by Sarah Outen
Bed perhaps instead; you’ve had a tough, long day. Maybe just catch a quick hot shower first though. You feel the endless supply of water caress your clean hair and skin as you unwind with your eyes closed, enjoying the easy therapy. You lean with one hand against the wall and exhale. The tapping sound of water falling off your tired shoulders adds to the moment and you simply go with it, relaxing every muscle of your body. You long for the warm, soft bed that awaits and dry off with a new towel, smiling at the flowery smell of clean linen. You feel as good as new. Well, almost. A few hours’ sleep will fix that and you know it, too. As the bed embraces your shell, your soul becomes lighter and you let yourself fall into a deep, restoring sleep. Everything around you is still. Silence is a luxury you take for granted. Your day has come to an end now and you take only a few seconds to look within, perhaps in prayer, before you are absorbed into the magic world of dreams and free emotions. Hours of sleep await; safe, dry, comfortable. This is you; your life. Probably every day, including the past 100 days, whilst Sarah Outen was at sea. Rowing. Rowing. Rowing…
Sarah, my little English rowing girl, I am so incredibly proud of you, as are all your friends, family and global fans. You are reaching many with your beautiful life journey and marine adventure. You are a sea animal now, a real beast of the oceans just like I said you would be. I know you are not really counting the days any more. You haven’t been for weeks and weeks. Time doesn’t really matter where you are. It’s all about progress, effort, survival, harmony. One stroke at a time. What a lesson; one that we will never forget.
You’ve had it tough girl. The weather was not kind to you for more days than you deserve. But this is the home run now. You are in the final weather sector of your voyage and this high pressure system is set to look after you until your proud bow pushes into the soft white sands of the paradise island. Thanks for your fantastic effort, especially in the last month. You have been consistent with your discipline and you have made such good progress, even with far from ideal weather. The last few days have been particularly hard. I don’t know how you managed to keep that boat moving so close to west with the wind not quite right. But you did it and you are now in the right place to eat up some good miles.
I believe the next challenge will soon be in your heart, as you begin to realise that this amazing blue world will be left behind. You will have to find a new strength to face the real world again and so many new and overwhelming emotions. We are all here for you, Sarah. Ready to welcome you home with a big loving hug.
See you soon, OK?
Your mate,
Ricardo
He had become an indispensable friend, helping me with more than just the weather across the ocean. He understood what it meant to me to be out there at one with the wild, making such an intense journey. He knew that part of me didn’t want to come home and that stepping off Dippers would be the end of an era. I would miss him too; we were mates now and had crossed that ocean together.
We still had some way to go, however, and I knew that the final run in to Mauritius would be challenging, dangerous and probably more than a little bit scary. When it came to the route, Ric was my navigator and right-hand man. He had my life in his hands.
Chapter 30
Keep it Together
‘When you have completed 95 per cent of
the journey, you are only halfway there’
Japanese proverb
Pain is an interesting concept. It is universally experienced, but it is relative to each of us and, emotionally and physically, has the capacity to break us and ruin lives. I had seen it with Dad. Out on the ocean my experience of it took on a whole new meaning and I was hurting in ways that you can never understand until you have been there and forced your body into such physical endurance. My body didn’t always want to do what I told it, and for weeks up to this point I had aches and pains and sores from top to toe. Even breathing hurt me now, having somehow strained the muscles in my chest while pulling Bob in a few days before. My back was a wasteland of solid knots, while my hands groaned constantly for rest and an ice bath, neither of which I could supply. Their default position was clawed and increasingly swollen, making rowing hugely uncomfortable at times. Once again, I saluted my Dad for his stoicism over all those years, coping with pain 24/7. Mine wasn’t a patch on his and the other millions of arthritis sufferers around the world. So I just gritted my teeth and cracked on.
