by Sarah Outen
I eventually confided in Ric, who assured me that he understood early voyage blues, that it was all perfectly normal, absolutely to be expected and perfectly curable. All I had to do was ‘become a Sea Ani’. A what? A Sea Ani. It is his very own concept and word and, according to him, a Sea Ani is where you become so happy on the ocean that you feel a bit guilty at not thinking about land any more – you are at one with the sea, the gull’s way and the whale’s way, and all the associated drama, laws and energy of the ocean. You have to become a beast of the ocean, if you like. Bring it on! I currently felt like a schizophrenic fish out of water, my emotions volatile, and all the time sweating and toiling and rapidly growing bored of my bad singing. I was frustrated that it was taking me so long to settle in to a life which was so simple; each day I had only to row west and stay happy. How hard could it be? Apparently impossible, until I had shaken off the shackles from land and could focus fully on the ocean.
It wasn’t just the blues that I was contending with – I was also vomiting my way through early-voyage seasickness, which meant I had to force myself to keep snacking to replace my energy stores. I enjoyed the ‘land food’ that I had brought along for this adjustment period, perishables such as fruit, muffins and bread that would soon run out and last only in my memories until Mauritius. ‘How did I ever think that ten packets of biscuits would be enough for a whole ocean? I’m three down already,’ I had written on Day 6. My food bags and snacks allowed me around 5,000 calories for each day, but I still expected (and rather hoped) I would lose a lot of the weight I had piled on before leaving. I generally grazed throughout the day and night, starting with porridge for breakfast, often eating it as cold gruel if the sea was too rough to boil water safely in my little gas stove. This would be followed by regular snacks of seed bars, chocolate, dried fruit and nuts, with some dehydrated meals thrown in and various random treats. In my bid to stop scurvy I had stashed away some fresh fruits and vegetables, although these didn’t last long. Before I had left Australia, Geoff had written on my cabin bulkhead, ‘Fresh fruit is very much overrated – hardly worth thinking about really.’ I cursed him with a smile each time I saw it – later in the voyage, fresh food and fruit teased my dreams. I often woke in the night, tasting and smelling food from home with all its textures and flavours; there was no enjoyable texture to any of my food. Dehydrated meals varied between very sloppy and squidgily stodgy, and flavour was in even shorter supply. As I coaxed myself into finishing off a packet of Mush X, Y or Z, I cursed the salesman who had convinced me to buy from their company, luring me in with promises of discounts.
On my Warm-up Lap I had discovered that strawberry protein shakes tasted as bad on the ocean as they did on land; I gave away as many of them as possible when I repacked the boat ready for round two – completely illegally, I later discovered. My friends at the AQIS would have been suitably unimpressed. They had cordoned off most of my food with yellow tape and heavy-duty cable ties, not to be removed until I was over 12 nautical miles out to sea and therefore outside of Aussie waters, which meant leaving many of the shakes on board. This meant extra weight and, as I was 112 per cent convinced that I wouldn’t drink any of them, I decided to empty a few overboard. Unfortunately, it wasn’t only the sea which changed colour. I discovered that a downwind deployment resulted in my receiving a spraying with strawberry talc and in the end resigned to rowing the extra weight; it had to be better than death by pink, but to this day the smell still makes me gag.
It took about twelve days to push off the continental shelf, rowing through steep and boisterous waves. Day 11 was particularly wet and windy, slogging through grey and cresty seas. The warmth of my dinner packet held against my tummy cheered me as I huddled with my back to the waves, trying to work out if it was better to see the waves flying towards me or not while I talked myself into eating another mouthful of mush. As I cleared up after dinner, rinsing out my stove pan overboard, somehow I let go of it and lost it to the deep. I lurched over the side to try and grab it but it was gone – we were running with the waves and all I could do was curse and growl at myself as I watched it waft down to an eternity on the seabed. As this constituted a loss of 50 per cent of my cooking capability I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, and I was just considering the pros and cons of each when I looked up to see the sky go black. Something was soaring low over me, and my first thought was of planes. A 3.5-metre wingspan and mottled brown body suggested otherwise – these wings had feathers. My teatime visitor was the biggest of all the winged voyagers in this world, the mighty wandering albatross. I whooped in delight as I watched him cruise over the waves, making light work of the watery walls which had hampered my progress since morning. Life was good – I would trade a pan for an albatross any day.
