by Roz Savage
The revulsion I felt was out of all proportion to the size of the offender. I can only account for it by hypothesizing that there must be something in the primeval brain that reacts vehemently to having a small creature glom onto a very personal part of one’s anatomy. Having been evicted from my person, the remora, as I later discovered it to be, took up residence on the hull of my boat, attaching itself permanently to a point right next to the corner of the deck where I normally made my entry and exit. Any time I thought of taking a swim, I looked over the side and saw its ugly little face looking up at me, its gills pumping repulsively, and gave up on the idea for fear of further assaults on my dignity.
I realize there is no rational explanation for being quite comfortable about the notion of sharks, but completely intimidated by a six-inch remora. I cannot even attempt to explain. I like to think of myself as being generally a calm and rational being, but in this drab little fish I had met my nemesis.
With or without the swim, the heat rash bothered me most when I was in my cabin at the end of a hot day’s rowing and it came time to write my blog post. There is barely enough room to sit upright in the cabin, and certainly no space for a comfortable chart table such as you might find on a more spacious boat. I have to balance my laptop on my knees while I type. Computers generate their own heat, and having a hot laptop on my sweaty, rash-ridden legs was a very uncomfortable and itchy experience. I tried all kinds of alternative positions, but it was too difficult to keep stable in a rocking boat while lying on my belly and resting on my elbows. Lying sideways, Roman style, didn’t work any better. Eventually I just resigned myself to my fate. (It would be almost another year before the first iPad came on the market and I’d think that my prayers had been answered. But to my great disappointment, I found it didn’t yet interface with the Iridium satellite phone that serves as my data modem.)
These were minor inconveniences, but nothing too serious—or nothing I wanted to blog about. I was a little embarrassed about my toothache, and, being British, felt that the state of my bottom was not a suitable subject for online discussion. The main drama of this stage, and the most public one, would turn out to be a matter of navigation.
IT WAS TUVALU VERSUS TARAWA. THIS DOES NOT refer to a war between two small atoll nations in the mid-Pacific, but to my difficult decision about where to make landfall between Hawai’i and the far side of the Pacific Ocean. Tuvalu would set me up better for an eventual arrival in Australia, and so I had set that as my goal—but now I was out in the sweltering doldrums of the equatorial Pacific, and Mother Nature seemed to have other ideas.
Both were tiny targets. With a land area of just ten square miles, Tuvalu is the fourth smallest country in the world, and can be found a few degrees south of the equator. It may be best known for having sold its .tv domain name extension for a large sum of money. Tarawa is just north of the equator and is the main island of the Republic of Kiribati (pronounced kee-ree-bas), which is the only country in the world to straddle all four hemispheres. It has a land area of 313 square miles, split into 33 pieces and strewn across 1.3 million square miles of ocean, an area considerably larger than the United States.
It would have been possible to complete the crossing nonstop, but I was keen to explore a new part of the world. It was also fitting that 2009 was to be the year that the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change would take place in Copenhagen. The fate of these small island nations would be determined by the outcome of the conference. If a fair and binding deal could be achieved, there was some hope that rising seas caused by climate change could be kept to a level that would allow these islands to survive. If no such deal was reached, they faced submersion beneath the ocean. The governments of Tuvalu and Kiribati were already in the market to find a new homeland for their citizens. I was keen to visit one or the other. It is not often you get the chance to visit a country that may not physically exist 50 years hence.
THE COPENHAGEN CONFERENCE HAD BEEN DUBBED “Hopenhagen,” and indeed there did seem to be reasons for optimism. In November 2008, America had elected its first African American President, Barack Obama, and anything seemed possible. “Yes, we can” had been his campaign slogan, and my liberal American friends wanted to believe it.
The environmental world was abuzz with preparations for the conference. Newsletters and e-mails were flying around the globe as various campaigns rallied the troops to save the world. Huge momentum was building. After decades of slow-burning activism, Copenhagen had come to represent a pivotal moment in the environmental movement. There was a real sense that if we didn’t win this battle, the war was as good as over.
I had been invited to be an “Athlete Ambassador” for 350.org, a nonprofit organization whose name refers to the maximum number of parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that can sustain human life as we know it, in the long term. At the time I’m writing, the atmosphere has just been measured at over 400 parts per million, and it’s rising. The United Nations had designated me a “Climate Hero,” a title I found slightly embarrassing for its faint whiff of the comic strip, but which was of course a great honour. There were several Climate Heroes around the world, selected for having gone above and beyond the norm in pursuit of their environmental missions.
Having spent that winter mostly in Hawai’i, but with side trips to the mainland and the UK, I had travelled to Nashville, Tennessee, shortly before launching the second stage of my Pacific row, to speak at the annual conference of The Climate Reality Project. The organization was founded by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore to spread awareness and information about climate change and consisted of several hundred presenters, all trained to give the PowerPoint presentation made famous by the film An Inconvenient Truth. I spoke alongside such luminaries as Rajendra Pachauri, the co-recipient with Al Gore of the Nobel Peace Prize, and the renowned Canadian geneticist and environmental campaigner David Suzuki. Speeches and offline discussions revolved around the most effective ways to communicate climate change, prospects for Copenhagen, and what might happen if it failed—something that nobody really wanted to contemplate.
