by James Adair
The most incredible feature of the cephalopods, though, is their intelligence. With their big, watchful eyes, squid, octopus and cuttlefish have intrigued scientists with their high levels of problem-solving and learning skills, with some even suggesting instances of ‘tool use’.
The concept of intelligence in other animals is, of course, a difficult one but curiosity is normally agreed to be one of its central facets. Curiosity is the predator’s friend, just as it is the survivor’s. If you want to last for more than a 100 million years then you have to be either very lucky or willing to try new things.
Why had the giant squid appeared right next to us on that night of Day 83? Our guess was that they probably migrate to shallow water near the surface every night along with other deep-dwelling life forms. Perhaps the darkness of the starless and moonless night had caused the squid to overshoot. But right next to us? A 24-foot boat surrounded by the immensity of the ocean? It was disconcerting to think that we might be rowing over such an intelligent and totally alien predator. Night swimming was now definitely off. More than anything I felt a kind of humble euphoria. We had seen an extraordinarily rare and mysterious sight. As Melville has one of his characters say, ‘The great live squid, which, they say, few whale-ships ever beheld, and returned to their ports to tell of.’
53 Para Anchor
‘Mark, how when sailors in a dead calm bathe in the open sea – mark how closely they hug their ship and only coast along her sides.’
Herman Melville, Moby Dick
At 4.30 a.m. the wind turned against us and we were forced to put the parachute anchor in to prevent ourselves being blown backwards. With the navigation light and the torches we managed to deploy it in the pitch black and then went to sleep, annoyed at the hampering westerlies but relieved at the chance for a rest.
When we emerged later that morning the cloud cover had finally gone, burnt off by the sun. The same sea seemed so different now; where it had been a dull grey under the cloud it was now a vibrant blue with shafts of light illuminating the deep azure.
‘I’m going swimming,’ I said.
‘Okay, I’ll keep a lookout.’
‘A lookout for what?’
‘Sharks.’
‘Please, do you have to mention sharks when I’m about to go swimming?’
‘Sharks, killer whales, giant squid, they’re everywhere.’
Ben was still off the swimming, believing, probably correctly, that it made his salt sores worse. I couldn’t resist, so I jumped in wearing the mask and with the camera on a head strap. As the bubbles dispersed I found myself staring face to face with a huge dorado. Incredible. It had the large forehead and bulldog features of a male and he swam right up to my face. For a second I panicked. He’s going to bite my face off, I thought. Or worse, he’ll dart down and bite something else off! But there he hovered, suspended right in front of my face, peering inquisitively at me. As I swam to the stern I saw five other dorado cruising around us at different depths. I could only see two pilot fish, though. Perhaps the others had been eaten or, bored by swimming so slowly, had mutinied to join some passing whale.
I worked away at the barnacles, which once again had spread to cover most of our hull. I carefully avoided the suckerfish that was still fastened to the boat, but there was no sign of the crab. Where has he gone? I asked myself and then, more worryingly, wondered if I was starting to consider crabs and fish as friends.
‘Whale!’ shouted Ben from the deck. I ducked under, scanning the blue with the camera but could see nothing as they were too far from the boat.
Later that afternoon I was in the cabin writing my journal when I heard Ben calling. He had just noticed that the retrieval line of the para anchor had come undone and was floating off. I had loosened the line because it was tugging and thus making the parachute collapse. Clearly I hadn’t then done it up properly and now that the wind and sea had picked up the line had been pulled free and was floating off. I could see the orange retrieval line drifting away. It was now about forty metres from the boat.
‘I’ll swim for it,’ I said, wanting to make up for not having done the knot properly but also confident that I’d get there and back – after all, I have my 100 metres badge.
‘No way, it’s too dangerous,’ said Ben.
‘It’s fine; it’s really not that far.’
‘There’s no way you’re swimming that far from the boat. Anything could be out there; sharks, anything.’
‘But if we don’t get the retrieval line there’ll be no way of getting the para anchor back in; we’ll have to cut the rope and lose it.’
‘We’ll just pull it back in.’
‘We won’t be pulling it back in, it’s already inflated; we’ll be dragging ourselves to it.’
‘Alright, we’ll do that.’
‘There’s no way, we weigh over a ton,’ I said and then, conclusively, ‘I’m swimming,’ with which I took off my cycling shorts and balanced on the side.
However, I could no longer see the retrieval line between the choppy waves.
‘Don’t swim, mate, it’s too dangerous,’ said Ben.
Ben put on a pair of sailing gloves and then proceeded with Herculean strength to drag our one-ton boat, hand over hand, fifty metres to where the para anchor was inflated. I put my shorts back on and, abashed, stood and coiled the rope, attaching it briefly to a cleat on the side of the boat every time the line starting fizzing back out. With his feet against the bulkhead, pushing his whole body into each tug, Ben said, in between puffs, ‘Bloody hell, this is like landing a giant squid.’
54 Food, Glorious Food
‘People think that if a man has undergone any hardship, he should have a reward; but for my part, if I have done the hardest possible day’s work, and then come to sit down in a corner and eat my supper comfortably – why, then I don’t think I deserve any reward for my hard day’s work – for am I not now at peace? Is not my supper good? My peace and my supper are my reward.’
Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Rowing for twelve hours a day makes you hungry. In the first week we couldn’t stomach the freeze-dried food, so most of it went overboard. By the second week we’d identified a few meals that we liked and we craved them. By halfway there wasn’t a meal that we wouldn’t happily eat.
We spent all but the first few weeks totally obsessed with food. Meals were the highlights of our day and the hungrier we got as the trip wore on the more important food became.
I’d originally thought we’d be left with no chocolate for later on in the journey, given Ben’s frequent advocacy of munching our way through the supplies. But I had no cause to complain about this, since I allowed myself to be too easily persuaded. There were differences between us, though. When it came to chocolate, cigarettes, snacks and other luxuries, I was all for squirreling away what we had and measuring it out a little at a time so that it lasted the whole way. Ben was more of the mind that if these things came in tiny measures then they weren’t fully enjoyable: it was better to eat the chocolate, smoke the fags, and be done with it. I would joke that he was dealing with issues from his Catholic upbringing and that after he finished everything he’d be wracked by guilt. He would counter that I was a mean-spirited Malvolio who thought that because I was sensible nobody else should have cakes and ale. But despite my Protestant upbringing, I did enjoy our little binges.
The difference in our personalities was well illustrated in the way we ate our breakfast every day. Ben would always opt for putting his chocolate bar in his porridge or muesli and feasting on everything at once. If I was making breakfast, I would say something like, ‘And will sir be making his usual mistake?’ To which he would always reply, ‘Of course, and it’s not a mistake.’ I would keep my chocolate bar and eat it in instalments throughout the morning shift. Occasionally, as I put down my oars to nibble at the chocolate, I’d hear a voice roar from the cabin, ‘Just get on with it!’ by which my guilt-stricken and by now famished friend meant, of course,
eating the chocolate, not rowing.
The basis of our diet was packets of freeze-dried food. These packs each contained about eight hundred calories and were dishes such as shepherd’s pie or sweet and sour chicken. We simply hydrated them by adding boiling water. I say ‘simply’ but when the boat was pitching around in the waves the boiling water would often splash to scald a foot or the hydrating food would spill to soil the cabin. Then, having eaten half a meal, the unfortunate cook would have to sulk in a cabin that smelt of curry while tending to their burns. To supplement these freeze-dried meals we also had some wet meals, mainly based around the versatile baked bean, which tasted better but were lower in calories. Finally, we had various snacks and treats. Chocolate bars (gone by Day 85), peanut butter (we unceremoniously dipped our fingers in it for a couple of weeks until it ran out), sweets (amazing while they lasted), nuts (all six kilos went stale because we tried to separate them out), and pork scratchings (incredible texture after the freeze-dried sludge) were some of the choice items we had on board.
We also had drinks. The hot chocolate was gone by the end of the first month and we were left with tea. After a few weeks we ran out of sugar to put in the tea. This was probably for the best because we had stolen huge handfuls of sugar sachets from McDonald’s, which meant that every time we made a cup of tea those alluring golden arches would trigger fantasies about eating a Big Mac, no three Big Macs, chips, nuggets, Coca-Cola and seven cheeseburgers. After the sugar ran out we used honey, then the syrup from the sticky toffee pudding and finally, when everything sweet was gone, whisky.
By Day 80 we had just about run out of everything apart from the packs of freeze-dried food. However, various meals were still tastier than others and these became our treats, the things we rewarded ourselves with, traded and dreamt about. We also had condiments: Tabasco, Marmite, olive oil, wasabi paste, mixed herbs and a seasoning sauce called Maggi. These went into pretty much everything. Of course, by Day 85 we’d run out of breakfasts, too, so we had to start eating puddings such as custard and mixed berries or rice pudding with cinnamon. When we ran out of these we started eating savoury dishes like bean and vegetable curry for breakfast, which we renamed the ‘First Meal’ to make it seem less weird. In fact, we took to renaming a lot of the meals so they had names which were closer to what they actually looked or tasted like. Chocolate chip pudding became chocolate mousse and potato and leek soup was mashed potato with chives or, most accurately, the ‘horror’. By the end, though, we discovered that no dish was beyond redemption. Our bodies, knowing that we desperately needed the calories, were forcing us to like the foodstuffs it knew we needed. Invariably one of us would start to like a meal slightly earlier than the other, which would give rise to a conversation along the lines of:
‘Hey, that’s the third vegetable casserole I’ve seen you eat this week. I thought you hated them.’
‘Oh, yeah, I do. I mean, they’re pretty awful but they need using up.’
‘I think I’ll try one tomorrow.’
‘I wouldn’t, it’ll only make you angry.’
The next day the suspicious party would eat a vegetable casserole and be instantaneously converted; the meal would shoot up through the ranks and become a ‘classic’. It would then have a brief and stellar career before becoming totally extinct, a mere hunger-inducing memory.
55 Pain
‘No man prefers to sleep two in a bed.’
