Bear Grylls

by Bear Grylls

  The northern lights lasted until around 4 a.m., and Mick and I helmed through that last night-time shift before dawn, while the others snatched a couple of hours’ rest in the sardine tin. In a tranquil, misty dawn we pulled into Port aux Basques at just after 6.30 a.m.

  We could hardly have been luckier with the way things were going so far. Everyone was slipping into their role and feeling confident. Each of us was playing our part with one clear goal in mind: to stay alive and complete the crossing. If it was going to be like this every day and night, then it would be easy. Privately, we knew that wouldn’t happen. It was only ever a matter of time before the skies and seas would change.

  As we approached the quay at Port aux Basques, I spotted the harbourmaster standing by to welcome us. He had been telephoned and forewarned by Chloë. The tracker system had kept her informed of our every move, and her attention to small details like this had an enormous impact on the expedition. It was the difference between being warmly greeted on arrival at a far-flung outpost and arriving and trying to find someone to talk to and having to explain who we were.

  ‘Welcome to Port aux Basques,’ declared the harbourmaster with a broad smile.

  I had expected this place to be a major hub for shipping in the area. It was, after all, one of the last ‘big’ ports before the northern waters of the Arctic ahead and a staging post for shipping between Newfoundland and mainland Canada. Instead, there were just a few old concrete and wooden piers stretching out to sea, where the big icebreakers and ferries could refuel and disembark.

  The rapidly rising sun was warming the cold air of dawn, and, happy to have arrived, we all began to peel off the layers of dry suits, thermals, Gortex and waterproofs.

  A group of local fishermen were sitting on the wooden walkway at the head of our pier. Leaning over the railings, side by side, smoking silently, they were dressed in lumberjack shirts and chest-high rough waterproofs and were watching us cautiously as we bustled about the boat.

  I was now down to my undies, and felt deeply relieved to have got rid of all the heavy, stinking kit, which now lay in a pile on the foredeck. Right then, I realized we needed some more rope and, on the foreshore, I happened to spot an old corrugated building with a sign marked ‘supplies’.

  They would have what we needed, but I really didn’t fancy getting dressed in all my kit again. I glanced over at the fishermen and thought, well, I am sure they have seen a man in his underwear before. So I pulled on my Musto ocean boots, took a deep breath and, dressed in nothing apart from underpants and boots, walked gingerly past the fishermen to the shop.

  They looked at me, looked at each other, then stared out to sea, puffing on their cigarettes, without saying a word. Charlie, chortling, caught the whole scene on camera.

  The sun was shining on a clear morning, and I was wandering around a chandlery in my pants. I was in heaven.

  6. SURFING THE WAVES

  Man cannot discover new oceans unless he first loses sight of the shore.

  Christopher Columbus

  British people traditionally seem fascinated by trying to forecast the weather. It’s a national obsession: we watch the news and then we watch the weather. It never serves much purpose, save the vague satisfaction, upon hearing the rain on the roof, of noting whether or not the forecasters were correct. This is a strange pastime, and one at which my mother-in-law is a maestro.

  ‘Hmm,’ Vinnie often muses from her sofa when it starts to pour outside, ‘they were right.’

  She assumes this is, of course, highly irregular.

  Out on the North Atlantic, though, the stakes were a bit higher than whether or not it would drizzle during the summer fête.

  For us, the weather forecast was everything. If our expedition was going to go smoothly, it would probably be because we got the weather forecast right. Similarly, if the expedition ended in disaster, it was more than likely going to be because our weather forecast was wrong. This worried me. So much seemed to hang on these forecasts . . . our lives in particular; and so many of those forecasts, ultimately, appeared to be down to luck.

  We were not looking for rough seas and storms – there was too much at stake. We didn’t want to be heroes – all we wanted was to be safe. We would stay safe by getting the forecast right.

  It was as simple as that.

  Everything I wanted most in the world – to get back safely to Shara and Jesse, to be the best husband and the best dad I could be – depended on accurate weather forecasting and staying away from the bad stuff.

  Plenty of other factors could go wrong, but the implications of bad weather were by far the greatest danger. In such an exposed, small boat, we were highly vulnerable.

  Andy, with his experience of the sea, was well aware of our precarious circumstances. In March, some months before we set off, he was on board HMS Newcastle in heavy seas off the coast of Cornwall. HMS Newcastle is a type-42 Destroyer, 462 feet in length, and, from his position on the bridge, with hundreds of tonnes of wild water pouring over her bows, the ship pitching wildly as she battled through the blackness, Andy began to understand how vulnerable we would be in an open RIB, only 33 feet long. He knew as well as we all did that the forecasting really mattered.

  As soon as we arrived in Port aux Basques, I took time with Mick to check the weather forecast. This would become a ritual: whenever we arrived in port, Mick and I would use our first spare moments to research the weather and call Mike Town in the UK.

  Mike is one of the top meteorologists in Britain and was one of the few experts to predict the hurricane in 1987. We were extremely lucky to have him on hand.

  We got through to him on the satellite (SAT) phone first time.