The morning of Day 16 provided a rather too exciting start to proceedings. My sea-me radar alarm invaded my sleep – it beeped if it was hit by another boat’s radar – and I lay awake on my beanbag for a moment with my eyes closed, timing the gaps between the beeps as I tried to discern what the sea was doing outside. At the same time I was half-heartedly flexing each of my major muscles, coaxing my stiff body into action. Peeling back my eyelids, yawning and not feeling very energetic, I stepped clumsily outside to see who was out there. I was met by the dull dawn breaking on an even duller sea, and with a slap in the face from an over-excitable wave was kicked into action. There was no boat in sight even when I scanned with binoculars on three separate sweeps so I put out a few calls on the VHF, giving my position and asking whoever may be there for a wide berth. ‘Sécurité, sécurité, sécurité. This is rowing boat Serendipity, Serendipity, Serendipity.’ I gave my position and heading and finished off with ‘Wide berth kindly requested as I am small and limited in my ability to manoeuvre. OUT.’
I turned up the volume and listened carefully, but there was nothing, nobody. After a few transmissions, there was still no boat and, as the alarm wasn’t too insistent and it was way before 8.00, when I had planned to wake up, I decided I would just catch a few more snoozes and hope for the best. Bad idea; I was woken up ten minutes later by the sea-me going berserk and this time when I popped out on deck and swept the horizon for ships I saw a very large one making easy work of the 2-metre waves as it headed straight for us. Completely naked, I stood on the deck with radio in one hand and holding on to my cabin roof with the other, alternately repeating my VHF call and waiting for a response. Still no reply. I could feel my heart starting to beat heavily and as the ship surged closer, I could pick out details – the lifting winches, the windows, the flags, the name painted on the side, even though I couldn’t read it. Things weren’t looking good. Ocean rowers had been squashed by big boats before so there was no guarantee that the captain had even noticed us yet or even would do – it was very possible that it could run straight into us and not bat an eyelid. The ship was about a mile away and still bearing down; my heart was now hammering even louder and my mouth going dry as I tried to line up the angles and calculate whether or not and at what point we would be squashed. As I looked at the bow wave rolling surf over the water, I remembered reading Pacific Ocean rower Jim Shekdar’s account of passing a ship too close for comfort and being rolled out of the way by the bow wave – I just hoped that the same would happen for us if it came down to it. I couldn’t row out of the way – that would take too long and I wouldn’t be able to radio while rowing. So I carried on my barrage of requests for this juggernaut not to squash me. After what seemed like an age, a reply crackled back through the airwaves:
‘Small boat, small boat, small boat – this is Prince of the Netherlands. Do you require assistance? Or are you just one of those mad adventurers? Over.’
Oh, happy days! Yes, I was a mad adventurer and no, thank you, I didn’t need any help. The kind captain altered his course and said he would pass on word to the Australian authorities that I was still alive. We wished each other a safe journey before I watched and waved at the Prince of the Netherlands until it disappeared
from sight, still completely starkers but very chuffed to have spoken to someone. Most never replied and it would be months before another ship responded to any of my VHF calls.
While trying to fend off the blues and seasickness in those early weeks, I also did regular battle with various impish voices in my head, which taunted me if I finished rowing early for the day or stopped for another snooze in the afternoon, goading me to row for longer every time. One might be shouting ‘Carpe diem!’ and hammering on my cabin wall, pointing to the message I had written there. One told me to ‘Get up and row!’ and another shouted at me to ‘Make the most of now!’. Some days that was easier than others as I tried to justify the value of spending an extra hour or two in bed. This was a marathon, not a sprint, after all. Prior to my row, sports psychotherapist Dr Briony Nicholls had helped me with strategies for situations like this. We had concluded that the dynamic nature of the ocean and its weather systems would require a flexible rowing schedule; that is to say that if the weather was good I would row and make the most of it, and if it was gnarly I would tuck up and rest. It was all about optimising opportunity as well as listening to my body and its grumblings. Success was going to be about equanimity and taking life one day at a time, sometimes just one stroke at a time. Some days would be about thriving and others would be about surviving. As such, instead of setting a schedule of X hours a day, I had given myself a single goal – simply to row and rest as much as I could, so that I could be as efficient and effective as possible.
