by Sarah Outen
Physically, the training had to be fairly brutal to prepare my body for the rigours of a four-month ocean trek, or however long it might be – it’s not like catching a train, there is no fixed arrival time. In 2007, while I was still at college and when most in my year were revising (and I probably should have been), I ran the London marathon. The training was a release for me, the long and muddy runs around Oxford a great escape from the struggles of finals; sometimes I would find myself running back to college in tears, exhausted but purged. Race day was intense and scorching hot. Having never run more than 16 miles and with a very painful recent injury getting worse, I found it really tough. To get through the pain I kept reminding myself that Dad had survived far worse pain than any marathon could throw at me and that I would not be beaten unless I was tied to a stretcher and forcibly removed. The Great Toenail Exodus followed a few days after marathon day as I pulled out five nails from my multicoloured and gooey toes, under the misguided notion that they would be better out than in. Bad mistake; apparently toenails can jump out of their own accord and do not need a helping hand. Later on, the mantra ‘Toenails hurt more’ would be written onto the cabin wall of my rowing boat. The pain training had worked.
My finals came and went at the saddest time of all, coinciding with both my birthday and the last time I had seen Dad one year before. With bloody mindedness and lots of chocolate, tears, rowing and support from family and some wonderful friends, I somehow made it through and received my degree. Another blow came with the passing of our dear great-aunt Broni in July, clocking the second big loss in our little family in two years.
Serendipity had landed me with a job for the following year, teaching and coaching biology and sports at a boarding school just up the road. The post was fixed term for one year. It was perfect: I would have chance to prepare for my row, and accommodation was provided so I could save. The timetable would be demanding but there were regular school holidays and the fact that it would also be a meaningful year, giving me valuable experience of teaching and working with children, made it even better. The school’s superlative sports facilities would also allow me to train in style. Bonus.
It turned out that a full-time job in a boarding school surpasses all normal understanding of the term. In my second term at St Edward’s I took up the post of matron in one of the girls’ boarding houses, with one proviso: that I would not be called matron. My six-day week turned into a six-day-and-night week, with the added trials of a house of seventy teenage girls where, if I was awake, my door was always open to them. And if I wasn’t awake then they only had to ring the bell. I guess I was a halfway house, being much closer to them in age than many staff members, yet old enough and experienced enough to show some wisdom. They were formative and valuable times and I came away knowing that one day I would be a teacher.
I also had my relationship with Alex, which at times was proving much more difficult than when we had been together at St Hugh’s and even more difficult than when he had been abroad. Alex, a talented and conscientious linguist, studied more hours than I thought possible for his finals and with a single-minded dedication I couldn’t understand. It was both frightening and frustrating to him that I was still so affected by grief and that my focus was on my row; equally, I was frustrated that he was so focused on his finals. It was with deep sadness that I eventually acknowledged that we were both headed in completely different directions. I still loved him; I just didn’t see my future with him. He did see our future together, which made it devastating for both of us when the relationship came to an end.
Outside of work, I had two major focuses – I needed to raise money and I needed to find a boat. I started to look at the options for the latter and discovered that the aspiring ocean rower can opt for a new build or a second-hand vessel, mostly along the same sort of design. They tend to be between 20 and 24 feet long with two watertight cabins for storage and sleeping, one at either end. Most boats nowadays have composite hulls – usually a foam and glass fibre ‘sandwich’, making them extremely light, strong and (theoretically at least) unsinkable. Mine was already called Serendipity, even though she so far had no builder, no money to pay for her and nothing more than a dreamy notional owner. I didn’t even know where to find a boat builder or how to decide what would make a good second-hand one; my only proviso was that I wanted one with character. I decided on the name Serendipity quite early on in the plan – while watching dolphins play around the research yacht in Scotland the year before. I love the way that wildlife at sea appears at the most unexpected moment – serendipity in action. The sound of the word strikes a chord with me, too – it sounds a little bit like ‘Sarah and Dipperty’. After chats with various people in the ocean-rowing community (yes, such a thing does exist!) and browsing the pages of the Ocean Rowing Society and the Association of Ocean Rowers forums, I decided, with no real consideration of my risibly empty bank account, that I would like a new build. This way I would know exactly how she was built and would be involved the whole way along.
Various names of boat builders were talked about on the forums or mentioned by rowers and I looked into them. The first chap, although highly recommended, didn’t ever respond to my messages or calls beyond the first salutary email and so I looked to the next on the list: Jamie Fabrizio and Emily Adkin of Global Boatworks. They had made a string of beautiful, successful boats and were at the time completing a new design for a solo boat, which intrigued me. My first contact with them was met with boundless enthusiasm and an easy rapport; they were clearly the sort of people that make you smile just by being with them. Yes, they could build me a boat; yes, they worked closely with expert designer Phil Morrison and a very good marine electrician; and yes, they promised cheese and baked bean toasties when I visited. And finally, yes, they did this sort of thing all the time. After all, I didn’t want any joker building the other half of my team – my life would depend on this boat.
