lunch. Any longer and it wouldn't have been a very pleasant experience.
But it was not all freeze-dried beans and muesli. Every couple of days the bags would contain a bag of lollies about the size of my hand. Of course, I found myself getting a few days ahead of myself with the lollies. I actually lived on lollies when I departed. Minutes before I left, Jacinta gave me a huge bag of lollipops, chocolates and lollies. Combined with my collection of snakes, it kept me going for days before I got into my proper food.
My eating habits became very strange. I never ate a main meal for the day. It is amazing how much our routines are dictated by other people. The main meal for a family is a chance to sit together and talk about things. When you are on your own, there is no real reason to have a main meal. Eating merely served its base function of supplying energy. Or to fill in the time when I was bored. But I did find there were certain times when I'd eat more, usually depending upon where I was in the world. As I neared Cape Horn I'd spend most days asleep and rise at night so I could communicate with family and friends in the middle of the Australian day. And near the Azores Islands, at my halfway mark, I was up most nights doing interviews with the Australian media. So I'd eat more then, and often find myself cooking a main meal at 4 a.m.
I may have had a dietitian to advise on food, but when it came to clothes I was on my own. Pat Dicks was helpful in suggesting some of the items I'd need when I rounded the Horn—not many people realise that Cape Horn is only a few hundred miles from Antarctica. So I stocked up on the gloves, balaclavas, thermal underwear and jackets, then tackled the more mundane items.
Clothes became a strange thing for me. Take socks, for instance. My socks would naturally become dirty. Smelly, greasy and salty, to be exact, so I'd wash them in saltwater until they were less smelly and greasy, but still salty. Then I'd wear them again. But I had plenty of new unworn clean socks stowed below. More than half of them remained there for the entire trip. It sounds strange, but I didn't want to get out a new pair because then they would be spoilt.
Three weeks before I got home I did not want to bring out my spare sleeping bag, even though the one I was sleeping in was putrid. I didn't want to bring this nice clean thing out into such revolting surroundings. There was a practical side to my madness. If I got the clean clothes out, I would have no reason to wash the clothes they were replacing, so there would be more dirty clothes lying about. If I k
ept recycling the dirty clothes and washing them, then at least I kept the clutter down to a manageable level. Keeping my room tidy is not one of my strong points, but I found I could at least keep the cabin tidy, even though everything was salty and grotty.
My shoes didn't cause much clutter as I only took one pair. They were my skate shoes, which are like sneakers, which I'd been wearing in the boat yard the day before I left. When I got to the tropics, after not wearing shoes for months, I decided that I'd wear the skate shoes when I got off. (I didn't have many things to think about at that stage so I started to plan my arrival outfit.) I found one of the shoes, but for the life of me could not find the other. It must have fallen overboard. So, my only pair of shoes was no more. I did have sailing boots, which had to be my arriving home boots as well. At one stage I thought I'd lost one of those boots too, which would have made me look like a real idiot, getting off the boat with one sneaker and one sailing boot.
Looking back, I'm amazed at many of the things I took with me, and took home. I took ten bottles of shampoo, but didn't even use one bottle. It was pretty difficult to wash my hair, so after a while I didn't want to touch it. Instead, I tied it back. I had a few small dreadlocks by the time I returned, so it felt pretty good to have a shower at the Yacht Club and wash it.
It was the same with soap. I took a lot of it, but used very little. My first proper shower was more than two months into the trip, near Cape Horn, when I showered on the deck in the rain. Before that I'd sponge rain water over myself. Washing increased while I was in the tropics, as it was warmer. I had a solar shower, which I could hang on the mast and fill with salt water. A few times I did the whole bit—shower, shave and even dabbed on some deodorant. Pity there were no girls to impress. My return leg across the Indian Ocean was too cold to contemplate an outside wash, so it was a rare event.
The next crucial item for the trip was the electronics equipment, and the issue of how to store it.
I took three computers—I was terrified of what would happen if I only took one and it failed. I'd have been lost without a working computer, as I became so reliant on email. I took my own Texas Instruments laptop. Hewlett Packard were kind enough to donate a spare to me in exchange for a link from my website to the HP site, and the Distance Education Centre lent me the third to complete my work on.
My main worry was the effect the combination of salt and moisture would have on the internal workings of the machines. I was surprised that I ended up using my own computer until three weeks before I arrived home. I was banking on roughly three months’ use out of each. That's not to say it was clear sailing with my computer, which copped a fair beating on the trip. There was a leak above the navigation table, and many times I'd find water dripping onto the keyboard—definitely not recommended in the user's manual. I had to lick between the keys to get all the salt out before it ruined the internal workings. Occasionally it would stop as I used it. But, like most complex electronic equipment, all I had to do was give it a thump and it would fire up again. If that didn't work, I'd take out the floppy disk drive, give it a blow and fiddle about with some wires. Most times it would start the next day.
Alas, three weeks from home, the build-up of salt got too much for my technical expertise, so I switched to the Distance Education computer. Even then, the thought that I should do some schoolwork on it didn't enter my mind. (I have since had my original laptop repaired and I am writing these very words on it.)
I mainly used the laptop to send and receive emails and to write my weekly newspaper column. The satellite email system comprised a little black box, about the size of a transformer you often find on computer gear, with a small antenna in the shape of a witch's hat on the back of the boat. I'd connect the computer to the black box to send or receive a message. Given the outrageously expensive cost of satellite phone calls, email was my lifeline. The only problem I had with email came a few days after I rounded Cape Horn. For some reason, it would not work. Only after many inquiries did I discover I needed to switch from the Pacific Inmarsat-C satellite to the Atlantic satellite. It made sense, but how was I supposed to know that?
