by Tim Jarvis
Nick was a professional offshore sailor, a mechanical engineer, had raced around the world nonstop on a Maxicat in the Oryx Quest, and had competed in the Volvo Ocean Race and a whole series of other high-caliber races on virtually every class of boat. In short, he was as qualified as you could get. In fact many of the races were marathons that involved nursing a boat over long distances, and that required the kind of seamanship and mind-set I needed for our expedition. A reference from Pete Goss was no bad thing either. I told Nick the other candidates were Chris Stanmore-Major and Paul Swain and he seemed comfortable about being involved with either, although he favored Chris’s greater experience.
We discovered a lot of things about the Alexandra Shackleton and our place in it during our five days trialing at sea: the steering ropes were fantastically heavy and cumbersome without the mechanical advantage of a tiller, the boat was sluggish and difficult to steer downwind, and living on board was going to be even more cramped, poorly ventilated, and sickness-inducing than the low expectations we already had. Plus the drinking water in our reconditioned whisky barrels had gone foul, three of our four oars had snapped, and sleeping on a floor formed of batteries was like sleeping on a pile of construction rubble. We certainly had some work to do down at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, Boathouse No. 4.
The Ocean Safety training, in the meantime, had taught me interesting facts about drowning and how salt water and sea spray inhalation can kill you long after you are plucked alive from the ocean. This is because your body directs fluid to your lungs in an attempt to thin the brine that fills them, causing you to drown in your own fluids. The only positive is that you can use the same process to keep yourself alive—in the absence of fresh drinking water, a salt-water enema allows your body to absorb only the fresh water and expel the salt. Images of Seb and the bilge pump suddenly made spooning seem pretty innocuous.
Seb had enlisted the help of a group of former Royal Navy personnel and they worked tirelessly to get the Alexandra Shackleton shipshape in ten days before she headed to Poland. These salty old sea dogs, along with Philip-Rose Taylor, Paul, Robert, Ed, and Seb, removed the rudder and most of the ballast, repainted and disinfected the boat, scrubbed all the seaweed off the hull, and fitted a variety of fixtures to the boat, including a new towing post and an additional mushroom vent. They also repaired cabling and fixtures to three of the six cameras that had been badly damaged during a lumpy part of our journey through the Needles. This was all capped off by Baz’s pride and joy, his Primus cooker stowage box, being “McNeished” with a salvaged kitchen-cabinet door found in a Dumpster. Trevor Gray at the Royal Navy Historic Boat Shed in Portsmouth also helped us resolve our oar problems, letting us in to the secret that they needed to be soaked in seawater for three or four days and then oiled and sealed to prevent them from snapping.
Despite our flirtation with Portland’s rocks, we didn’t end up doing a skipper changeover at Lulworth Cove because Nick, who had by now committed to the project, couldn’t get time off work. In characteristic fashion, Chris agreed to skipper for the whole five-day trial with Paul Swain as No. 2. They worked well together, with Paul’s intimate knowledge of the Alexandra Shackleton and Chris’s years of experience getting us through some tricky tidal conditions and, on occasion, sizable standing waves in the Needles passage. Baz was pretty seasick and Ed was unhappy about the way the cameras had been knocked about but, apart from that, things had gone well. In the meantime, Chris proved to be a great skipper and good company throughout. He was full of confidence, empowering others and not short of good stories—in all, he would be an asset to any team. There was, however, a big gap between his and Paul’s experience, particularly given that Paul had not been to the Southern Ocean.
At this point Seb, having suddenly become aware of the reality of what lay ahead, told me his own sailing experience was a distant third to Paul’s and that I should not be swayed by his bravado. I already had a gut feeling about Seb’s limitations in terms of sailing, but it was good that he felt he could tell me. He also let me know he was mystified as to why I had decided to take him—he assumed it was because I regarded him as something of a “fixture of the boat.” There was an element of that, but I also had a good feeling about his resourcefulness and ability to deliver when things got bad, as I knew they would.
