by Sarah Outen
Thankfully, the damage list wasn’t too bad. My wrist felt bruised and my toes felt sore, but I declared myself OK, albeit a bit shocked. When you are both medic and rower you sometimes have to force yourself into believing that all is rosy if there isn’t time or scope to rest up. I would be OK. I had to be; there was no one else to row us home.
It did worry me that an oar had broken, the blade snapped in two, of which the outer portion now hung limply, attached only by threads of carbon. It looked repairable but for now I stowed it away and let it be, swapping it for one of the spares.
That said, I was nervous of going inside the cabin now. But I had a pre-scheduled radio interview with ABC Perth in Australia for lunchtime. I was worried that if I capsized inside it would be more painful than it had been outside, yet if I didn’t answer the phone at the appointed time they would worry. And I was worrying enough people already.
So I took a deep breath and went for it, reaching for my helmet as soon as I had closed the hatch behind me. I don’t think the interviewer quite realised the significance of the capsize until I talked him through how I had nearly drowned. Poor bloke, he seemed quite shaken by it. Next I made a call to Mum to let her know what had happened and left a voicemail for Ricardo telling him that, yes, it had been very interesting. No ham and cheese in my roll at lunch, just a whole lot of sea salt.
Even a couple of hours afterwards, my heart still boomed and I was concerned that I might go into shock. I decided that the best thing I could do to avoid this was to keep eating and rowing as much as I could. Comfortable inside the cabin after my interview, I was afraid of going out again. I had to rationalise it and tell myself to get back out on the oars. How the hell did I think I would row to Mauritius if I was too scared to go out on deck? The decision was made for me. And so onwards I rowed into the sunset, repeating my mantra out loud, ‘Every stroke we take, takes us nearer and nearer; every stroke we take, takes us nearer to home.’
Every single stroke. Every single minute. Every single day. It was all in the right direction, even if it wasn’t. Even if we had somersaulted, we had still chalked another line onto my wall chart and moved a day across to the other side of the balance sheet. That felt good.
Ric’s response to my capsize made me chuckle. He said that I obviously needed refreshing. Refreshing? It had nearly drowned me! Still, we had survived sporting only minor war wounds. Importantly, Ric said that all was OK and so I believed him. He obviously felt that what didn’t kill me made me stronger and that he wasn’t too worried about what lay ahead. The crazy seas were the result of two mighty weather systems crashing into each other a few hundred miles beneath me, creating some very messy stuff (as if I hadn’t noticed!). With fewer than 1,300 miles to run until Mauritius and news that the south-east winds were due again soon, I was buoyant, if a little more cautious than I had been the day before.
To make Mauritius in one piece, I knew that I would have to put today’s episode aside. On the one hand I could use it as a confidence boost that both boat and rower were resilient and floated in all the right places, and on the other it reminded me just how powerful the ocean can be and how little we are in the face of it. Capsizing had been a cold, sharp slap in the face, a sort of wake-up call, and I had to fully expect that another might follow before I was safe and dry. I had to expect the unexpected.
Capsizing an ocean rowing boat must be like crashing a car, because on the morning of Day 87 I felt like I had been through a high-speed wash, battered and bruised and then dragged through a hedge backwards for dessert. My chest muscles and upper arms screamed before I had even thought about lifting them up; they were tired and weary after hauling myself back on board the day before. I was so exhausted that I went back to sleep until midday, trusting that the wind had shifted enough to blow us west without me feeling guilty. Overnight we had added another 16 juicy miles to the campaign and the same again lay between us and the much anticipated seventy degrees. I had been in the eighties for way too long now with all my toing and froing about the ocean and I was ready for the next run. Frankly, I was absolutely zonked and in need of a decent rest, mentally and physically.
