Rowing After the White Whale

by James Adair

  ROWING AFTER THE WHITE WHALE

  This edition first published in Great Britain in 2013 by

  Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd

  West Newington House

  10 Newington Road

  Edinburgh

  EH9 1QS

  www.polygonbooks.co.uk

  ISBN: 978 1 84697 250 8

  eBook ISBN: 978 0 85790 599 4

  Copyright © James Adair, 2013

  Endpaper map is adapted from an original depicting the ‘New Island’ by Lee Mothes.

  Section illustrations © Tory Adair, 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  The moral right of James Adair to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

  Typeset in Great Britain by Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire

  Printed and bound by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

  For Ben, thank you for sharing the adventure

  And for Tory, thank you for believing me

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part One: The Build-up

  1. Beginnings

  2. Interim

  3. Mixed Motives

  4. Monomania

  5. A Bosom Friend: Ben Stenning

  6. Preparations

  7. ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’

  8. A Brief Note on the Indian Ocean Rowing Statistics

  9. The Shortest Possible Description of the Lead-up to Our Departure, Including a Brief Portrait of the Incomparable Simon Chalk

  10. Australia

  11. The Shelf

  Part Two: All at Sea

  12. The First Day

  13. At the Mercy of the Shelf

  14. Downing Tools

  15. The Looming Seas

  16. The Vortex

  17. Surf’s Up!

  18. ‘Water’

  19. On Our Way

  20. Swim

  21. Another Rower

  22. On the Personalities Drawn to Ocean Rowing

  23. Timothy and the Filofax

  24. The First Becalming

  25. Fish

  26. Storm

  27. Catch 22

  28. A Brief History of Ocean Rowing

  29. The Thieving Dorado

  30. Small Aliens from the Deep

  31. The One Thousand Mile Mark

  32. The Great Becalming

  33. Gyres

  34. Sea Stars

  35. ‘If’

  36. Whale!

  37. Our Birds

  38. Shark!

  39. Drier than Being Dry

  40. The Moon

  41. Halfway Point in the Sea of Rainbows

  42. Moby Dick

  43. Passing Ships

  44. Splendid Isolation

  45. Reveries

  46. The Fire Ship

  47. The Great Independence Day Wave

  48. From Bad to Worse

  49. The Dark Boat

  50. Recovering Under a Bright Sun

  51. ‘The Most Wondrous Phenomenon’

  52. On the Cultural and Natural History of the Squid

  53. Para Anchor

  54. Food, Glorious Food

  55. Pain

  56. One Hundred Days at Sea

  57. Longest at Sea

  58. The Silent Sea

  59. The Beginning of the End

  60. Second Storm

  61. Pilot Whales

  62. Lunar Rainbow

  63. Nearing

  Part Three: The Last Day

  64. False Start

  65. The Battle of Grand Port

  66. The Final Furlong

  67. Decisions

  68. The Swim

  69. The Reef

  70. Rescue and Reunion

  Afterword

  Mauritius

  Apologia

  Meeting a Legend

  On the Positive Benefits of a Brush with Death

  A Lost World

  The Final Swim

  Acknowledgements

  Bibliography

  Prologue

  17.15, 14 August 2011 (Day 116)

  Now we’re going to die, I thought as the wall of white water came thundering towards us. My heart thumped as my body started furiously pumping adrenaline in anticipation of the impact.

  For a moment the sea in front of the wave looked still and pure, so peaceful and blue in contrast with the white rolling mass that was now seconds away. But already the flat in front of the wave was being disturbed and soiled by spitting shards of tumbling white water. The noise grew suddenly louder, from a rumbling hiss to a raging thunder as the turmoil of water reached us.

  Now we really are, actually, definitely, after all of this, after everything, going to die, I thought. Typical. As for words, the only one I could manage in time, the only one that seemed appropriate, was: ‘Shit!’

  I took a deep breath.

  The wave hit us with a violent, sickening crash and everything went black.

  PART ONE

  The Build-up

  1 Beginnings

  ‘Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul . . . and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off – then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.’

  Herman Melville, Moby Dick

  It’s no surprise that Ben and I decided to row an ocean when you consider our dissolute characters and unremarkable circumstances during the dark November of 2004. We had graduated from the University of St Andrews six months before and were struggling to readjust to city life. After four years of fun and games we had given up the freedom and fresh air of Scotland for the trudging London commute and a flat in which we, and the mice we lived with, were regularly plunged into darkness as the pay-as-you-go electricity ran out yet again. I had been talked into doing a law course, which I wasn’t enjoying, but Ben had suffered a worse fate. He was selling fully integrated accounting software in Lewisham. It’s not hard to see why we started dreaming of a big adventure and, as complete ocean novices, we settled on rowing the Pacific, which is of course the biggest of all the oceans.