I had to – there were still 700 miles between Mauritius and me on the chart, and I was already 60 miles north of the island’s latitude. With the prevailing wind a south-easterly, there was a very real worry that I might get blown too far north and not make it back down again. This would mean flying straight past Mauritius and into the open ocean to the north. It had happened to two previous solo crews to row the Indian, who had both gone too far north and were towed in to the island of Rodrigues a few hundred miles to the east of Mauritius. When Ric told me that he was worried about this happening to me, my heart sank at the thought of a bill and the collapse of my bank account. I whipped back an email immediately asking him if he was serious; I knew him well enough by now to know he sometimes said things for effect. Thankfully, this was one of those times, and he had been joking. While it had been a concern previously, he was now confident that if the weather did what he predicted and I was able to push south 20 miles in the next six days to make the most of the wind below me, then we could make it and row into that white sandy beach as planned.
We called it a beach but it was more of a jetty, apparently, with a bit of sand off to one side. Not that I had seen it or indeed any photographs of it. A recce trip to the island beforehand would have been way out of my budget. I had only my laminated chart of the island to peruse, which up until now had been stored under my beanbag, collecting crumbs. Often in storms, when I was bored or scared and in need of distraction, I had slipped it out to study my approach and dream of the finish, wondering at what point I might see my first bit of green and spot the faint shadow of land tickling the horizon. Now that there was more of the journey behind me than ahead, my tummy leaped in excited anticipation each time I thought of it. There was a bit of fear leaping in there, too, as Mauritius is surrounded by a coral reef, with limited options for getting through it. Ric and I had decided that the east coast would provide the best chance of me making it in under my own power. The west coast might be calmer, but to swing underneath the island and then row back into it would be tough and dangerous, and if I skirted up north then I risked missing the island completely by being blown out to sea and needing a tow. It was a tough call, but we decided that Mahébourg Bay on the east coat would be my best chance of a safe landing.
One of my regular email correspondents and advisers in all of this was Marcel, a Mauritian chap linked to the government, who had offered his services many months before, promising hospitality and support. Escort boats, welcoming parties, helicopters for the media, accommodation and all sorts – there wasn’t anything he couldn’t sort out and I was grateful and relieved to have his enthusiasm at our disposal.
I wasn’t counting my chickens, though; the sea was still feisty. As if to remind me of this, a huge wind system blew up from the south and pushed me into the cabin for two days, as I deployed Bob to hold our ground while the waves grew and grew to monster heights, making rowing impossible and unsafe. The rest probably did my battered body some good, although I always found it frustrating not to be out rowing. Sally Kettle aptly commented that the only thing worse than rowing is not rowing and she was right. The second day of my incarceration was hot and stuffy as the sun had shone down all day and I had rarely been outside. My body ached after spending most of it braced across the cabin and my head throbbed after twenty-four hours wearing my helmet. I had dozed in and out of fitful sleep for hours and, as it grew dark I took it off, believing the seas were settling a little bit and telling myself that I didn’t need it on anyway. Sleep came again and carried me off gently to somewhere much calmer. The next thing I
knew, I was lying on the roof of the cabin, where I had been thrown with a thud a moment earlier. I yelped as we rested the wrong way up for a second and then again as I landed back on my bed, underneath a bag of food, my foot walloped by the mini-suitcase which housed all of my camera gear. The realisation that we had just rolled was perhaps even worse than the rolling itself and I whimpered out loud, shocked that it had happened, scared that it would happen again and suddenly feeling very tiny and insignificant, humbled by the might of the sea.
Still rubbing my head, I blogged: ‘The past forty hours have reminded me of how far we have to go still. It’s not the “home strait” until I see my landing spot on the jetty – it’s just closer to Mauritius than it is to Australia.’
Time ticked by very slowly that night – my heart racing, my body shaking and my mind willing the wind to drop off and calm down.
The wind shifted on Day 103 to something more rowable, although the waves were still imposing. With the boat plunging into huge hills of water and waves crashing into her, it took me over an hour to heave Bob out of the water, pack him away and tidy Dippers again. The salt stung my sores as I worked and I sang and whooped, straining at the effort, keen to get back to the oars. After all, I had an island waiting for me.
