by Sarah Outen
Outside the boat, I felt like I was in control at least; inside the cabin all I could control was how many bars of chocolate I ate. Less than 2 centimetres of boat wall stood between me and the waves, meaning that every sound of water came straight through, a bit too loud and clear for my liking at times. Sometimes it wakes you up. There’s no reference but for the sounds. You might feel a whoosh and acceleration down the wave, but sometimes you can’t work out how big the waves are. Perhaps it’s better that way. Even on a pond-like day when water gurgled gently and swirled round the rudder, the boat was never silent. I found this rather comforting, especially as I grew to know all the different noises and what they meant. As sea state increased through wavelets and slightly bigger waves into the sort that charge about like monsters, the noise would build. In hindsight, earplugs would have been a good idea for those noisy hours in the cabin, and industrial spec ear defenders would have been genius.
Boisterous seas always curtailed my rowing at night-time; I felt it was better to be safe and end before sundown than to push on in dubious and volatile conditions, particularly at this early stage. A big bright moon and following seas made for irresistible night-time rowing, but with waves rolling into the boat broadside my heart was racing and I was soon soggy and bruised in the ribs from being bashed by my oars or hurled into the safety rails. Being dumped on by waves in the sunshine was not great but I might at least have a chance of warming up a wee bit; at night-time if I got too wet it might get critical. With no one to take care of me I couldn’t risk getting hypothermia, so a few too many sloshings generally sent me inside. One such night in my third week at sea I finished rowing just after sunset. After tea I went through my usual routine of sluicing my Lower Decks with iodine, powdering with talc and plastering with zinc cream. An hour later it was stuffy in the cabin so I opened the back hatch, just a fraction, and put it on the latch. A sliver of a breeze crept in and cooled the air, soothing me. I was just considering how crap it would be if a big wave came and got us wet – and guess what happened? A chuffing big wave came along and back-ended us, giving us one hell of a ride down the wave. My sleeping bag got rather wet, which was no fun and I decided that I couldn’t risk opening the back hatch again unless it was a calm day, for fear of a capsize. If we rolled with a door open it would be curtains for the project and for me, as Dippers wouldn’t come back round.
Rain was a different matter; I have always loved the sound of water hitting roofs, be it on tents, boats or buildings. Gentle rain, lashing rain, sideways rain, warm rain, cold rain – I’m not fussy. I just love the feeling of being cosy, snug and dry from the wet. On the ocean, rain means fresh water and sometimes the opportunity for a bit of a shower, or at least a token wash. If I saw a big squall on its way I quickly stripped off, filled a bucket with seawater and soaked myself, rubbing in my tangy shower gel (biodegradable and organic so as not to annoy the fish). If the clouds did as they threatened this was great and I rinsed in fresh water; if they decided to play the tease instead, then I was left freezing in the buff and covered in bubbles, which had to be rinsed off in a bucket of seawater once more, of course throwing more salt over the very salt I had hoped to wash off. Funny times at sea.
A squally evening on Day 17 looked to be the start of something more serious. The skies were stormy and the waves growing, which meant new wind was on the way. ‘Here’s an even bigger one!’ I squealed into the Dictaphone as we raced down a wave; ‘Wohoooo!’ I laughed. Winds arrived with each set of clouds and then died down again as they passed over, before another massive wave set and cloud line rolled in from the distance. The big white tops were phenomenal, rolling on a 10-metre swell. I rowed non-stop for five hours, then went for a snooze.
I woke after my rest to find white water everywhere and some bloody big waves. ‘I’m glad Mum can’t see; she wouldn’t be very happy,’ I told the Dictaphone. Feeling a bit queasy I took a seasickness tablet and lay back down in the cabin for a few minutes, before digging about for some snacks. A Crunchie went down very well, though sadly it came back up even more swiftly a moment later, thankfully straight into a well-timed plastic bag. A vomity cabin would have been unbearable. Chuckling at the sad waste of my Crunchie, I switched on my satellite phone and hoped for some messages. Roostie was at work (and clearly trying to procrastinate). I sent a message back, telling her that it was getting messy outside and that I was tucked up for the night already, wedged in and bracing myself against rogue waves. She asked if I was ever scared by the noise, or did I find it comforting? Mostly it wasn’t too scary, I replied, but hearing a crescendo race towards the boat while I waited for the inevitable slam was fairly frightening. Luckily, some of those ran themselves out and crashed elsewhere. After a long exchange of messages I said cheerio and carried on resting. The lights were on and my phone was too so that I could pick up any incoming messages and I nibbled bits of spiced cake, calm and relaxed, calm and relaxed. Or at least I was as calm and relaxed as I could be, given the watery mayhem outside. I checked my watch – only just past sundown – and acknowledged that it was going to be a long night. I snoozed gently, reminding myself that I was oh-so-very calm and relaxed.