My nutrition was suffering a bit with the all-too-bouncy weather – I hadn’t cooked for a few days, instead living off chocolate, snacks and nibbles. As much as I didn’t enjoy 99.9 per cent of the mush meals, I did enjoy the warmth and the savoury flavours. This section was proving to be the most challenging rowing of the journey, too, so the added energy and bulk would have been well received. Picking my way up and down mountains of confused surf beneath sunshine and squalls, I gritted my teeth as I pushed on. I had always been very alert and very cautious, but the rolling had cranked it up a gear – I now felt like a meerkat on sentry duty, always watching, listening and anticipating danger. There were a few moments where we took waves side on or broached on a downhill surf, but we managed to avoid a full capsize. Thank goodness – I was terrified of the same thing happening again, even though I knew that I could hold my breath and that she rolled very quickly. I had confidence in myself and in Dippers, but still the thought was there. I would hold my breath in anticipation of the slam each time a big one came or we lurched violently, often throwing back the oars and hurling myself over to the windward side to counteract the weight. Of course, if a wave wanted to roll us, we would roll – hurling or no. With a good few hundred thousand tonnes of water in a wave, my shrinking frame wouldn’t add much ballast to the counterbalance. Still, instinct had me leap up from my seat like that every single time. Although I was tired, I was still full of fight.
The wild stuff was worse at night. I would lie in my cabin, legs and arms braced out against the walls, sweating in my helmet and imagining what Dippers must look like from above. It was a sobering thought; she would be a little cork in the surf. Gulp. A bit of fear was good; it helped keep me on my toes but I had learned to be rational about it and keep it in boxes I could handle. There was no room for panic attacks or freaking out. It all had to be maintained within sensible limits and I had learned some tactics along the way. I hugged my albatross Alberto every night as I went to sleep, and spent many hours thumbing a rose quartz crystal that Mum had given me. It was cool and smooth, exactly the right size for my hand. I don’t believe in the powers some folks claim that crystals hold, but I found that the very action of rubbing it concentrated my mind and kept me calm. Mums can make things better even when they’re not there in person; it’s just one of those magic mum powers that they have, isn’t it?
Despite the freaky bits, the wind did have some east in it for a while and allowed a decent couple of days progress before it veered to the south and brought with it some terrifying monsters. Rolling up from Antarctica, these waves had been gaining energy and growing in height for thousands of miles. The meeting of giants like this was always messy, the two wave sets mixing themselves into confusion and kicking up lumps and foam and general havoc.
The waves thrown up by the wild weather often meant that I was soaking within a second of stepping outside the door, my cabin was always full of wet clothes, which then meant (and I don’t recommend that you imagine this) that Eau de Cabin wafted out whenever you opened the hatch, and threatened to choke you when inside for too long in one sitting. Talking of sitting, my bottom took a beating in the wet weather, and I played host to an array of raw and peaky saltwater boils and sores, pointed reminders from my behind that it was really ready for a rest and looking forward to the sunshine. It was like a small child repeatedly asking ‘Are we nearly there yet?’ all the way to the end of a car journey, annoying and painful, and well-nigh impossible to placate.
Soothing came in the form of sunny weather and an easing swell. After all the mad dropping off the backs of giants into the troughs below, the gentle swell made for a happier rower all round. I celebrated in my usual fashion by eating four days’ rations of Mars bars in one sitting – absolutely delicious, even if it was a dangerous plunder of dwindling stocks. I washed my hair and made water, danci
ng in the luscious sunshine and singing the happiest of songs. I was glad that life could still be made gloriously rosy again by the simplest of pleasures. Hanging my clothes out to dry was brilliant for morale and the air quality in the cabin; and cooking food for the first time in a week felt like a novelty. Re-stowing my clutter and tidying away the rubbish was the final piece of the treat and made me feel like I was back on top of everything again. Everything apart from the water maker, which was leaking. The seal was obviously disintegrating but without being able to take the whole thing apart I hadn’t been able to replace it, and so had innovated. Gaffa tape and petroleum jelly had saved the day and I now just topped it up, hoping that it would last until the other side.