We surfed on under a dazzling sky, me with the biggest smile I’d had on my face for a long time. It was wet and wild but heaps of fun; I felt deeply content, but with twinges of sadness around the edges at the thought of renouncing my sea creature habits and saying cheerio to my faithful Tweedles in the not too distant future. To think of life without Dippers was unthinkable; we were a team now and had kept each other safe through the highs and lows of the ocean. With debt to clear I knew I couldn’t keep her, but I promised that I would find her another loving, singing and dancing fruit loop to take her adventuring again.
Most people probably think that one day on the ocean is indistinguishable from the next, but for me they weren’t. My days became significant for various things: milestones, losses to the deep, phone calls home, albatross visits. The morning of Day 111, I remember clearly. I was up and rowing before the sun had even contemplated its arrival. Cloud fairies had been out decorating the sky with fleece the night before and so as the colours worked their magic across the fluffy weft and warp, I was treated to a gorgeous display above and below as the sea turned through shades of pink grapefruit, rose and orange. Radio 4 out-of-date podcasts from Melvyn Bragg and Sandi Toksvig alongside too-thick porridge under a burnished sky made for a very contented, if surreal, start to the morning.
With each day that passed I felt more and more like a runner striding out towards the bell which would signal the remaining loop of the track. For me, it was about to herald in the final 500 miles to the island. Ric prophesised a week of perfect, idyllic weather ahead, and I just hoped that he was right and there were no more funny tricks waiting to blow us off course. While I loved dear ole Bob, it would be nice if he stayed put until the end now. I felt I was well on the way to earning my first salty stripe of an ocean crossing and further complications wouldn’t be missed too sorely. The same can be said for the Unchocolate Age – I knew it was coming but hoped that it wasn’t going to happen too soon. From now on, any chocolate was a clinger-on from a doomed species, and would soon be condemned to memory as the stores were nearly empty.
I was sorry to note a dwindling of my fishycade as we approached the island. I was hopeful that the shallower waters and island topography would kick up some interesting wildlife as I still needed to see a shark and a turtle before I landed. They had been up in the top five of my wish list alongside the albatrosses and the whales since the start. Unlike the latter, they still had no tallies beside them.
I decided to surf under the stars again that night. Luminescent plankton swirled in the black water like a child with sparklers and the Milky Way stretched above in a curving white bow. I swear you could get tipsy on such a delicious, awesome sight.
In spite of the wiggles, wobbles and frustrations, I was madly in love with the ocean and all that it offered me. Apart from cargo ships, that is, because they represented my best chance of an early end to my journey and my life. During the voyage I had spent many a night up in the wee hours putting calls out on the VHF, urging captains not to squash me, and trying to figure out their direction and course. A few hundred miles out of Mauritius on Day 118, as I was doing my washing, I noticed a ship rising and falling across the horizon towards the open ocean. Excitement! It looked like we might be close enough to talk. Hoping for a friendly chat, I put out a couple of calls over the VHF and was very pleased when the captain replied to say that yes, he could see me and no, he wouldn’t squash me. I told him that he was the first ship I had spoken to in months but as soon as I had finished my sentence he told me that he was en route to China and went silent, as if it was a completely normal thing to speak to lone women out at sea in small rowing boats. I was taken aback and inwardly disappointed – I had a whole stream of questions to fire at him and things to find out, and he had just cut off my only opportunity for a social chat. Nonetheless, I stared after him as he powered off to the east, grinning inanely at the radio chat with only my second ship since leaving Australia – the rest either hadn’t heard me, hadn’t seen me or couldn’t be bothered.