Each day (or as often as required) Ricardo texted or emailed through the weather forecasts and also advised me on how best to route through or around the action. I loved it when he talked of good wind coming my way or praised me for progress, and I always dreaded downloading my emails if it had been preceded by a text message asking me to check my email inbox for this usually meant bad news. At times I struggled to meet his brief, whether it was to ‘head to this lat and long’ or ‘push north 40 miles to find new wind’. I was comforted when he assured me that the best thing in these early stages was to just go with the flow and, if it was possible to row, to do the most efficient thing. In short, any mileage west was good and we could fine-tune the north or south part later on as we needed. Even so, there was concern among some of my blog followers watching my track on the little map on my website that I was already way above the green line and heading too far north. This green line was a fictional, theoretical and very smooth line on the map joining up Australia to Mauritius – a line I later called the racing line. My own track was definitely not a racing line and there was disbelief in some quarters that I would make it. Maybe Mum needn’t have forwarded those messages on to me but she did and I continued to read them and chew them over. In my head, I was aware that these were early days. Yet I was a bit frustrated that their chatter bothered me; I needed to focus on my game and Ric’s instructions and nothing else. It would be one of the most important lessons to learn and take home from the waves back into land life: listen only to the voices that matter. I hadn’t got out to sea by listening to people who had said I wouldn’t do it or that I would be shark bait. This was no different.
An important step came around this time. A blazing sun shone into the purest, brightest, bluest hue I had ever seen and all was mirror calm, crying out for me to jump in. I had debated the mid-ocean swim with various sailors before leaving land; on the one hand being in the water goes against all natural instincts because the boat represents safety but on the other, it is so enticing and alluring. I knew that to immerse myself would be to venture into a whole new world. Indeed a brave new world, too, for I had never before swum in water so deep or so far from land and swimming in deep water terrified me. When I say deep, I just mean deep enough not to see the bottom – even a metre or two can freak me out. I so wanted to do it and my muscles ached for the coolness, yet my logical head was trawling up memories of being swept out to sea on a rubber ring as a child when I had been too scared of jellyfish to swim back to the beach and had to be pulled back to shore by a watching bystander. As I wondered how many people could lay claim to swimming in a pool 4 miles deep and quietened the imps in my head, I stripped off. ‘I’m going swiiiiiiming!’ I squealed half nervously and half excitedly to my video camera as I tied on my extra long safety line and donned my mask and snorkel. I stood on the edge of the boat, leaning back on my safety rails and had one last look for fins and sea monsters. A bird wheeled in the distance, foraging for dinner, but there was nothing and no one else; it was silent and empty, just me and the lonely sea and the sky. Instead of jumping in with a whoop I just froze, eventually stepping back on deck for a quick pep talk. I took a deep breath and stood up for another go but again, I didn’t get any nearer to the water. Kneeling down, I stuck my head under the surface, just to reassure myself that it was OK. Of course it was, so I got back up on my perch, ready to jump. Once more, I froze and so there I remained, egging myself on until the boat had keeled over so much that I slipped and fell in with a very inelegant splash. I was in just long enough to register that it was both very blue and way too deep to comprehend, when a little black and white striped fish looked up at me and growled. I squealed and leaped out, my first foray ending almost before it had started. I was so chuffed to have made it into the water and confident that I would jump in to fix something if I needed to. But I am not ashamed to admit that I was more than a teensy bit scared. Scared of what exactly, I am still not too sure, for of course the fish didn’t really growl. (And he was only 8 centimetres from fishy nose to his fishy tail.) In fact, on second inspection he was really rather sweet and I’m sure he said, ‘How do you do?’ I was enchanted, and all the more so when his mate appeared. In their stripy little jackets they were calling out to be named Tweedledum and Tweedledee, so I did, and appointed their stripy collective The Tweedles. They would be my friends and follow me to Mauritius; pilot fish by name and pilots by nature, they are escorts of most ocean wanderers, boats, beasts and other flotsam. My deep blue swim was a triumph, therefore: I had semi-conquered my childhood fear of swimming in the ocean and felt that, now I was on first-name terms with the locals, I was well on my way to becoming a true salty beast.