A nanosecond later I was slammed into the cabin wall. Dippers was suspended mid roll, apparently deciding whether to go right over or come back up. Water rushed in through the vent on the hatch and I screamed, willing her to come back round. She had done it in Fremantle; she knew how to do it. Come. On. Dippers. Save the rolls for another day, my friend.
The roll back to upright was as violent as the first and I was shaken. Oh shit, I’m scared now. I’d been on the roof of the cabin, stuff was everywhere, the food bags had squashed me. I had only just been telling Roostie how I wasn’t scared; here I was now whimpering and too frightened to go out on deck and get my helmet out of the front cabin. Up to now I hadn’t needed it, but with roughed-up seas I couldn’t risk another big knock like that without a helmet on: I had to go outside. Even if I failed, at least I would know I had tried. Only a fool doesn’t have at least a little go so there was really no choice. Not wanting to get my clothes soaked, I stripped off and clipped my safety harness round my waist; the buckle snapped shut, cold against me, and I shuddered at the thought of going on deck. Bracing myself against the lurching, I drew a deep breath and I visualised each little step in the process. The other end of the boat was only a pace and a half away in good weather, but I knew that once I opened the hatch it would be a race to get outside, clip my safety line to the deck bolt and close the door again. Stinging salty spray whipped across me as I peeped out and I shivered as a wave landed straight on top of me, gritting my teeth and tensing my muscles against the cold. The deck was lurching, rising and falling as waves rolled under and into us. The moon shone brightly behind grey shadowy clouds and the air was filled with spray and spume. Gripping the safety rails I crouched low to face the incoming waves, pulsing my legs against the boat’s rhythm. Opening the forward hatch, it was clear that the Grand Slam had shifted my kit into odd positions; a welly boot was lodged out of place, the grab bag had come loose; things which had been on the left were now on the right. I grabbed the helmet and put it on, jamming the heaviest bits of kit back into their proper place – Dippers’ righting ability was in part reliant on heavy gear being stashed low down. It was too dangerous to do everything now; I needed to wait until it had all calmed down. My inner chatter talked on, putting the fear into a box and telling it to stay there until some other time. I picked up the few odd bits which hadn’t been washed out of the stowage pockets on deck and made a dash for the cabin, taking another soaking.
Inside once more, I felt spaced out; I was drowsy and woozy, worried that I might fall asleep and not wake up. I was also scared that it might happen again; one boshing definitely did not preclude another. I had no way of tying myself down inside the cabin so had been hurled at full speed head first into the side of the boat. Note to self: 1 centimetre of foam camping mat round the cabin is not enough to protect the ama
teur head banger. My head thumped as I struggled to keep my eyes open so I decided to send some messages via the satellite phone, trying to make light of it. I knew no one could help me; I just wanted someone to talk to for a moment as I felt very alone, very tiny and very scared. Ric made me laugh later when he sent me a message saying, ‘Stop trying to break your boat with your head!’ He assured me that he was confident she wouldn’t ever roll past ninety degrees, and I tried to remind myself that we hadn’t capsized fully and that it could have been a lot worse.
The next morning, deciding it was time to find a little present to cheer myself up, I settled on a large jiffy bag which had instructions to ‘Only open if you’re feeling really low’. A complete stranger had given it to me when we were filming a short piece down by the river in Oxford one day. I felt pretty low and in need of a smile, so I opened it up. Joy of all joy! Four bags of pork scratchings! I scoffed the lot within the hour and wished for more; the salt and the fat and the crunch was sublimely delicious. Another note to self: take copious supplies of pork scratchings on next adventure. Unfortunately, after the Grand Slam the salted pumpkin seeds in the food hatches were now soggy and destined for fish food; on the upside, Roostie promised to look into pigeon-posting a malt loaf across the waves. So it wasn’t all bad, even after a boshing. In fact, it had served as a relatively gentle reminder that the ocean was a wild and unpredictable place.