The advantage of email was that I could receive messages at any time. With the satellite phone I had to have it on to receive or make a call. It was just not possible to have it on all the time, so I had to organise a time with people if they were going to call me. Likewise with the radio. People would have to book calls in advance to get to me. It might take hours between the time the call was booked and finally speaking. But email was instantaneous. It also allowed for concise messages. Like many people, I cannot think of a single issue when I pick up a phone. I am a lot better on a keyboard when I can think about what I'm writing.
The satellite phone may have been expensive, but it was a vital tool. I approached the satellite company, Iridium, to sponsor me, but they were already committed to support an Australian trekking expedition to the South Pole. I bought the phone for $5800 and the call costs were about $15 a minute. It worked fantastically, but the costs made calls prohibitive. I was actually listening to the BBC one night when I heard a report that the satellite phone company was in financial trouble. I immediately became worried that the service would cut out on me. The strategy they adopted for survival, much to our delight, was to drop the call costs from $15 to $4.45 a minute.
My satellite phone bills averaged $2500 to $3000 a month before the price drop. One month, it got to $5000 when I hit the worst weather of the trip, near Africa, and had problems with the electronics. I found myself on the phone a lot sorting out the problems.
Sealing from moisture was vital for the electronic equipment I took: global positioning system (GPS), radar, satellite email equipment, satellite phone, three laptop computers, CD player and CDs, two video cameras, spare battery chargers, film and batteries. I stored the computers, video and spare batteries, chargers and first-aid kit in a series of pelican cases—waterproof camera cases, sealed with a rubber O-ring, with foam insulation. Not a drop of moisture penetrated the cases throughout the trip.
My main luxury on board was the CD player and more than 60 CDs. My Mistral budget had included $1500 for books, magazines and CDs, so I made sure I got what I wanted. I've been pretty influenced by my parents’ music tastes as I grew up, so a peek inside my collection would reveal plenty of Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Neil Young and Lionel Ritchie, plus more contemporary artists, such as my all-time favourite Ben Harper, Pearl Jam and Hunters and Collectors.
I found music a bit like food. I'd have a favourite for days or weeks, then I'd go right off it and find a new favourite, which I then played to death. I also took my guitar, which I was able to play a lot, particularly in the calm of the tropics. I was forever emailing Andrew, asking him to find me the chords for a certain song.
My team of advisers continued to grow. Dr Geoff Broomhall agreed to help with some medical advice. He knew a thing or two about maritime medicine, having spent sixteen years in the Royal Australian Navy. He helped me put together a first-aid kit and also came to my house one night a week for four weeks to advise me how to use the stuff in the kit. One night he brought needles and we practised the different injecting techniques on some chicken legs. We then had the chicken for tea.
Luckily there was no need to use any of his techniques, except when I stabbed myself in the finger. And, unfortunately, no chickens with sore legs ever landed on deck looking for medical treatment. In a strange way, I looked forward to the challenge if anything did happen to me. While I didn't want to break my leg, I was excited by what I'd have to do to overcome the problem.
In a perfect situation, and with more preparation time, I'd have had a psychologist on my team. All our effort went into the boat, so we weren't thinking about the actual trip. Our objective as a team was to get all the equipment ready and supplies loaded the night before I sailed. After that, I'd have to work it out for myself.
There was no denying that in the back of my mind was the fear of solitude. I don't think you can eve
r prepare adequately for spending nine months alone, but it perhaps would have been good to speak to someone, to talk through some issues. But it was such a race to get the boat ready, that aspect of the plan went by the wayside. Looking back, I don't think I suffered many mental crises that I was not able to work through myself.
In the same article that he wrote in the Australian the week before I left, David Adams made a comment that I didn't understand at the time. I do now. He said: I'd spent months with psychologists to prepare myself. Maybe as a kid you don't have so many hang-ups.’
I think he's right. When you are young, you have had less chance of establishing relationships that would be torn when you did something like this. There was less to pull me home mentally. But I think my biggest psychological fillip was knowing that David Dicks had achieved what I was setting out to do. And he only had two months to prepare.
Sponsors continued to sign up, right up until the week I left. There were twenty sponsors in all, from Mistral to a company that gave us some glue. Wesley, my old school, put on a drama production that raised $3000, so they had their logo on the side of the boat. That was an interesting one. I believe there was some hand-wringing at the school over whether it should be seen to support such a venture. I was, after all, virtually saying, ‘Bugger school, I'm off.’ Did one of Melbourne's most academically orientated schools want to send that message to other students, and risk the ire of parents who believed what I was doing was foolish? Luckily for me, they came through, and I reckon their gesture showed that Wesley recognised that students have goals in many forms, not all of them based on classroom activities.
All those who gave me products had their names on the boat. We were given a certain brand of milk, Rev, so they got their logo on board. It seemed to appear in every picture taken of Lionheart. Some sponsors came on board at the last minute, under pretty strange circumstances. A few days before I left, I urgently needed some welding to attach the wind vane, the automatic steering system. A local welder agreed to do it at very short notice for $150, which was a pretty good price, so I told him I'd put his logo on the boat. He was in the right place at the right time. The electrician was a great bloke, and did a good job, so he got his sticker on as well.