Chapter 14
Red Carpet Weather
‘Water is life’s mater and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water’
Albert Szent-Györgyi
Ricardo called it Red Carpet Weather when the wind blew from the east. I think he meant Magic Carpet Weather, referring to the way it magicked me along in the right direction to gain sea miles, but it ended up being called Red Carpet Weather. It was our favourite sort of weather. The initial forecast that we had based all the decisions on for my April Fool’s Day departure had suggested helpful winds for a week or so and happily, they continued to blow for more than a fortnight. Following winds made for perfect surfing weather, with waves rolling towards Mauritius, helping us in the right direction, even as I slept. Oh, how I loved this rowing lark; you don’t get free miles like that by your own two feet, eh? Some mornings in these early Red Carpet days, I took advantage of the weather and used the opportunity to do something other than rowing. Sometimes I might use it to clean either myself or the boat, but on a few mornings I slept for an extra hour or three, the time being determined by the temperature of the cabin and by how sticky and sweaty my sleeping gear was. Generally if I was tired, I would only wake up again when the air in the cabin was so stifling that I doubt any oxygen remained at all. Until this moment, extra sleep was mostly very welcome and very sweet. After waking up on these mornings I would try to get out into the air as quickly as possible, whilst working out how productive my coasting had been. The bubble compass in the bulkhead showed through to the cabin, so with a quick bit of maths I could work out our heading. A little look at my red ensign through the back hatch gave me an idea of what the boat was doing relative to the wind and either elicited a warm smiley feeling at the thought of free miles or a rapid leap outside to swing the boat into a better
position. Then there was Einstein, my GPS, wired into the deck outside, who would reveal all the twists and turns and wiggles of the night’s drifting. The anticipation of finding out my position teased me and sometimes I saved it until after breakfast if I knew it was going to be a good one. One morning I woke up after a particularly satisfying sleep to find that we had run nearly 30 miles in the twelve hours since I had stopped rowing. Even better was the fact that it was all in a perfect line due west.
Of course, it wasn’t always like that; the ocean is full of intriguing and feisty currents and eddies which do not always act as useful conveyor belts for the ocean rower, as my Leeuwin Current experience had shown. I could tell if I was in a current by the temperature of the water and my progress relative to the wind, waves and my own rowing efforts. Ric would also warn me if I needed to head in a certain direction to avoid a contrary current that might push me backwards. I had heard of ocean rowers and kayakers looping round for two weeks or more in an eddy before being slingshotted out, but some currents were jolly helpful and carried me along a useful track, or at least rectified any mischief caused by another part of the same system. Between Days 8 and 11, each night as I slept the boat was pushed round a series of eddies, curving the top half of a circle. Had I not rowed west again the following day, I would have looped complete loops on my tracker. Thank goodness the weather was calm enough to allow me to row or else I would probably have been drawing polo mints far earlier in the voyage than I would have liked.
As we left the coastal shelf and ventured out in to the deep ocean, the waves grew steeper and the wind blew harder. Everything, it seemed, was getting bigger and scarier. I found it both thrilling and terrifying at times, and always tiring from the physical exertion and the focus I needed to stay safe. It was good to have the ten days of the Warm-up Lap in my head as a reminder of my ability to cope, though it was still a challenge. My inner monologue was turning out to be quite a chatterbox and I talked myself through most tasks, however small they might be; I couldn’t afford to lose focus or make a mistake, so I had to make sure that voice stayed measured and calm at all times. As with any survival situation, when feisty waves are threatening to wash you overboard, your thinking is crystal clear – there is no space for extra noise.