Chapter 15
Happy Socks
Happy socks (n) (pl.) [happee sokks]
By Day 22 I had come through some fairly rough stuff after departing the continental shelf, leaving me cold, tired, wet and with disintegrating feet and backside. Surely all this was a ticket to an early finish each day? Well, not according to the imps in my head. They goaded me, saying that Ellen MacArthur wouldn’t do this because she was cold or because she was gaining free miles with the wind. Captain Scott would have carried on. Dad wouldn’t have stopped. So you’re not going to do that. You’re going to sit there and row until as near to six o’clock as you can get. With winds gusting 20 to 30 knots and water flying everywhere, the last week had been challenging; surfing down some of those watery walls, I just pulled in the oars and held on. I was living on a mix of adrenaline and fear, but despite the messy bits, I was very content and loving it, fear and all. In the final run in to the end of the day, as the sun set and my eyelids longed for bed, I willed the sea not to throw water over my head. I’m quite a calm person so I usually smiled, albeit wryly, when this happened just before bedtime. But I sometimes screamed a bit too; a good yell does wonders for the soul, especially when you’re shivering and wet. The cabin was my sanctuary; inside I could dry out, warm up and snuggle down into my cosy bedding. Even if my sleeping bag was soaked, my woollen blanket stayed warm even when wet, though it did make the cabin smell fairly vile – think teenage boy’s sports bag and then double it, add a whiff of salt and a splash of unidentified boat odour and you’ve got the musty damp of Eau du Cabin.
Give me the smooth bitter bite of a fine gin with a cheeky twang of zesty limes, all iced up in a long glass with some tonic, and I am happy with life. Give me a sea view at the same time, and you will have just made my day. Sadly, Jamie had forgotten to install the ice maker and bar on Dippers and so sipping gin with the sunset only ever happened in my head. I did have a Gin Machine on board though, a piece of kit so important that I talked to it each day, and so expensive that I had nearly opted for the manual one to save the bank balance; had I done so, my life at sea would have been quite different and even more bloody hard work. This is because the Gin Machine was my one-stop flick-a-switch route to fresh water each day, and the manual version would have meant hours spent pumping instead of rowing. Fortunately, the swanky electric desalination pump took only TLC and kind words, and when it went wrong, a bit of Vaseline. It is a fantastic bit of kit, powered by the sun via the batteries, which drive the pump to squeeze seawater through various membranes and filters, pushing out the salt by reverse osmosis. The result was fresh water, fairly tasteless but for a twist of salt. Usually a few hours of the Gin Machine whirring away in its little hatch filled a jerry can of water to last me a day or two, and I only had to make sure the batteries were nicely juiced up with sunshine. This was the tricky bit; contrary to popular belief, the Indian Ocean is not always a sunny place. There were many sunless weeks on my voyage when water was in such short supply that I only used it for drinking and rehydrating meals. Laundry was way down the list of priorities at times like this and I mastered the art of turning things inside out and back to front, re-wearing them and refreshing them occasionally with a squirt of perfume. Yes, perfume, and I don’t care that you’re laughing at the fact I’m probably the first adventurer to take a bottle of perfume on expedition. It made me smile and also prevented me smelling myself out of business.