From our initial conversations, I had good vibes about Jamie and Emily, and six months later they were building my boat. Looking back now, I laugh at the serious chats which I had with them on my first meeting, while knowing full well that I had practically no money at the time. I didn’t even have the £5,000 deposit, let alone the money for the whole build, which amounted to a figure capable of giving any recent graduate a heart attack. I bluffed through it. I would find the capital, even if I wasn’t sure how. I kept telling myself, and others, that it would work out. It had to; I wasn’t prepared to let this project fail without giving it my absolute all. Most of what I earned went towards the project and I exercised the full breadth and depth of overdrafts on my various accounts. Sponsorship would be the only way to bolster the sums which I could devote from my own savings, earnings and grants or donations from individuals.
Having heard horror stories about sponsor hunting from other expeditioning folk and adventurers, I was buoyed by early reassurances from some of them that mine was a story likely to attract sponsors. I would be the first woman ever to attempt the Indian Ocean and also the youngest person to do so – all good hooks for the media. The fastest was always open to debates – the previous three successful crossings had all taken slightly different routes and mine would be completely new, leaving Australia from much further south, out of Fremantle. My idea with heading south was to minimise the northward drift which previous crews had experienced, and it would help my plan of landing in Mauritius, a little island a few hundred miles off Madagascar. Six out of the nine previous attempts had failed on this volatile and unpredictable ocean, so I was taking an even bigger gamble with this new route. All of these crossings so far had been from east to west, in order to make the most of the wind and currents. While to land on Madagascar or even Africa would have been somehow more complete and satisfying, I also figured they would be much harder options with the currents, shipping traffic and extra distances involved. So I chose Mauritius as my proposed landing spot – no one had landed there yet on a rowing expedition across the Indian.
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The sponsor chasing taught me various things – namely that it would be a brilliant idea either to marry someone rich enough to finance my adventures or to become very skilled at covertly robbing banks. The quest for partnerships was relentless – if I had spare time and wasn’t out training then I would be plugging away, researching and trawling for links, sending off proposals and letters, usually late into the night. I talked about my plans to everyone I met and was always on the lookout for good links or possible pots of gold. Of course the end of the effort doesn’t always mean money: I had already seen my friend from Oxford, Alex Hibbert, fold two expedition projects after funding issues.
My very first sponsor had the coolest name of them all – Lumpy Lemon, a very funky little design company based in Oxford at the time. I found them in a web search and knew that anyone with a company name like that would be fun to work with. They agreed to come on board, build me a website and help with design work – all very useful as my design skills aren’t much better than those of a colour-blind walrus. Another early sponsor came after a round-robin email to friends and family asking for ideas. A school friend passed on his dad’s details and almost immediately after my proposal was sent I found my bank balance £5,000 healthier. Another chunk like this was promised around the same time from a chap who got in touch with me – always a novelty in sponsor hunting. He had grown up in Rutland and moved out to Australia but was home for his father’s funeral when he read an article about my project. It wasn’t all finance that people or companies sponsored either – some offered kit, food, services or their time free of charge or for heavily reduced rates. It was humbling and energising to have so much support and a reminder that success would be down to more than just my ability to keep rowing.
Friends and family also sponsored various aspects, many of them sponsoring ‘miles of the row’, which I sold for a few pounds each with the promise that I would carry their names across the ocean on my boat, thinking about them as I rowed through ‘their’ miles. It was a wonderful way of getting as many people as possible involved in the project. After various articles in the local press I received letters, emails and donations from all over the place, wishing me well or telling me their stories or throwing a few pounds into the pot.
Chapter 7
In Which the Rower Gets Ready to Row
‘The journey is the reward’
Chinese proverb
One year before I was due to start out from Australia, at the same time as Jamie was laying the first strips of foam along my boat’s new frame, I took my first strokes in an ocean rowing boat with an Atlantic veteran, the Hungarian Gábor Rakonczai, out in the baking sunshine of Gran Canaria. It had all come about after I saw an advert by him on the Ocean Rowing Society website, advertising courses on his rowing boat in Gran Canaria. I paid for his flights from Hungary and jumped on a plane, arriving on the island with just a teeny bit of concern as to what I had let myself in for. I had never met him and I would now be living on a 23-foot boat with him for the next week as we made our way round the island. We got off to a slightly embarrassed start when I went in for a handshake and he did the European kisses to the left, kisses to the right thing and we met in the middle with a bit of a headbutt. On our first day on the water we clocked sixteen hours rowing, taking it in turns to rest after the first eight hours. I am surprised we even made it that far – Gábor had been drinking beers all day as I had been glugging my water supply. I guess things are done differently in Hungary. As Gábor slid through the hatch into his little cabin for his first rest, my gaze fixed on the compass glowing red in front of me; I felt like an eager pupil, keen to impress their teacher. Each time the needle wandered I heaved on an oar, pulling the boat back around on course. The wind got up to such a strength that I had to row with just one oar to keep us going the right way and after a few hours my body felt like it was on its way to earning the first salty stripe; that is, that it was bloody sore. The night was beautiful as stars twinkled in the sky and the sea, and bioluminescence swirled off the oar strokes. I was so glad that I was enjoying myself; it would have been awful to discover that I didn’t like being at sea in a tiny boat after I had told everyone what I was about to do. I was starting to fall asleep at the oars when Gábor stuck his head out to swap shifts, and so I flopped into my cabin gratefully for some chocolate and a snooze. I have never been inside a coffin before, but if I had to imagine it, then that cabin would come very close. Trying to shake off the shivers, I drifted in and out of sleep, rocking with the waves and trying not to think about being in a coffin, which of course meant that I only thought about being in a coffin. I woke up two hours later to find that I had to remain lying down in the cabin or face a messy rendezvous with my lunch. Three attempts to get out failed as I was hit back by rushes of sickness, and I fed both the fishes and the deck when I finally appeared at the hatch. After rowing halfway round Gran Canaria we were forced into a little marina by contrary headwinds from where we did a couple of shorter day trips to learn about different bits of kit that had so far been alien to me, such as the sea anchor. Gábor also made me get in the water and scrub the boat’s hull clean. I have always hated deep water, but pride made me jump straight in and pretend that I was cool with the whole thing, a complete lie. By the end of the week’s training I had a feel both for how many beers a Hungarian seafarer can drink in one go and also what it might be like out at sea; with one year to go I was confident that my planning and training were headed in the right direction.
