Four Mums in a Boat

by Janette Benaddi, Helen Butters, Niki Doeg

  ‘Oh, don’t say that to Janette!’ said Niki, slowly shaking her head. ‘She’s incorrigible!’

  ‘The first?’ Janette looked at him. He nodded. ‘Ever?’ He nodded again.

  ‘We won’t hear the end of it now,’ said Helen with a smile as she got into the back of the van. ‘All the way up the bloody M1.’

  And we didn’t. The idea went back and forth across the seats of the van as we drove.

  ‘We do need more practice in Rose,’ began Janette.

  ‘But on the North Sea?’ replied Helen.

  ‘We need to spend the night on board,’ said Frances.

  ‘We need to row in the dark,’ agreed Niki.

  ‘We need to row and not be able to see land. We need a proper run at it before setting off from La Gomera,’ declared Janette.

  ‘And this would be the perfect opportunity,’ agreed Frances.

  By the time we reached the Midlands we were all sold on the idea. All it would really require was a little organisation.

  Actually, quite a lot of organisation was required, particularly for Helen. Richard announced that he had got the job as Director of Public Prosecutions on the Isle of Man, as everyone – most of all Helen – knew he would. She had seen more Manx signs in the past four months than she’d seen in her (and possibly Richard’s) entire lifetime. The only problem was that he had to move. He couldn’t be DPP of the Isle of Man if he didn’t actually live on the island. So not only was Helen going to be on the Atlantic for three months rowing an ocean, Richard was not going to be at home either. What was going to happen to Lucy and Henry? Who was going to look after the children? And the dog? Should they all move to the Isle of Man together? Should they stay? What was already a difficult situation suddenly became a whole lot more complicated.

  But Helen was not going to give up. Having got this far, it didn’t seem fair to be thwarted by mere logistics. Lucy and Henry didn’t want her to give up either. Even Richard, who had been so reluctant, was now adamant that a solution had to be found. Then Grandma Pat, Richard’s mother, stepped forward. She had originally been less than keen on the idea of her daughter-in-law rowing the Atlantic. But she had found herself swayed when she’d listened to a speech given by Sally Kettle at the end of the summer term at St Olave’s School. Sally had spoken about her experience crossing the Atlantic, along with her mum, and had finished up by telling the school that she knew of four mothers in the audience who were preparing to do the same. She had invited all of us to stand up, which we did, to a faint ripple of applause. And Grandma Pat suddenly felt herself a bit proud of Helen and her hare-brained scheme, and now she was offering, very kindly, for Henry, Lucy and the dog to live with her while Helen was on the Atlantic. It seemed like a solution and Helen was extremely grateful, but in the end Richard was concerned that looking after two teenagers and a Labrador would be too much for his mother, so they managed to persuade St Peter’s to let the children flexi-board, going to stay with their granny at the weekends, and with their father coming backwards and forwards to see them. It was a very big sacrifice. They had turned their lives upside down so their mum could follow her dream. And they had done it without complaint or fuss. It was a move that humbled Helen. If everyone was going to put themselves out for her this much, she’d better make it across!

  But first we were going to row the North Sea.

  Perhaps we had not taken the idea of crossing the North Sea seriously. After all, in comparison to crossing the Atlantic, it was only a little bit further than Poppleton. Like rowing across a pond. It looked easy. In fact, we were so completely underprepared when we arrived at Southwold in Suffolk that we turned up in our onesies. Well, not quite in our Guy Fawkes’ onesies, but certainly the sort of Lycra workout gear more associated with getting in touch with your pelvic floor in your local village hall. It was May, the sun was out – this would be like a stroll in the park, we thought.

  ‘Where’s your wet-weather gear?’ asked Charlie as we stood on the beach in our leggings at 6 a.m. We looked at each other. Surely one of us had a few jackets in the car?