Paul sensed I had reservations about his lack of Southern Ocean experience and took me to one side after the trials, volunteering to fall on his sword if need be. It was a measure of the man, him sensing I needed the experience of Chris and Nick as the two lead sailors, with Seb’s boat knowledge and ability to fix things on the run as their backup. I turned his resignation down initially but knew he had a point. Chris meanwhile was happy to come on board, but only as skipper, whereas I saw Nick in that role and somehow couldn’t see him and Chris as a natural fit in the same way as Chris and Paul. It was a quandary that was resolved for me when Nick said he would feel much happier about the project if Paul Larsen, aka Larso, was involved.
Seb: committed and resourceful.
Courtesy of Ed Wardle
Larso was something of a known quantity to me as an Aussie with 100,000-plus sea miles and multiple world records to his name, and because I’d approached him previously, again at Pete Goss’s recommendation. At the time, he had been committed to breaking the world speed record in his boat Sail Rocket, but winds in Namibia, where he was heading in his quest for the record, were no good from December to March, so the timing was now ideal. His CV said he had a “history of sailing some of the fastest boats ever to grace the oceans.” I broke it to him gently that the Alexandra Shackleton was not one of them—the only way she would reach sixty-plus knots was if the crane that lifted her in and out of the water dropped her. At forty-two years of age and with a wealth of experience, Larso was a legend of the sea and importantly he knew and trusted Nick and was keen to be involved. They were a unit and could work well together.
The Rotor downforce has Baz, Woody, Seb, and Paul Swain holding on for dear life.
Paul Larsen, aka “Larso,” fastest sailor on the planet.
Courtesy of Helena Darvelid
My weekend off in Brussels with my godchildren had not been relaxing. Major issues with our support vessel and the potential deal breaker of the Alexandra Shackleton not getting through French customs were still recent memories, but at least geographical distance had given me perspective on the final team selection. I gave Paul Swain the bad news that he would not be in the crew, feeling I owed it to him to tell him straight and immediately before he heard from anyone else. He was gutted but acted with the good grace I’d come to expect from him. I asked him to be our reserve sailor and he accepted. It reminded me of when Shackleton wanted the Endurance skippered by John King Davis, who had commanded Aurora during the Australian Antarctic Expedition. Davis refused, thinking the enterprise was “foredoomed,” so the appointment went to Frank Worsley. By all accounts Worsley was something of an eccentric, having reportedly applied to the expedition after learning of it in a dream:
One night I dreamed that Burlington Street was full of ice blocks and that I was navigating a ship along it. Next morning I awoke and hurried along to Burlington Street. A sign on a door caught my eye. It bore the words “Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition.” I turned into the building, Shackleton was there, and after a few minutes’ conversation he announced, “You’re engaged.”
It was now September 2012 and thunder and lightning flashed all around, two-meter waves rocked the launch violently and she flipped upside down, leaving us clinging to the ceiling, treading water in air pockets wherever we could find them. Regrouping with great difficulty inside the boat, we did a head count, agreed on a plan of action, ducked out into the open water, and swam to the nearby life raft. When we got in we were sitting in ankle-deep water, so we had to start bailing almost immediately. The violent movement of the life raft made us seasick and it was with great relief that I saw a helicopter’s searchlight illuminate the awn
ing of the raft as the winch man’s feet appeared. One by one, we were hoisted to safety. That night the six-man team gathered in the sergeants’ mess at the SB headquarters in Poole. We all agreed that the incredible simulation in the launch in the Royal National Lifeboat Association’s (RNLI’s) Poole wave tank was a clear reminder of how important it was to ensure we didn’t capsize and that, if we did, abandoning our hundred-year-old life raft for a modern equivalent was something we really didn’t want to be doing.
I returned to Australia in early October 2012, feeling for the first time that we might be a bit ahead of the curve and extremely happy with the caliber of, and unity among, the now-finalized Alexandra Shackleton team. That’s not to say there hadn’t been question marks hanging over some of my decisions but, to their credit, the guys loyally backed my choices. Ed had liked Chris Stanmore-Major both in terms of the confidence he exuded and the fact he was good in front of the camera. Seb and Baz had liked Paul Swain and probably queried the need for his replacement, although it was a measure of them and their military discipline that they never questioned me directly. Nick and Larso privately thought we needed an additional high-caliber sailor and that Seb wasn’t at the required level, but nor, for that matter, were the rest of us. To my mind, Nick and Larso were a fantastic unit and sailors of the highest caliber and, most importantly, knew and trusted each other. No other combination could give us that, and we would need them to be at their best to get the job done. Seb’s tireless work rate and lateral thinking made him a key team member even if he couldn’t see it himself. He didn’t have to. That was my job.