With land just around the corner, the shipping traffic was increasing. So, too, were the birds – each morning a variety of terns would fly out to sea, off fishing for the day, before squawking home at sundown. Sadly, there was more litter about as well. I had seen at least one piece of litter for every day that I was at sea – it made me feel quite sick and sad to scale it up and imagine the enormity of the problem. People say we should call our world Planet Ocean, not Planet Earth, because it is 70 per cent water and only a smattering of land. But in the not too distant future, I reckon we might want to rethink and call it Planet Plastic, such is the volume of plastic in our oceans.
Chapter 31
The Final Countdown
‘The port, well worth the cruise, is near;
and every wave is charmed’
Ralph Waldo Emerson
As the miles dwindled, my excitement levels rose and rose while the Tweedle count got lower and lower. For a few days I tried to coax the final solitary stripy follower with bits of food, until the morning of Day 118 I found that he, too, had deserted. Whether he had succumbed to the food chain or joined another caravan of fish or boat on some other journey I didn’t know, though I was glad to have had his and the other Tweedles’ company. It was another reminder that land was about to become a reality, and the Tweedles had obviously picked up on the signals and headed back out to sea.
There were now just 300 miles stood between Mauritius and me. This was great for my morale, until I found out that Mum could only arrive into Mauritius on 8 August at the earliest and so at my current rate would miss my arrival, estimated at 3 August. To put out to sea and worry her senseless for all those months, just to land up ashore before she had even left the UK was just not cricket, was it? I thought about deploying Bob to slow down and wait around a while, though thankfully I was talked out of it by Adrian and various others with ocean rowing experience – they all just wanted me in safe and sound now.
Not least Ric. At 250 miles to go, he was convinced that the wind was going to pick up and turbo me in, threatening to whisk me north of the island. ‘Let’s land this baby!’ he wrote, the perfect catalyst for a quick cry on my part. I was swinging between excitement, satisfaction, surprise and sadness at the approaching finish, now just five to seven days away. One minute I would be laughing and the next I would be crying, but either way I was smiling inside, even if I couldn’t quite comprehend all that I had come through and all that lay ahead. The distance and dimensions alone still baffled me.
With such a short distance left to row I had cut my rest and sleep time down to the bare minimum. That line from Kipling’s poem ‘If’ about pushing your heart and nerve and sinew to serve their turn long after they
are gone was a squealy reality now. I was more worn out than I had ever been, muscles weary and sores stinging; I was running on adrenaline. Meanwhile I dreamed of roast beef and knew it wasn’t too far away. The British Ambassador to Mauritius had already offered to cook me a meal of my choice when I arrived, and even said there was horseradish to be found from secret supplies.
Ric was still nervous about the final stage, with winds forecast to blow in and blast me to the very end. Under his instructions to ‘defend my course’ I dived south of west so as to drop beneath the island. I was so close but there was still a lot that could happen, which is why I was so keen that Ric should be in Mauritius to help with the landing. He had to be there. So I was gutted to take the phone call saying that he wouldn’t be able to make it because the flights were too expensive at this late stage. My bank account had already been emptied by other costs so I couldn’t help out either. We agreed it would be impossible. I returned dejectedly to my oars to vent some rage.
Then I had an idea. My blog followers loved Ricardo and had been so supportive up to now. I figured that it would be worth a shot, to ask if they might be willing to help fly him out to me. I posted a quick blog and went back to the oars. When I nipped inside to check the sat phone shortly after I saw a note from Adrian: ‘JIM FROM MACTRA SPONSORED £300 FOR RICS FLIGHT.’ Susie from Natracare was next, confirming her brilliance as my top sponsor, and my friend Geoff Holt came in too with a really generous gift as I knew he was saving towards his own big expedition. Within the hour we had cleared the sum we needed and even had a bit extra. Once again, I was dumbfounded and humbled by everyone’s generosity; it was as much as I could do to stop myself from crying as I rang Ricardo back with the news. The contrast between that and our last call was massive; this time he squawked with delight. A day later he would be on the paradise island, welcomed into a beautiful luxury apartment on the Anahita resort that a friend of a friend had offered. Through the help and support of all these wonderful folk from around the world, it was all coming together.