  ‘To be fair, we didn’t get a list like in the Talisker, which is very strict on what you have to have,’ explained Niki. ‘Charlie sent us a few emails saying we need this and that, but nothing was actually stipulated. It was something of an awakening in many ways. We’d been really busy and we hadn’t really thought about it. Then all of a sudden it was like, “Oh crap, we’ve got to have a life raft, we’ve got to have an anchor.” All these things that we didn’t have, and couldn’t afford to buy, because we were still quite far from the start line and we were still trying to raise money. We borrowed some essentials from Angus and Charlie. I think they lent us a life raft and an anchor and various bits, but we didn’t have any of it till we got to Southwold. And, crucially, we didn’t know how to use it.’

  So with only a few hours before we set off, we launched ourselves at the local chandlery. ‘We had the wrong map, the wrong chart. We needed some netting,’ said Frances. ‘We spent so much time trying to raise money, which was really important, but we could’ve ditched a few of the Saturdays taking Rose fundraising in Leeds or York, to whichever craft fair we’d decided to show up to for a couple of hundred pounds at the most, and had a proper day just understanding more about the equipment. But as it was, we didn’t know very much at all.’

  The more we panicked, the more undiscerning we became. So we loaded Rose up with lifejackets, survival suits, head torches, sleeping bags, an almanac of tides, snack packs, dehydrated food and enough water to take us to Gibraltar. She was so heavy and low in the water by the time we’d finished. The trip was only supposed to take about 48 hours at the most. We could have left over half of it on the beach and gone to the local takeaway and simply ordered a few pizzas. But we had not thought anything through, which is never a good place to start.

  ‘We’d talked about it a lot, saying we were going to row the North Sea. It looked like a quick jaunt. What was there to discuss?’ said Niki. ‘But no one had done it before. Perhaps there was a reason.’

  Turns out, the North Sea is incredibly unpredictable. There are two ways to cross: one is straight from Southwold to Scheveningen in Holland; the other is to zigzag with the tides, as they rise and fall every six hours. And no matter where you think you might be going, there is nearly always something in your way.

  ‘It’s like bumper boats,’ said Niki. The North Sea/Dover Strait is the busiest shipping lane in the world with some 500 to 600 boats passing through it every day, and we were the smallest craft on the ocean. Only the week before, Team Beyond – Philip and Daley – had abandoned their boat in the middle of the Strait (while doing a timed crossing as part of our race) and had called up Janette the following day to tell her that we should absolutely not do the trip. Their experience was enough to make the rest of us panic.

  ‘They had terrible weather and were very seasick and surrounded by huge tankers,’ explained Janette. ‘They sent me a picture of their GPS and there were loads and loads of boats. You could see them, little dots all over the screen, like a bad case of chicken pox. And they said, “Look at this! Look how crowded it is out there. They’re everywhere, these ships, and they’re big. You guys need to think seriously about whether you should do this.” So they abandoned their new boat in the middle of the North Sea and got a lift with a fishing boat. I said, “It’s not a problem.” They had rough weather and were very sick, and don’t forget, they’d never been out on a sea before. I called all three of them to say, “I’ve been out to sea. We’ll be fine.” The fact that I had only pottered around the South of France with a gin and tonic in my hand was neither here nor there. I had been to sea – that was my story, and I was sticking to it!’

  Come 7 a.m., all our families were there to see us off. All except Niki’s dad, Pete, who had volunteered to drive the trailer over to Scheveningen in Holland to meet us when we arrived at the other side, and Janette’s sister, Jane, who had taken one look at her accomm
odation in the nearby holiday camp and announced that she was not staying the night and had driven straight back to York. It was a bank holiday and we were by the seaside, so the options were limited at such short notice.

  In fact, even at that hour of the day the beach was busy. We spent so long answering everyone’s questions about what we were doing there and what sort of boat Rose was that by the time we set off we’d forgotten to put all the coordinates of our waypoints in the autohelm. But worse than that, we also hadn’t had time to eat. Our pub was obviously not serving breakfast before we’d left as it was so early, so we decided to use it as an opportunity to try out some of the dehydrated food we planned to take with us across the Atlantic. We had also yet to have a go on the Jetboil – the stove – something we needed practice with. So after our brief meeting with Charlie, we sat down to a bowl of tepid, strawberry-flavoured porridge, which proved to be inedible. Sickly sweet, it was pale pink in colour and was the consistency of wallpaper paste.