As well as the team being bolted down, the Alexandra Shackleton was on her way to Eduardo Frei, where our fixer, Alejo, would be there to receive her. We had established a great relationship with the regulatory agencies FCO (the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office) and SGSSI (the South Georgian and South Sandwich Islands government), who were very supportive of what we were trying to do. We’d respectfully listened to all the advice they’d given and to the team’s credit not a smirk or roll of the eyes had appeared when, at an SGSSI meeting, it was suggested that the Alexandra Shackleton could become a rat or mice colony if left unattended. There wasn’t enough space on board for a single mouse!
Unfortunately, while trialing and team selection for the Alexandra Shackleton had gone well, the other vessels in my life were encountering headwinds. There was the small matter of acquiring and positioning 80,000 liters of diesel in Antarctica and 13,000 liters in South Georgia. Plus selling fifteen berths on our support vessel at $20,000 a head was proving troublesome, but at least Howard Whelan and I had a ten-day grace period to work on it before Polar Pioneer and the Alexandra Shackleton arrived in Buenos Aires’s port, Mar del Plata, on October 12. I received an e-mail from Tomas Holik at Aurora Expeditions gently reminding me of the written guarantee I’d given to Polar Pioneer’s Captain Gorodnik that Alejo would rendezvous with the ship in Mar del Plata and travel aboard her to Frei to supervise the offloading of the Alexandra Shackleton. Despite multiple conversations with Alejo reiterating the importance of all this, the October 12 rendezvous with Tomas in Buenos Aires didn’t happen. We left Alejo multiple phone messages and e-mails suggesting a later rendezvous at Mar del Plata the next afternoon, giving clear directions how to get there. Early on Sunday, October 14, Australia time, I finally got through to Alejo on his mobile. “I’m not coming, Tim.” I heard his words in slow motion, absolutely incredulous because we had a formal arrangement in place and had had numerous conversations about the importance of this rendezvous. I was furious but tried to remain calm. “Can I ask why you have decided not to be there?” “Too much ice in Fildes Bay so no boat can land at Frei,” he replied. “Do you think I might have liked to have known this information?” I replied, my tone and choice use of Anglo-Saxon vernacular letting him know what I thought. Rapidly backtracking, he made some calls claiming that, due to his friendships with personnel at the Argentinian scientific base Carlini Station, formerly known as Jubany, only three nautical miles from Frei, we could offload the Alexandra Shackleton there. Despite the fact we were essentially a British expedition and therefore not exactly popular with Argentinian authorities, I was heartened by the news. When I e-mailed an increasingly concerned Tomas, he called me straight back. He knew Carlini well: its wharf’s sides were like those of a bathtub and the absence of a crane or amphibious vehicle meant offloading the Alexandra Shackleton there was out of the question. Alejo would have known this, he said.
Me feeling the strain but up for a challenge.
Courtesy of Ed Wardle
Baz—cold is his specialty.
Courtesy of Ed Wardle
Putting the would-be sailors through their paces.
Courtesy of Ed Wardle
It was time to ditch Alejo and sort things out ourselves. There was one alternative Tomas thought might work: the Polish base of Arctowski in Admiralty Bay some twenty miles from Frei, where Tomas had spent time as a scientist many years before. Calls were made to the head of logistics at the base, Jaroslaw Roszczyk, and without hesitation he agreed we could land the Alexandra Shackleton there, loving the ambition of our expedition. It was fantastic news and I, of course, offered some kind of remuneration for the wonderful gesture. An e-mail came back almost immediately from Sylwia, the head of communications at the base: “Some fresh fruit and vegetables would be nice.” I laughed out loud at the wonderful straightforwardness and generosity of the Poles’ gesture, which wouldn’t have been out of place in Shackleton’s day. Four hours later, Polar Pioneer set sail for Arctowski.