After finishing at St Edward’s in the summer of 2008 I moved back home for the final six months before my planned departure date, in a bid to save money. I took two jobs, working in a coffee shop and tutoring, while I planned, trained and fundraised. It was stressful and exhausting and I longed for the space and quiet of the ocean.
Unfortunately, as with most projects at this time, the global economic downturn meant that my search for sponsors was not as fruitful as it might have been a few years before. At various points I had been ready to apply for a full-blown bank loan; either that or wave goodbye to the project or postpone it. Each time an invoice arrived that my bank balance couldn’t deal with, perhaps for the trailer or the final stage of the boatbuilding costs, my hero of a mum said that she would play banker until the money was found, and she continued to plug the gap when the bank balance dipped into the red, even when I was on the ocean. I was frustrated at not having pulled in all the finance I needed, probably more than I was proud at having secured over £40,000 worth of sponsorship. I didn’t like borrowing from Mum but equally I was so grateful. It amazes me that she was so willing to help me, even though it would mean some of the scariest moments and most worried months of her life. Mums are the most special sort of people. She couldn’t understand why I would want to put myself through this huge journey but she was right behind me from the moment she realised I was serious about it and didn’t once try to stop me. Besides running, my training involved lots of hours in the gym lifting chunky weights and hour upon hour on the rowing machine, eventually in our greenhouse at home, which I did come rain or snow through the winter, listening to the radio late into the night and rowing by torchlight. In April 2008 I had also raced in the 125-mile kayaking marathon from Devizes to Westminster. I had no experience in the skinny racing kayaks used for these events and had just two simple aims: to complete the course and not get washed down any of the raging weirs along the way. Given that the fourth and final day of the race was only my tenth time in this type of boat which, by default, likes to rest on its side, i.e. ninety degrees to the upright, I was chuffed not only to avoid death-by-weir, but also to complete the course with only three capsizes and a second place finish. (No one needs to know that there were only two people in my category.) All of this physical preparation was about pushing boundaries constantly and testing myself to find my limits. This is one of my favourite and most frustrating things about endurance: the boundaries are not static, but you keep testing and can keep redefining them. Even whe
n you think you’re running below empty, there is always more to give – even if it’s just to drag yourself to the end.
Seamanship would be the most important part of my mental readiness – the key would be surviving the elements and staying happy and healthy and safe, in mind and body and boat. Part of this was covered with my weather training and for this I needed a weather man. Not knowing how or where to find one, I asked ocean rower and one of my mentors Roz Savage if she knew any. She introduced me to an effervescent Portuguese sailor called Ricardo Diniz, an absolute god of a human being to look at – tall with deep dark eyes – and great fun to be with. Ric and I spent many months talking weather on the phone and by email, often at odd hours of the day to fit in with our hectic schedules. He would be key to my safe passage across the ocean, feeding me advice and predictions about the incoming weather. He promised to be great value.
Meanwhile, the boat build ticked on steadily and once I had finished my job at school I had a bit more time to go down and visit the little workshop hub where my new best friend was being created. Emily had been sending me weekly updates on her progress and I loved showing off the photos to friends and family as bits of foam and wood grew piece by piece and week by week into a beautiful little boat. I spent a couple of days with them here and there, watching and learning from Jamie and even getting dusty helping out with various jobs. I am proud to say that I screwed in all of the internal fixing points in the forward cabin and made all the flaps for the water outlets, or scuppers, down the side of the deck. I’m less proud of the fact that I got a bit carried away with one of the scupper flaps and made it a few millimetres wider than the rest, which meant Jamie had to redo it – perfectionist that he is. I was confident that she and I were in safe hands. In this day and age of mass production, it was inspiring to see that master craftsmen still build beautiful, solid and strong pieces by hand – the man is really an artist as much as a boat builder.