Andy and Guy on board Flying Ferkins had recently overtaken me and were jostling with the other pair’s boat for pole position. It was interesting to see the effect of competition on their morale, something I didn’t have or need to be worried about. Having been behind the other boat, Southern Cross, for so long, the boys were now in contention for victory and became addicted to the thought. They had been through the crazy weather, just as I had, and were now putting in all the hours they could, just as I was. Unlike me, they were clean out of goodies by this stage, and I pitied them for it, albeit with a lot of bantering and teasing. It had long been a joke between us that they would chase me down and steal my chocolate supply. Having made friends with Andy and Guy, I wanted them to win their race now. Over the next few weeks I received regular updates from home about who had looped the loop, run south, pushed north or gone backwards or broken their toilet bucket. My blog followers joined theirs and vice versa, and they had their own little dialogues across cyberspace. Guy’s mum and family even called in to visit my mum at home one day and they emailed each other often, supporting each other and swapping stories from the ocean. I still thought that it was harder for everyone at home; while I might be scared at times, tired and broken, at least I knew what was going on, understood it, and could deal with it. At home, all the trials and storms of the sea were left to their imaginations, helped or hindered by our emails and little snatches of phone conversation from time to time. My poor mum. I salute her, nonetheless, especially on those phone calls when she knew I was frightened or hurt, yet still managed to make me smile. I know that she did sometimes get twitchy about it all and stay up late worrying or wondering, but for the most part I think she was so used to me being away for long periods of time that it wasn’t really any different from usual. I knew that she wanted me home now, however, and the more I wrote back with tales of heavy seas, the more she longed for that first hug.
I was surfing towards the ‘1,000 miles to go’ sign and Ric was excited to point out that on my web track at home, Australia had disappeared off the page and Mauritius was creeping into view quite nicely. ‘My little English rowing girl is coming home,’ he signed off one day, promptly causing me to burst into tears. They were the proud, happy, sad, exhausted tears of one very content rower. I was excited about finishing, but I was already sad about the prospect of leaving my little bubble of ocean life to go back to shore.
Two whales popping by for a hello on Day 90 confirmed this feeling of being at home on the waves, and as I watched them slide beneath the boat and investigate, I knew that I would be back. It was bewitching to be so close to such huge and gentle creatures, wondering what they might do next, guessing at where they might have come from and where they were headed. A purple sunset made for a serene backdrop, and I leaned back on the hatch and smiled back the tears at how wonderful my world was after three months at sea. One quarter of a year, alone and rowing. I was still chuffed to note that I had managed three months at sea without a face-to-face slapping by a flying fish. While I loved the little fellas, I preferred to watch them sprinting over the waves from afar and was less keen on finding them splatted onto the deck of the boat. The learners lost a few in the aerial displays and I generally provided burial services to one or more each day. Lucky, then, for the little dude who leapt out of the water onto my lap, from where I swept him back over the side and onwards to safety and new life. Or perhaps the jaws of a bigger fish. It was all part of life and death on the high seas and after three months out there, I was getting the hang of it all.
So I signed out from June, and rowed on towards my first hundred days at sea, the final 1,000 miles to run. Tired, but still fighting. Scared, but still smiling.
Chapter 29
The 100 Club
‘When alone and out in nature, time does not exist.
Nor does the future’
Thor Heyerdahl
Before the ocean I didn’t count days; I don’t think that many of us do, unless of course you’re six years old and counting the sleeps until Christmas. After Dad died I counted weeks and then months in my bid to claw my way towards healing. I counted terms at school and university, but never had I been so fixated on days. At sea I chalked off each one with a marker pen on my cabin wall and scribbled mementoes of important days or sights. Day numbers were my reference. Not because I wanted to get them out of the way necessarily, but because I needed to know how much food I had as I progressed across the ocean and as a record. Mostly I had no idea whether it was Monday or Saturday – my days had quickly become one and the same and names had no relevance. But the numbers were important. They were badges of honour and checkpoints of the journey, and afterwards would be anecdotes in themselves.