It was a cruel irony that the countries where I was considering making landfall at the end of Stage 2 of my Pacific row had among the smallest carbon footprints in the world, yet would be the first and worst affected, while the affluent nations that had created the problem had more resilient infrastructure and were better equipped to adapt to a new climate. This was not just an environmental issue; it was about human rights.
DURING MY PREPARATIONS FOR THE VOYAGE, I had discussed my route with Mick Bird, the only other person to have rowed a similar course across the Pacific, making landfall along the way. About ten years previously, he had set out from Fort Bragg in California. Like the Turkish ocean rower Erden Eruç, it had taken him three attempts before he finally succeeded in departing the California coast. He had stopped in Hawai’i, the Marshall Islands, and the Solomon Islands before making landfall in Cairns, Australia. Given that winds and currents can vary enormously from year to year, he recommended that I aim straight for Cairns, and see where I was when I got about halfway there. It might be the Marshalls, or it might be Tuvalu, or it might be Tarawa, which was where the British adventurer and circumnavigator Jason Lewis had stopped off with his pedal boat. This approach seemed a bit vague to me. I wanted to have a more definite idea of where I was going—that’s just the kind of person that I am. So I had settled on Tuvalu as my stated destination.
I knew that getting there would be difficult. The main problem would be crossing the equator; Tuvalu lies at eight degrees south, and just a couple of degrees west of the international date line (IDL). The previous year, Erden Eruç had launched from Bodega Bay in California, aiming for Australia, and it had been agonizing to watch his difficulties as he tried to cross into the southern hemisphere. He would get within a few degrees of the equator, only to be caught in an adverse current and whisked north again. His course w
as a wiggly worm westwards, bobbling along within a few degrees of the equatorial line.
It took five months of frustration before Erden finally found his way through, and by then he had lost his chance at Australia, which now was too far to the south for him to cut across the west-flowing currents. He simply couldn’t make a sufficiently southerly course to get to his intended destination and eventually made landfall in Papua New Guinea. This did not set an encouraging precedent.
AS IT TURNED OUT, I HAD AN EASIER TIME than Erden crossing the equator, but a harder time than Mick. By Day 45, as I crossed eight degrees north, I was already starting to debate the merits of Tuvalu versus Tarawa. Even from this far out, Tarawa seemed like a safer bet, given the way the wind was blowing and the potential challenges at the equator. There was no point making life excessively difficult for myself. But there was still a long way to go. I reassured myself that there was no need to decide yet.
However, I found the state of indecision very demotivating. More than once I abandoned a rowing shift early, unsure of whether I should go speeding downwind to the west towards Tarawa or continue to slog south towards Tuvalu. “A sailor without a destination cannot hope for a favourable wind,” as the saying goes. I was inclined to agree.
By Day 50 I had reached six degrees north and had entered the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). Better known as the doldrums, this is the twilight zone of the Pacific, notorious amongst mariners as a region of deathly calms and sudden squalls, thunderclouds, and lightning storms. It overlaps with, but is not the same as, the Equatorial Counter Current (ECC).
A brief geography lesson may be useful here. The Pacific contains two enormous rotating gyres, or circular currents. The North Pacific system turns clockwise, heading north up the coast of Japan and Russia, across the Arctic Circle, and down the California coast, before turning west at the equator to head back to Japan again. The South Pacific gyre turns in the opposite direction, anticlockwise, flowing up the coasts of Chile and Peru, across the equator, down past Australia, and through the islands of the South Pacific back to South America. It is in the centre of these gyres that plastic and other debris accumulates.
Because the flow in the northern hemisphere goes clockwise, and the flow in the southern hemisphere goes anticlockwise, this means that both currents are heading west at the equator. This is good news for ocean rowers heading from California to Australia, as I was attempting to do. The not-so-good news is that between those two helpful currents, a fraction north of the equator, there lies a contrary band of east-flowing water—the ECC. It varies in width according to longitude and time of year, but generally it occupies a horizontal stripe about 240 nautical miles wide, between two and six degrees north. So although it is narrow in the overall scale of the vast Pacific, it’s plenty wide enough when you attempt to row across it. It moves at up to one knot, and I move at about two knots while rowing, so its effect would be quite significant.
ALMOST BANG ON CUE, AT SIX DEGREES AND five minutes north, I found it—or rather, it found me. Having been heading quite happily south for 50 days, I woke up one morning to find that I’d been pushed three miles north overnight.
This was when I started to realise that the ECC would be an even trickier adversary than I had anticipated. As well as trying to push me back towards the Americas, this contrary little bugger of a current also generates a variety of eddies along its edges, where the east-flowing water meets the west-flowing water. These are invisible and unpredictable sub-currents that can unexpectedly whisk a rowboat way off course. It is like an oceanic game of snakes and ladders, played on an invisible board. Some days I would find myself in a helpful current, a ladder helping me towards my destination. Just as often, I found myself slithering down a snake, helplessly watching my hard-won progress slipping away in the numbers on my GPS.