  The Pacific – the very word seemed to summon up the wide expanse of ocean, the equatorial sun beating down on the two of us hauling in another massive tuna for lunch. Yes, the daydreams were unrealistic but they were alluring and they had us hooked. Every time I rode the 59 bus or the tube, crammed in, standing again, wedged between ashen-faced salary man and morbidly obese tourist, accompanied by the sound of an aggressive track-suited mother chiding her toddler or the ramblings of some unwashed nutter; every time my mind would drift off to sea, to a place where you couldn’t see another human being in any direction. Space, solitude and silence, these were the things I craved – and, of course, a massive skive off work. Back in our flat we’d discuss the mad scheme over shepherd’s pie and red wine.

  ‘We really have to do the rowing, no matter what.’

  ‘Yeah, definitely.’

  ‘I’m not kidding Ben, we have to get out there as soon as we can.’

  ‘I’m ready now.’

  ‘No but really, we should really do it.’

  ‘St
op worrying Adair, we both know when we get out there I’ll end up doing all the rowing.’

  ‘Will you be bringing those mustard coloured corduroys of yours?’

  ‘Absolutely, will you be bringing your riding boots?’

  ‘There’s really nothing funny about my riding boots, they have a specific purpose, what’s the purpose of your mustard coloured corduroys?’

  ‘Primarily to keep me warm but their secondary purpose is to make me look good, very good.’

  ‘Every weekend you look sillier than the last, also you’re beginning to look quite, how do I put this delicately, fat.’

  ‘I have no time to eat properly, you can’t imagine what sort of demands selling fully integrated accounting software packages can put on a man’s body, they say most people burn out by the time they hit twenty five.’

  ‘Well, if we run out of food when we’re in the middle of the ocean I think it’s quite clear who’ll be eating who.’

  ‘Yes, in that scenario I will be over-powering and eating you.’

  ‘In which case you’ll just have eaten one of your two friends.’

  ‘Let’s face it, if we go missing at sea very few people are going to notice we’re gone.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  Soon our nightly chats became more serious, we would row the Pacific, it wasn’t just empty chat, we had to row the Pacific, or it would become another dream that slowly slips away. We knew that a lot of people had rowed the Atlantic, on the well-travelled route from the Canaries to the Caribbean, but we wanted to do something different, something bigger, newer, more dangerous. And so we plumped for the Pacific. Our casual research showed that one man had rowed the South Pacific solo without stopping and two pairs had done it in legs. Fine, we would be the first pair to row the South Pacific without stopping.

  2 Interim

  ‘Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.’

  Ernest Hemingway

  In 2005 we left London and went our separate ways. Ben made the logical step from fully integrated accounting software salesman in Lewisham to logistics and freight forwarding manager in Uganda (having grown up in Kenya, he was basically going home). I eventually got a job in journalism as editor of the Alderney Journal, probably the smallest paid-for newspaper in the world, serving a mere two thousand souls on the island of Alderney in the English Channel. The first thing I did on receiving my first pay cheque in Alderney was to set up a joint bank account so that we could start saving towards the row. It was the first step in making the dream a reality and it felt great. We were actually going to do it. Something was happening! The years went by. Ben moved to the Sudan and lived in a container while I moved back to London and became a shipbroker. More years went by. At this stage we were in what could be called the comedy planning phase; for example, we would exchange emails wondering if it was practical to take Ben’s Ugandan houseboy, ‘Mr Ben’, to sea. A sample email from Ben at this time goes: ‘Whatever happens . . . death, embarrassment, insanity . . . we must never sink to such lows as wearing Lycra.’

  As the years went by we continued to save and to try to agree a date for Ben to come back to the UK so we could prepare for the row. Time passed and other people rowed oceans. One pair who finished the Atlantic in 2006 even had the same names as us. After Ben Fogle and James Cracknell did the Atlantic suddenly everyone knew about ocean rowing. ‘Weren’t you talking about doing that?’ people asked. More time passed and people stopped thinking that we were serious (if they ever had done). I started to become deeply frustrated. Ben moved to Ghana. Still nothing happened, but we continued to say to anyone who would listen that we would definitely do it. People now smiled indulgently in the same way they do if they hear someone is writing a book or becoming an actor.

  By the summer of 2009 Ben and I had agreed that he would come back at Christmas with a view to setting off the following June. I needed time to train – time that my hours at HSBC wouldn’t allow, so I decided to resign. This might seem strange, but my greatest fear was that it wouldn’t happen, that it would simply be another idle dream. I felt that by taking the drastic step of leaving work it would somehow ensure that the row actually happened. My boss, Mark, and the CEO, Chris, were incredibly supportive and said that if I started earlier in the morning I could leave earlier to go to the gym. After all, they said, anything could happen: I could get injured or my friend could pull out. I assured them that the project was one hundred per cent, agreed to stay and started my new training routine the next day. Then in the autumn Ben pulled out. His girlfriend, Carole, had moved out to Africa and he said he couldn’t leave her now for what could potentially be ten months at sea. I was devastated. I couldn’t accept that the adventure wouldn’t happen after years of saving, dreaming and telling everyone I knew about it, including, now, my employers. I understood Ben’s reasons, but I felt I would have to go on and do the row somehow, even if it meant going alone, because it had taken on such significance to me over the years.