Frei had been the first choice because it was the only base on King George Island with an airstrip and this could potentially be used to bring in the fuel our support vessel needed. Also, there was a tie-in with the Shackleton story: it was the Chileans who ultimately rescued Shackleton’s men from Elephant Island in their ship Yelcho after the Caird’s voyage. When they expressed an interest in being involved in this expedition, we had told them there were two ways they could help. Ice made the first no longer an option as the Alexandra Shackleton was now bound for Arctowski. The second was helping transport the drums of diesel our support vessel would need to the base and allowing us to refuel there.
Regardless of their desire to help, an intense period of high-level diplomacy ensued—eight months and counting by this point. There had been countless letters, e-mails, and calls from Seb and me to the Chilean military attaché in London, the Chilean ambassador to Australia, and the head of Chile’s southern fleet. This, added to Zaz’s good contacts with the Chilean Navy through her grandfather’s reputation, the fact we had two serving Royal Navy men in our team of six, the strong relationship between the UK and the Chilean armed forces, and my brother-in-law being based in Chile and able to help, meant we felt confident.
Our all-out assault by phone, e-mail, letters, and jumps through bureaucratic hoops brought an offer from the Chilean Navy to transport our diesel to Frei. However, it needed approval from the Chilean government, something that could only happen once we got sign-off on our environmental impact assessment (EIA)—in itself a challenge given that ship refueling is not allowed anywhere south of 60˚S, a line that curiously touches no land but that demarcates Antarctica. Whichever way I put it to the FCO, which had the headache of assessing our application (as both the Alexandra Shackleton and our support vessel were UK-registered vessels), it was a tricky one. Refueling in the Antarctic was refueling in the Antarctic however you tried to dress it up, and negotiations were becoming protracted despite the FCO’s keenness to oblige.
It was early November and I was giving a talk in Singapore, with Elizabeth and the boys having joined me. My contact at the FCO, Henry Burgess, casually mentioned to me that the Section 3 and 5 permits governing our expedition were still a way off being issued. I assumed he was referring to the issues we were having with fuel placement and proceeded to update him. Politely he cut me short. That wasn’t the issue; it was the fact that our support ve
ssel hadn’t been granted permission to proceed by the Maritime Coastguard Agency (MCA). This news came as a bolt from the blue. Specifically, the issue seemed to relate to ballast calculations that hadn’t taken into account factors such as ice adhering to the sails and other serious aspects I had never been made privy to. It was a pretty damning report from the MCA and coincided with a letter arriving from the Chilean government saying that, because the EIA was not issued, they could not sign off on supporting us. Now we had a Mexican standoff—or, more accurately, a Chilean standoff—because I’d been waiting to hear what level of support the Chileans could give with fuel before determining what I put in the EIA. It meant the end of the line for our support vessel.
The longer I’d been planning things, the more I’d come to realize that the number of problems I had correlated with the number of people involved in the project. I was spending far more time on our fee-paying guests, sponsor-team members, and the film crew’s logistics and insurance than on the core expedition goals. Within seventy-two hours of terminating the old support vessel, I had switched to a smaller specialist vessel, Australis. Luckily I had warmed up Australis’s team several weeks earlier when my gut told me things were going awry. It was a breath of fresh air to deal with an efficient, dedicated skipper like Ben Wallis, who knew Antarctica like the back of his hand. Despite the personal financial hit I’d taken in choosing to part company with the other boat, it was simply a decision that had to be made. I knew that, like Shackleton, you have to pursue your goals with all your being. But when changing circumstances make your goal unachievable, you need the strength to accept the situation, reset your goal, and pursue it with the same conviction as you had the original. Alexander Macklin, the surgeon on the Endurance, recalled Shackleton’s pragmatism when the ship finally succumbed to the ice: “As always with him, what had happened had happened; it was in the past and he looked to the future. . . . Without emotion, melodrama or excitement [he] said, ‘Ship and stores have gone, so now we’ll go home.’ ”