  It was our first call back from the boat. Our system of hunting good weather had begun. It was midday back in England, and this was just about the only occasion when Mike Town would be called at a sensible time of day. Unfortunately, we ended up calling him at all times of the nights ahead, but he was kind enough to expect and accept these calls whenever they came. He understood only too well how much we relied on him.

  ‘We’re in Port aux Basques. How does the weather look from here?’

  ‘It’s looking OK,’ he replied. ‘You shouldn’t have any problems for the next twenty-four hours.’

  ‘So it’s clear?’ Mick asked.

  ‘Pretty much. There are a few localized small fronts but nothing really menacing. There’s a big storm passing to your south, but that should miss you. The temperature will drop from here onwards, but you shouldn’t find more than Force Five northerlies, and they’re going your way. It should be fine.’

  When I first met Mike I called him ‘sir’. He was my geography teacher at school, but he soon became a friend as well. He was a climber and a martial artist and a real character, loved by many of his students. He used to arrange climbing trips to the Lake District, which Mick and I, aged fifteen, adored and took very seriously. For both of us, he became genuinely inspirational, and we have stayed in touch with him ever since leaving school.

  Soon after meeting Shara, I planned to take her away for a weekend’s climbing. Shara was under the impression it was purely a romantic getaway weekend, which it was of sorts, but it did also involve two ascents of Skiddaw, the hard way. It was Mike who lent me the keys to his cottage in Cumbria.

  In the years when I was training with the army, Mike used to pack stones in my rucksack and run off ahead up the mountains, dragged by two abnormally large Bernese mountain dogs, telling me to hurry up because he had the sandwiches.

  Time and again, Mike has been a source of support and friendship, a man I have learned to trust absolutely. And I loved the fact that he had been one of the few to predict the hurricane!

  Some people might think it is a bit unusual, maybe a bit amateurish, to set out across the North Atlantic with your old geography teacher as one of your main sources of meteorological advice. But I liked that. I suppose I was just lucky that my old geography teacher happened to be such
an expert in this field.

  The Fleet Weather Centre, operated by the navy, also provided us with invaluable information at various stages of the expedition, and when Internet access was available in port we logged on to various weather websites, including one maintained by, and designed for, the US military.

  Our third source of guidance was the local population. The people living in these isolated and far-flung places were not slow to offer their opinions on the weather. Down the years, through the generations, they had learned to interpret and recognize patterns; to look at the sky, feel the wind and trust their instincts.

  The bottom line was that we were trying to avoid the storms, and these people were fishermen by trade. Avoiding the storms was what they had to do every day of every year of their lives.

  In Port aux Basques, the local people seemed relaxed about the weather. Wizened old men appeared near the dock later in the morning and told us how they had only just emerged from nineteen days of dense fog, but now things seemed to be clearing.

  ‘You should still be careful,’ said one old man, dressed in a thick woollen jersey and faded jeans. ‘Things can change very quickly out there.’

  Routinely, we were used to predicting the weather for a journey of, say, 60 miles offshore. That is still a long way out to sea. But we needed now to estimate the conditions for a crossing as long as almost 1,000 miles. That was a whole different beast.

  You might be told that wind speed was only 5 to 10 knots, and think that is all right, but a wind just 20 per cent over that can still produce enormous swells. This in turn reduces the speed of the boat, and suddenly your carefully planned two-day forecast would have to become a three- or four-day guestimate . . . and it was that extra time that was so unknown and dangerous.

  We had always known that accurate forecasting would be difficult, not least because we would be passing through waters that were, to a large extent, uncharted. Where little shipping traffic passes, the authorities understandably don’t place too many weather buoys, so information was sketchy and forecasts often unreliable.

  Most of the time, we simply had to be satisfied with an accurate twenty-four-hour forecast, and thereafter we would make a reasonable assessment and hope. Above all, we simply tried to be cautious and sensible.

  It was just before ten o’clock on another brisk and clear morning when the Arnold and Son Explorer pulled away from Port aux Basques. We had refuelled, paying for the diesel with a heavy fistful of our US$50 bills, taken from a watertight container in the depths of the hold where we stored our cash, passports, wallets and photographs of home. We said goodbye to the locals and once again pointed our nose north.

  Within fifteen minutes, though, we were in dense sea fog, and we found ourselves edging through what felt like thick, soggy soup. The fog was so intense that at times it was impossible to see the bow of the boat. We were driving blind.

  We had been warned of magnetic variables in this region, and the compass started to behave erratically. This was worrying. We were now relying entirely on the accuracy of our electrical instruments to make any progress at all.

  Every now and then, through the mist, we caught a glimpse of Newfoundland away to our right, a craggy stretch of coast or a distant lighthouse; then everything would go grey and damp again, enveloping us in mist. Everything gets wet in seconds as this type of fog hits you. Inexorably and quietly, it covers you in moisture.

  The sea though stayed calm and flat, and we moved steadily on through this strange, silent seascape. Minute by minute, we were beginning to settle into a routine.