Day 100 was a pinnacle I had thought about for a long while, and as I rowed closer and closer it rose up in the foreground, like the summit of a mountain coming in to view, teasing me and congratulating me in equal measure. To join The 100 Club was just as momentous as I had expected in all of my wondering and anticipating. I had set aside a bag of Minstrels for the occasion and had repeatedly battled with myself to save them; you know by now how useless I am at saving chocolate. Several of my blog followers knew also and promised me lots on my return. They understood that this was a big deal for me; saving chocolate just wasn’t a done thing on board Dippers. The day turned out to be full of treats, some edible and others not.
I started the morning off with my usual breakfast and dose of rowing, before turning my attention to the Minstrels. I am proud to say that the blog inspired a global chocolate fest; Mum posted descriptions of Minstrels for foreign readers and even tracked down a website where you could order them for international delivery. As I sat reading my emails that morning, I ate the whole bag, by the handful, all in one sitting.
I also interviewed with BBC East Midlands Today, in a live session where Mum and Matthew were filmed at home. Staged and a bit stilted it might have been, as you can imagine, but it was great to touch base as always, and to pick Mum’s brains about painkillers. After a tough week of rowing mostly with just my left arm and the rudder hard over (which slows the boat down), my back was not enjoying life. In fact, I was in agony and finding it difficult to row at all. I was debating whether or not to take painkillers to silence it. I decided not to – I didn’t want to risk clouding my judgement.
The expedition website also received a hit of comments that day, a reminder that this was more than just my journey; this was a huge team effort. Without them, there would have been no growing total for Arthritis Care, now nearly £10,000, and I wouldn’t have had the moral support I did. The messages meant a lot to me and often made me laugh. I knew I could rely on people to provide answers to questions or conundrums on all sorts of subjects. One chap from across the Atlantic, Barry, copied and pasted scores of poems for Mum to forward on for me to learn and another, Robert, had volunteered various brilliant and nerdy services to the website maintenance. This was pure, glowing kindness and it was becoming clear that there really wasn’t a lot of room on the boat any more, for I was surrounded by so many souls across the planet, all living and breathing the adventure. It was a privilege to share and an honour to have them on board.
Hello Sarah, I’ve been following your epic voyage across the high seas over the last 100 days.
What an achievement. You really are amazing; so strong, so courageous, so determined. I often think of you and remember sitting together on the bow of Silurian. It was a beautiful Hebridean summer evening, glassy calm seas, porpoises for company and the overwhelming mountains of Skye towering above, glowing pink as the sun set behind us. I knew there was nothing I could say or do to help the pain of losing your dad. But I knew that you would succeed in turning this bitter experience into something positive and full of energy. Thanks for taking us all with you. My warmest regards and respect, Laura.
One of my most supportive and interactive sponsors, Susie Hewson of Natracare, also put up a lovely note:
I bet there are few of us without a teardrop after Ricardo’s amazing tribute to you, Sarah. What a truly wonderful memorial from a daughter to her father this challenge is. We have all sat in that boat with you emotionally over the journey thanks to your blogs and phone calls and I for one want to thank you for that opportunity. I look forward to the next instalments, Susie
And here is that very blog from Ric, written especially for the occasion. It made me cry and it made me smile, and here’s why:
On my side of the world the voyage clock has just reached the almost surreal 100 day mark. Wow. I mean, seriously wow! What were you doing 100 days ago? What have you done since? How my times have you gone shopping, walked in the park or enjoyed a bike ride through town without a care in the world? How many miles have you driven or flown? Isn’t it just great to put your feet up with the weekend paper, and just sit back and switch off for a while? Cup of tea anyone? Or a cool fresh orange juice from the fridge? Hmmm… delicious.