  ‘It makes you want to throw up right here and now!’ declared Niki, putting hers straight in the bin.

  ‘We are not taking this with us,’ stated Frances.

  ‘I’d rather go to sea on an empty stomach,’ said Helen, placing her packet on top of Niki’s.

  Which, given what was to happen later, was perhaps her problem.

  ‘Hang on!’ Janette suddenly said as we walked towards Rose. ‘A moment… if you please.’

  We all looked at her rather quizzically as she pulled a fistful of black beads from her anorak pocket.

  ‘Really?’ asked Frances, looking down and raising an eyebrow.

  ‘Rosary beads?’ asked Helen, clutching at her stomach a little, still feeling the effects of the strawberry-flavoured porridge.

  ‘They belonged to my godmother, Great-Aunty Rose,’ said Janette, swinging them in front of us. ‘Mum’s given them to me for good luck.’

  ‘Right,’ nodded Frances, with a look that indicated she didn’t do rosary beads.

  ‘I think we should all touch them,’ said Janette, ‘and say a little something.’

  ‘What? Out loud?’ asked Frances.

  ‘Anything that’ll help,’ said Niki, tapping the beads with her fingers and closing her eyes.

  ‘Absolutely,’ agreed Helen. ‘Dear Great-Aunty Rose, please look after us on this crossing…’ began Helen, closing her eyes and praying away. ‘Please keep us safe… so… thank you very much, Amen.’

  ‘Amen,’ agreed Niki and Janette.

  Helen opened one eye to look at Frances. ‘Amen?’

  ‘Amen,’ sighed Frances, touching the beads briefly with her fingertips.

  ‘There,’ declared Helen, opening both her eyes again. ‘Sorted.’

  ‘We should be all right now,’ concluded Janette, popping the beads back into her pocket.

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Frances. ‘What could possibly go wrong?’

  We set off with a staggered start. The other transatlantic teams, Ocean Reunion, Team Essence and Greg Maud (who was rowing with Perfecto Sanchez, as it was deemed too dangerous to row the North Sea in a solo boat), all went out before us. In contrast to our Lycra leggings and fleeces, Team Essence were bizarrely dressed for a storm in the Falklands in full heavy-weather gear plus life jackets, and in front of an audience made up mostly of our families, they proceeded to make a complete mess of their exit. Not only did they smash into our boat, but they also took out the BBC TV cameras that were filming the start of the race, before finally heading out to sea. Somehow we managed not to let our families down. We were in and off in one swift movement (just like our inspiration – those French gazelles). Even the current was making us look good. The sea was choppy, but the tide was very much in our favour and we appeared to fly out of the harbour, with Boadicea at the helm.

  Almost as soon as we hit the open sea, though, Helen started to feel sick. The boat was going up and down on the waves, up and down, up and down, and slowly but surely she became silent and then she turned a pale shade of green and then that was it. She couldn’t row, she couldn’t speak, and the only way she could cope was to retire to the tiny cabin below. She wasn’t the only one. Frances was also feeling the motion of the boat.

  ‘With Frances, she’d be out on the oars and then every so often you’d hear a quick scramble, the blades would go down, she’d retch over the side and then a minute later she’d wipe her mouth and get back on the blades,’ explained Niki. ‘But when Helen started being sick a few hours into the row she just went into the cabin. She did come out occasionally and try, but would end up back in the cabin. She was so ill. She had just a seasickness patch behind her ear and she’d had nothing to eat. She’d already been feeling sick because of the stupid porridge that we’d eaten and she hadn’t taken any medication. She chucked a whole lot of that back later, but you need to take it before you set sail. It was a bit of a shock for us all. We were all sitting there, quietly worrying about her, about how she would cope on the Atlantic. Even Helen, I think, had real doubts at that point. She couldn’t be like that for the whole trip: a) she wouldn’t be able to row, and b) she’d die.’

  Our plan had been to row two hours on, two hours off, which we had been told was the minimum required for the body to recuperate, but with land still in sight we had to abandon the idea. So with only three of us rowing we changed to an hour on, and a half-an-hour rest period.