  As the afternoon drew on, the temperature began to drop and the waves started to build steadily into a swell. The change was slow and gradual, but we were clearly approaching much bigger seas. We knew we were heading up towards the Belle Isle Strait, a natural funnel of water where the wind and currents drive the ice down between Newfoundland and Labrador. It was an infamous stretch of water, and not much used. It was dangerous and unpredictable and was now less than 300 miles to the north. We were readying ourselves.

  Perceptibly, the feel of everything was changing. We were alone and heading north. It was only going to get colder and more isolated from now on and ice was ahead, somewhere. We had no idea how long it would be until we saw it, but it was out there, waiting, floating massively to our north. We knew that Port aux Basques was to be our last port of accessible civilization for a long time.

  We were starting to quieten into our own worlds, checking and rechecking, lashing ourselves to the boat when we moved around, taking nothing for granted, keeping our own personal grab bags clipped to our waists. These small waterproof holdalls contained essential items such as a torch, a knife, a hand-held VHF radio and mini-flares.

  Each of us was well stocked with anti-sickness pills, and these were working well. I took my pills on the dot every eight hours. I had to keep alert and avoid that debilitating sense of feeling wretched and disoriented.

  The seasickness, we soon discovered, was often worst in the sardine tin, and if it hit you, it was utterly incapacitating. You lie there, desperately needing some decent rest, overwhelmed by the invasive smell of diesel and the deafening roar of the engine, and you are wet and cold. You can taste the salt water in your mouth and your nostrils are sore and raw, and your stomach churns, and nothing can stop it. You want nothing more than to curl up and die.

  They say seasickness has two stages: one is when you don’t care if you die; the second is when you start praying to die.

  Whenever anybody was sick over the side, it was vital to try to rehydrate afterwards. You’d have to pump water from the large jerry cans strapped to the side of the console and start drinking again. It was the last thing you felt like doing, but it was absolutely necessary to recover your strength.

  ‘Drink water. Replace the liquids. Keep drinking.’ This became one of our mantras. Experience had told us that dehydration could be a big issue in an open boat, especially when it is rough. The sheer amount of waves and spray that was eventually to come over us meant that we swallowed a lot of salt water – it was impossible to avoid. This means your salt intake becomes very high and you need twice the amount of fresh water to compensate. But on the sea you never feel like drinking, which is why it has to be a discipline.

  As we progressed, the rota seemed to be settling down and working well. We had decided to sustain a five-hour rota. Each crew member would helm for an hour, navigate for an hour, spend the next hour sitting in the ‘deckchair’, a piece of rubber material on one side, slung between two metal struts and angled down, and lastly rest in the sardine tin for two hours. Every hour on the hour, almost without exception, the five of us rotated religiously through this circuit of tasks and responsibilities.

  Our concept was logical and straightforward: make the big challenges manageable by breaking them into smaller tasks. We reckoned that on a 1,000-mile leg you had to have something short-term to focus on. The days and hours passed very slowly sometimes, especially if you were sick. It was much easier to focus on getting through a single hour and then addressing a new situation than it was to have nothing to think about apart from watching the GPS plotter and seeing how slowly we were moving.

  We humans are creatures of habit and we need something to focus on. This routine was something tangible that would hold us together when it struck rough, and I was determined that whatever happened, we would stick to it. Even when you were resting in the sardine tin, after one hour you would roll over to the other side as the guy to your right got up, and another body crawled in to your left.

  There were times in those early days when we would be coasting along in calm seas under clear skies and one of us would suggest we stayed as we were because everyone was OK, but I was adamant we stuck to the rota.

  This was our discipline. In extreme environments people depend on routines, and the more familiar you are with the routine, the less frightening the unfamiliar becomes. On the ocean, life gets much easier when you have something you can
hold on to, something you know is predictable and reliable and constant. Whatever else might change, I wanted the rota to remain on track.

  The only drawback of the system was that you had to get on well with whoever was next to you. The rota meant you really only had regular contact with the people either side of you. When the seas were rough, you would be wearing your helmet and full survival suit, and, even though you were sharing a living space of a few square yards, you would scarcely be aware of the other two members of the crew one seat away from you. It sounds strange, but at various stages of the expedition twenty-four hours would pass during which I would not see Andy even though we were never more than a yard apart.

  Mick just loved this. He would say that this was his ideal holiday: no chit-chat, no small-talk, just the roar of the engine. He announced that if the rota format could be duplicated in England, life would definitely be better. This is a sure sign that a man is working too hard and getting too many phone calls.

  Growing used to our equipment, and settling into the hourly routine, we continued to make good progress, at times reaching speeds of 25 knots as the following seas propelled the boat forward.

  I remembered how Andy had told me one evening that one of the reasons why he was so keen to do this expedition was his desire to experience some unusual sea conditions and, towards evening on this first day out of Port aux Basques, it was beginning to happen. We were being treated to the spectacular sensation of ‘surfing’ on big ocean breakers.

  We had been aware of the sea building in size and strength throughout the day. Increasingly powerful waves would roll up from behind and raise the boat high above the ocean; then the crest of the wave would break, and we would surge forward. It was amazing. We would look back to see the wave frothing away in white water and, within moments, another surge of marine power would lift us high once again.