  3 Mixed Motives

  ‘When he received the stroke that tore him, he probably felt the agonising bodily laceration, but nothing more. Yet, when by this collision forced to turn towards home, and for long months of days and weeks, Ahab and anguish lay stretched together in one hammock . . . then it was, that his torn body and gashed soul bled into one another.’

  Herman Melville, Moby Dick

  ‘Why?’ is the most frequent question put to the would-be ocean rower. For me, the original inspiration was to have a wild and fun adventure, a sort of glorified fishing trip. Unrealistic perhaps, but this is what sparked my imagination. However, the motivation to actually do it, to actually go through with it despite the obvious risks to life and limb came from something else, something entirely different.

  At the age of fourteen I collapsed, breathless, while playing football. Within twenty-four hours I was diagnosed with the rare illness, Guillain-Barre syndrome, rushed to London in an ambulance and hooked up to a life-support machine. When I came round a week later I could not see, breathe, speak, or move a muscle – I was totally paralysed. It was all hugely inconvenient. My immune system had mutinied, mistakenly attacking and destroying the motor nerves, which send messages through the body; although it did the decent thing of leaving the sensory nerves intact so I could feel the pain. There were complications and some close calls, but in the end I survived. The nerves started regrowing slowly, so that after a month I could breathe and see once more, after four months I could leave hospital in a wheelchair and six months later I was learning to walk again. That might have been the end of that – with six months of pain in Tooting being a good experience for anyone, especially someone who’d grown up in a Home Counties bubble. However, the nerves stopped growing and I was left, still am left I should say, with paralysed feet. The fuckers just don’t work. It was a brutal memento, especially during my teenage years when all I really wanted to do was play competitive sport and not have to explain myself every time I met someone new.

  Anyway, time passed, as it always does, and to anyone who met me it perhaps seemed like a small thing; to walk with a slight limp is no big deal when compared with the horrors and depredations endured by others around the world. With various foot supports I made wholehearted but usually comedic attempts to play football, hockey, cricket, tennis, squash, to ride horses, scuba dive, hike, ski and all the rest of it. It could be frustrating, but I insisted on pushing myself, on getting a lot out of life. But by my mid-twenties all this effort had buggered my knees, and I was able to do less and less. Simultaneously I found myself becoming more sensitive to innocent comments from people who didn’t know me. The reason I took the lift down was to preserve my knees, but their thoughtless comments left me railing: how dare they suggest I was lazy, if only they knew how much effort it takes to walk with paralysed feet. While Tory and I were on a riding safari in Kenya, our guide remarked that, ‘James is so lame that if he was a horse he would be put out to pasture.�
� I was out of earshot at the time but when Tory told me later, I was livid, despite knowing that if I was a horse I would have been shot fourteen years previously. If people wanted to judge me on their own terms, as a totally able-bodied person, then fine, I would do something that most of them would never dare. When I offered to resign in the summer of 2009, my then boss, Mark, asked perceptively if I was doing it to prove a point. He was the first person to ask me this and I’d never thought about it explicitly, but after a second or two I answered, ‘Yes’, because even then I was completely obsessed about proving that I could do it. It had become a point of pride and there’s nothing more dangerous or blind than pride.

  4 Monomania

  ‘Considering that with two legs man is but a hobbling wight in all times of danger; considering that the pursuit of whales is always under great and extraordinary difficulties; that every individual moment, indeed, then comprises a peril; under these circumstances is it wise for any maimed man to enter a whale-boat in the hunt?’

  Herman Melville, Moby Dick

  The last word on monomania and obsession goes, of course, to Captain Ahab. He is the central character in Melville’s whaling classic, Moby Dick. The novel is ostensibly an account of a whaling voyage, although Melville includes many meandering factual deviations on whaling, whales and the sea. Ahab is the captain of the ship and is obsessed with avenging himself on Moby Dick, a white sperm whale that bit off his leg on a previous trip. Ahab ignores the fact that he only has one leg and is unsympathetic to the feelings and lives of others, including his chief mate, Starbuck, who warns him, to no avail, against his headlong pursuit of the white whale. As a model of selfish, relentless focus and unflinching disregard for personal safety, Ahab became a kind of hero to me. It is Ahab’s disability which drives him on and I, like the narrator of the book and others before me, was strangely drawn to this. As he says: ‘A wild, mystical, sympathetic feeling was in me; Ahab’s quenchless feud seemed mine.’ Okay, Ahab ends up dead along with all of the crew, bar the narrator, and the white whale survives, but you have to admire the old man’s persistence.