  Needless to say, Janette was not terribly sympathetic. ‘I kept asking her if she wanted to eat anything or if she wanted to come out of the cabin and have a little try on the oars. It was like trying to coax a small child out of its room.’

  But as the day wore on, we had much bigger problems.

  ‘There were boats everywhere. As soon as we left the harbour they started,’ said Niki. ‘There were hundreds of smaller pleasure boats, and then further out there were fishing boats, and then the tankers.’ Obviously we had been expecting the North Sea to be busy and we knew it was dangerous and terrifying – we’d seen Team Beyond’s GPS – but nothing could prepare us for quite how quick and just how enormous the tankers were. Once we reached the open sea, and the two massive shipping lanes that bisect the North Sea, it became like a game of chicken.’

  There are rights-of-way laws on the water – a more manoeuvrable boat must not impede a less manoeuvrable boat, so smaller boats with engines give way to yachts under sail, tankers and people like us – but tankers are so huge and so fast that for them to shift course is a big deal. We were just rowing – going 2 knots to their 14–16 knots. So actually, for us, moving quickly wasn’t really feasible. That’s why it was so dangerous. They could plough us down and not even notice, like a little matchstick in the water. However, the situation was worse than that. It turned out that our biggest problem wasn’t the big ships, because we could see them on the radar; it was the fishing vessels.

  They didn’t stick to the deep channels. The deep channels are helpful – you know you’re going to cross them, it’s going to take about four hours and you’re going to have to be alert, to keep your eyes open at all times. But the fishing vessels could be anywhere. And although we had an AIS (automatic identification system), a lot of fishing boats don’t. So that meant they couldn’t see us and we couldn’t see them. It’s okay in daylight hours, but come nightfall it’s terrifying. We began to see quite why those chaps in Team Beyond had abandoned their boat.

  We decided that the only way to stay safe was for someone to be on watch the whole time and look for the lights and any other sign of incoming traffic.

  But Helen couldn’t go on deck. Despite all of Janette’s powers of persuasion and Niki’s kindness, encouraging her to eat or drink, she remained in the cabin. So it was just the three of us as we rowed on into the night.

  ‘Weirdly, I quite like a crisis,’ said Frances. ‘So in a way, having Helen out of action meant the three of us had to work out a different routine and be so strict with our timings.’

  On we rowed – 1 hour on, 30 minutes off. ‘We
were making good progress,’ said Frances. ‘Being out there at night and seeing the lights of the ships, it was such a novel experience. I was really enjoying myself.’

  Although none of us enjoyed the moment when Frances came out of the cabin at around 3 a.m. to discover a huge fishing boat bearing down on us.

  ‘How long has that been there?’ she asked, staring at the massive nets hanging off either side of the boat.

  Niki and Janette had been so busy chatting as they rowed that neither of them had noticed. We even had a rear-view mirror attached to Rose so that we could see where we were going, but none of us had bothered to look in it.

  It was so dark out there and the lights were so confusing, it was also hard to keep an eye on each other. Niki tripped at one point and fell over the side of the boat.

  ‘I was hanging upside down off the side of the boat with my hair in the water, my knees hooked over the safety line. My heart was in my mouth as I managed to scramble up and drag myself back on deck. It had happened so quickly no one had even noticed. “God bless safety lines,” was all I could think!’

  That wasn’t the first time she nearly went over. With Helen monopolising the bucket, the others were forced to use other forms of toilet facility. They had brought along two other methods of going to the loo, to test drive for the Atlantic. The first was a plastic bedpan and the second was a sort of Shewee device. The first was so shallow and our backsides ended up so close to our pee, dipping into it, that we just ended up sodden and covered in the stuff. And with the second it proved completely impractical to stand up with your pants down on a bobbing boat while straddling a plastic funnelled cup. So Niki opted for the third way.

  ‘We had been told to just stick our arses over the side of the boat and go for it. But when I did that I nearly turned the whole thing over! Maybe it works better if you are a bloke, but for us the only way it would work was if we peed in tandem, one on either side of the boat. Otherwise we were in danger of capsizing the thing!’