To endure the vagaries of the ECC and the ITCZ at the same time was to dice with madness. Sailors have traditionally dreaded this region. Usually sailboats have an easier time than rowboats, as they gain enough momentum from the wind to fly across the top of tricky currents. But at these latitudes, where the air is often stagnant, a sailboat could drift aimlessly for days, the crew desperately hoping for a breeze to aid their escape. In a rowboat, at least I could row my way out, although progress was slow and hot and sweaty, and the air weighed heavy on the soul. With no high waves to limit the view, the ocean stretched out to infinity, and land seemed no more than a distant memory.
My logbook records days of sultry, calm, overcast conditions, with the ocean so still and silent I could hear the fish jumping, or, as I put it in one of my tweets, “It’s quiet enough to hear a fish flatulate.” At other times winds were frustratingly variable, in both strength and direction. I had to adjust the rudder frequently to try and stay even vaguely on course. Sometimes I had no sooner put the sea anchor out to stop myself being blown backwards, than the wind would wheel around and I would have to go through the 20-minute process of hauling it in again. Squalls drenched me, to be followed moments later by blinding sunshine. Black thunderheads rolled across the sky, and after dark I was often treated to spectacular displays of lightning flashes as they lit up high-piled cumulus clouds from within. Rainbows and double rainbows abounded—and one night I saw a moonbow. The full moon was exceptionally bright, and in the opposite direction I saw a monochrome arc rising above the sea. I hadn’t even known that such a thing existed, but after I mentioned it in my blog, my online followers corroborated that this was a known phenomenon. These were strange days indeed.
The combination of odd winds and unpredictable currents drove me as close to insanity as I have ever been—which, to be honest, is not very close, my mind seeming to have a particularly strong grip on reality. But I did become obsessed with the line on the GPS that represented my course. I zoomed the chart’s scale way up so that I could detect an adverse current as soon as I ran into it, and I watched the numbers as keenly as a day trader might watch the stock market when he has bet his last dollar on pork bellies. My obsession reached unhealthy levels, my mood a hostage to those little numbers on the GPS screen as wind and currents pushed me this way and that. One day I recorded in my logbook, “After 6 hours and 4 squalls, have nearly completed a jagged circle.” And a little later: “Hard to stay upbeat. So much effort, so little reward.”
Eventually a trusty follower intervened, concerned that I was losing perspective. “Zoom down the scale!” he implored. “Overall, you’re still making progress!”
I complied, and things immediately looked much better. It was an important lesson in focusing on the bigger picture rather than getting bogged down in the little setbacks that are an inevitable part of any major project. In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig, these setbacks are called “gumption traps.” There are catastrophic consequences for the unwary, the traps sucking them into a dark hole of negativity and despondency. Get-up-and-go drains away, leaving the victim confronted by a seemingly intractable problem. It takes perspective—or the help of a good friend—to escape the trap, set aside the spiraling thoughts, and get back to the task at hand.
OVERALL, I WAS SLOWLY EDGING MY WAY towards the equator. Some days I went south, other days I went north, but gradually the degrees ticked by. Five degrees north, four, three … I got almost down to two degrees when I found myself in a strong adverse current and heading north. Over the course of the next three days, I was pushed nearly all the way back up to three degrees, my worst setback yet.
It was heartbreaking to lose so much ground. I resorted to scream therapy, a technique I had learned on the Atlantic for venting my frustration. Then it had been followed by an almost immediate improvement in the conditions. Superstitiously, I hoped it might yield the same result this time, so I stood at the bows of my boat and hollered my frustration at the ocean. But no luck. The trick didn’t work, but it did make me feel a little better, apart from the sore throat.
A small boost to morale came that night with the discovery tha
t powdered coconut milk is a magical addition to freeze-dried Thai curry. The restorative effect of a tasty dinner is quite remarkable. When the going gets tough, the tough get cooking. As was my habit, I ate my dinner while watching the sunset. I sat on top of the life raft, my feet in the footwell, my back resting against the hatch to my sleeping cabin—not desperately comfortable, but by far the most comfortable seat on the boat. And most important, it positioned me facing the bow, towards the sunset.
Sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset—these were the highlights of my day, the ocean rower’s equivalent of prime-time TV. I loved watching the dying moments of the day, with the best of the colours usually appearing after the red disc of the sun had dropped into the ocean. I sometimes exclaimed out loud in appreciation of the afterglow in the west as the sun lit the clouds from below, and the subtler hues of rosy pink reflected on cumulus banked around the other points of the compass. Nothing can compare with the end of a day on the ocean, when you can reflect virtuously on a full day of fresh air and exercise, while eating a well-earned hot meal and admiring a full 360-degree Technicolor sunset. I have hundreds of photos of the sky taken during those precious moments at either end of the day. The novelty never fades.
HEADING SOUTH WAS STILL my primary focus. I had decided that I wouldn’t consider the Tuvalu/Tarawa question again until and unless I crossed the equator. It was so difficult to predict how long that might take, or what longitude I might reach before it happened, that it seemed pointless to debate the issue at this stage. But despite my determination to release my unproductive thoughts, the debate was always there, hovering in the back of my mind, unsettling me.