During one week of grey, my water ran dry; the batteries were all juiced out and there was no sunshine nor any forecast for any. A rower with no water will struggle for a while and eventually dehydrate and die; it is serious stuff to be faced with no fresh water and no tap to fill up the tanks. This is why I had 90 litres of emergency ballast water stowed below deck. It acted as extra weight to help Dippers to self-right, but was also there in case I needed drinking water. In another bid to save money I had filled my jerry cans with tap water from the quayside in Australia rather than buy posh sealed bottled stuff. Unfortunately, any thoughts of sterilising processes had escaped me completely, and so eight weeks later it didn’t smell quite so fresh. Nor did it look it either; a mouldy carpet had grown over all of the cans and the first one I opened had orange blobs floating around in it – lots and lots of them. They may even have been swimming, too; I closed the lid quickly, not stopping to investigate. I had the ‘Survivor drinks own urine to stay alive’ headline running round in my head as I reached for the second can. What if the whole lot was ruined? Hmmm. I inhaled gingerly, remembering the time our chemistry teacher had proffered us a vial of sulphur dioxide and we all keeled over after taking an enthusiastic whiff. This one looked OK and smelled just like all things do on a boat after that long at sea, so I went for a little glug, swilling it round my mouth. Ugh! I spat it out; it was stale and pungent. But at least things weren’t growing in it yet, or if they were then I couldn’t see them. And even if they were they weren’t orange, so that was a bonus. Worried about draining my precious supply, I cut my drinking allowance and rationed the water for three full days, willing the sun to shine. After three days I was a bit dehydrated but still wanted to play it safe – I could do this for a few days yet. That week, more than ever, I realised that water is the key to life; here I was on an adventure struggling to make enough water, yet there are a billion people in the world with no access to clean water. It was a humbling eye-opener and I realised that the ocean is one of the best places to learn about resource management, for what you forget to take with you, you do without. And you do everything you can to make sure you don’t run out of the crucial stuff. Or you’re buggered.
Everyone should have a pair of Happy Socks. They are cosy and capable of soothing mind, body and toes after a salty day on the ocean, or indeed after a long day in the Real World. On or off the water, I champion Happy Socks: happy socks make happy days.
I know what you are thinking; I bet you are wiggling your toes and questioning your sock ethic, asking your toes if they are happy. My Mum invented Happy Socks, made with that curiously clever wool that changes colour from top to toe, the sort you thought were cool as a little person, uncool through your teens, but are now keen to wear again. A brand new pair was made for my voyage and I knew I could count on them to cheer me from my toes up after a hard day at the oars. Once I had shut up for the night I would strip off, wash, checking for sores and mould, and then put on some dry clothes.
It’s probably a good idea to talk about ocean laundry at this point, too, as lots of people ask about this. First thing to note is that you only attempt it if the sun is shining and the sea is calm en
ough to dry everything; for if you wash too much stuff and the sun abandons you, then you get left with damp mouldy clothes and a stale cabin. I hung my newly washed knickers and socks from netting inside, and I might wake up to find a pair of shorts stuck to my face, they having found their way onto my beanbag as I slept. Of course, usually I would put on a fresh pair of shorts (I only had two) or a clean top (I only had three), enjoy the relative freshness for a moment, before being drenched by an errant wave.
My attitude to ocean hygiene was that I should keep myself clean enough to avoid infections and stay healthy, but not use too much fresh water; dehydration was a bigger threat than intoxication and so the priority for water was to drink and then to wash. The main task, therefore, was rinsing the tidelines out of my rowing shorts to protect my Lower Decks from chaffing and general rot. Not wanting to harp on too much about it, but feeling the need to share my discomfort, I shall sketch out a little idea for you. Imagine sitting on a cold damp mat, in cold damp shorts, in cold damp trousers on a little boat, being pitched about by rather salty, cold, wet waves. Not only do you appear to be sitting on some sort of trapped nerve, sending numbing pains down through your legs, but the flesh on your bottom is red raw. Salt sores have set up camp on your bottom and thighs and prickles run all over your skin each time you move; you need to talk yourself through some tasks because it is so damned painful. On wet days you will squirm so much that you can’t sit or stand for more than a moment in one position and every time you need to use the bucket, you have to rip fabric from skin as you peel away the shorts, scratching salty crystals across open wounds. Swearing fills the air as you pull them back up. This was me and my bottom, unhappiest on the wetter days. At the end of the day and sometimes in between rowing shifts, I tried to have a look at the mess, twisting round like a dog chasing her tail. Red mountains and oozing volcanoes everywhere – it was like a Martian landscape, pitted and pinnacled with carbuncles and bumps en route to boilhood. I remember one in particular which rubbed so much that it drove me mad; it felt like Everest at the top of my buttocks. Declaring war I went for the big squeeze, relieved as the lumpy yellow pus exploded onto the deck. Better out than in, I thought, as I doused my entire mid section with iodine, wincing as each wound flooded and gasping with the sting. The gaping hole filled and refilled with gunk for days afterwards, adding another scar to the collection. But these would be war wounds to be proud of; I was working hard for them.