Herman Melville, Moby Dick
We spent an uncomfortable night on the para anchor, with endless waves slapping the stern and disrupting our sleep. Top and tailing in the cabin was an awkward affair at the best of times, but heavy seas made it very difficult. Both of us would wake through the night to kick or hit the other person for snoring or putting their feet in the other’s face. Ben would often accuse me of making loud blowing noises, like a whale spouting, although he actually did this himself a few times. This annoying habit was probably due to the stuffiness in the cabin, as we would have to tighten the air vents in rough weather to prevent water getting in.
Still, on Day 85 the wind had clocked around behind us so we pulled in the para anchor and got moving. When we switched on the handheld GPS after twelve hours of rowing we were elated to discover that we were going well at a consistent two knots. We carried on at this sort of speed for the next week or so, but this period became a drug-induced blur as pain finally took hold.
Ben had been taking painkillers on and off owing to the painful cramps he experienced as part of his ongoing nightmare with his bowels. Up until this point I had only taken them once. About a month in we had heard that the four-man team were all taking painkillers regularly and this had given Ben the permission he needed to start self-medicating. It was a Sunday and we were chatting before my four-hour shift.
‘They’re really effective, you should try one,’ he advised.
‘I’m aching a lot and the sores are stinging but I’m not sure it warrants painkillers.’
‘They really do work.’
‘Are you suggesting I take morphine-based painkillers recreationally?’
‘Obviously your pain isn’t as bad as mine.’
‘Not at all, it’s probably worse; I just have an incredibly high pain threshold.’
‘Oh yeah, yeah. I remember when you pulled out of coming to the World Cheese Awards in the ExCel Centre because you had flu; you moaned about that for days.’
‘Hey, flu is different and you know it.’
‘Let me know when you start to feel some real pain.’
‘Alright, give me one, fuck it, I’ll take two, ten, whatever.’
I took one, looked at Ben, and said, ‘That was a bad idea, wasn’t it?’
For the next four hours I rowed, high as a kite, singing away. But what goes up must come down and later I vomited and felt deeply disappointed with myself.
By Day 85 we were in a very different situation altogether. I had experienced pain before, but I now had genuine problems. The salt sores, which appear in the crevices of the body, had worsened and the skin in my groin area was breaking and bleeding. It’s worrying to see your balls in that sort of state. Our fresh water supply was limited because of using the manual watermaker and as a result we didn’t make enough to wash the salt off as frequently as we would have liked. We even developed salt sores on our wrists where we dipped our hands in the sea to fill the jug to feed the watermaker. While my internal organs and muscles felt fitter and healthier than ever before, my skin was falling apart. The constant exposure to water kept it continually damp and therefore soft. Then the salt would grind away at the soft skin and disintegrate it. It felt like my skin was rusting. A few hours in the cabin before rowing again gave the body no time to recover. We had run out of surgical spirit to wash and cleanse, and so I had to turn to drugs for some respite.
Our conversations about medicine were as confused as our arguments about navigation. We both knew as little as each other. Ben had been to see a doctor in Ghana once who told him that the guidance on drug packets was always very conservative and that an average man should always take double. So I took four codeine, four paracetamol and a couple of tramadol. I can’t remember a great deal about that week, but it wasn’t fun. In the end Ben could see I was suffering badly and gave up his vitamin rations and rearranged the shifts to give me time for slightly longer, unbroken sleeps. It worked.
I often joked with Ben that he had to follow me around until he saved my life, like Morgan Freeman does with Kevin Costner in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, because of the one time I saved us from driving into an unlit parked lorry in Uganda. Here he really did save me; if not my life, then from a whole lot of pain that, if it had worsened, could have ruined the trip.
For the rest of our time at sea we made sure we used more of our fresh water rations to clean with and we also washed ourselves in passing rain showers, which would have been an interesting sight for any ships happening upon us. Despite, or perhaps because of, our individual trials with physical pai
n we were both determined, more than ever, to finish and we agreed that we would get to Mauritius even if one of us had to row the other one there.
56 One Hundred Days at Sea
‘I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote.’
Herman Melville, Moby Dick
It wasn’t just our bodies that were suffering – our brains seemed to be deteriorating too. We kept dropping or breaking things. We both managed to drop a bucket overboard, leaving us with just one, so we debated what we’d use to shit in if we lost that. None of the suggestions filled us with joy. We had dropped or broken all bar one of the spoon-fork hybrids we used to eat with. When we got down to our last spork we realised we would have to eat with spanners or use drill bits like chopsticks if the last one went. Which, on Day 91, it did when Ben broke it in half, but then rescued it by gluing the end of the spoon to the sheath of a knife, thus creating the first ever ‘spife’.
On Day 98 we finished Moby Dick. Captain Ahab’s fate is, of course, a lesson to all those who relentlessly follow their obsession. We still had a long way to go and I hoped we wouldn’t suffer a similar fate. When we finished the book we lost something else – no more afternoon sessions reading aloud.
Two days later we celebrated one hundred days at sea. We were thin, hungry and heavily bearded but we’d survived for one hundred days in one of the toughest environments known to man. We had no mirror on board, so we took it in turns to describe what the other looked like. I started with a generous comparison.