Four Mums in a Boat

by Janette Benaddi, Helen Butters, Niki Doeg

  Eventually we were ‘glad’ we only had Bounce Balls to eat in our snack packs, we were ‘glad’ we had to ration each wet wipe to be reused at least twice before ending up in the toilet bucket, we were ‘glad’ we had no autohelm, ‘glad’ we had no lighting at night, ‘glad’ that Niki was teaching Helen to steer, ‘glad’ none of us drove with her at night as we found out she couldn’t see in the dark, ‘glad’ we only had 500 miles left to go, ‘glad’ we had not washed our hair in two and a half months, ‘glad’ our calf muscles had withered to nothing, ‘glad’ our chafe-free pants had flown overboard.

  Except that Janette was not too happy about the last one. ‘I have never seen so much fanny in my life!’ she said. ‘There was fanny in front of me, fanny to the back of me, fanny in my face, fanny on my head, just fanny, fanny, fanny, everywhere! And they’re hideous! I have no idea what my husband is thinking!’

  The level of nudity was fine; it was the proximity of the nudity that, perhaps quite literally, got up her nose.

  ‘There was one point when Janette complained to me, “Helen, take your vulva out of my face!” I was, to be fair, bent right over trying to stick plasters on my feet. But she’s right; there was a lot of fanny. Sometimes you’d open the cabin door to find an arse in your face, as someone had put surgical spirit on their backside and were cooling it off in the air. Or maybe they were just giving their buttocks an airing.’

  ‘The worst bit was walking around the boat with your pants off, legs apart, scuttling like a crab,’ said Janette. ‘There’d be a wave and suddenly someone would tumble towards you, fanny in the face. For some reason, Helen was the worst. She’d walk through as you were sitting down, rowing, her legs akimbo – there was nothing you could do, nowhere to go. You’d get more information than her gynaecologist. Frankly, I saw enough fanny on the Atlantic to last me a lifetime.’

  Fanny was not the only vision we saw. Much like we did during those two nights we spent on the North Sea, we all, at one point or another, began to hallucinate, although unlike on the North Sea it took much longer for these visions to come. But they were just, if not more, vivid and also oddly personal and profound. Maybe it’s the intense loneliness of the sea that allows your brain to play and fill in the gaps, to compensate for the boredom. Or maybe in the quiet and calm, you have time for reflection, space to explore your feelings or your deepest thoughts.

  ‘I’d be rowing along and I’d think, “What are these houses doing here?”’ said Janette. ‘And there’d be a whole row of houses and a red telephone box. I’d be thinking, “I’m rowing in the ocean. How can they be there?” I saw a lot of flyover bridges. I’d be rowing away from a bridge. And trees. I saw a lot of trees as I was rowing along at night. They were particularly vivid. And I saw a lot of houses. I could see the bricks, the windows, the grass in front of the houses, sloping down towards me.’

  ‘I heard a choir,’ said Helen. ‘Janette saw an angel. She kept saying to me, “Look, Helen, there’s an angel, there’s an angel.” And she saw this angel figure, just small, sitting by the navigation lights. I’m afraid I didn’t, for once! All I could hear, for the first two weeks, was a choir, singing in my head.’

  ‘There’s something about death, dark skies and stars,’ said Frances. ‘My mother’s name was on the boat, I was rowing for her, for Maggie’s. I thought, “She is with me all the time.” Especially during the night. Not during the day, really. I didn’t think about her so much during the day, but at night I felt her presence – she was there with me, looking down. It was an odd feeling because I’m not sentimental like that at all. But I really did feel her and it was incredibly comforting.’

  ‘I always felt my father was there. His name was also on the boat,’ said Helen. ‘I always felt there was somebody behind me. I was always turning around to look, trying to catch him out. I remember being in the cabin when I was feeling really ill and sort of asking for him to be there. I felt his presence. I felt his support, like he was looking after me. After I saw Janette’s Great-Aunty Rose on the North Sea, if we were rowing together at night, we’d chat about it a lot. Janette would say she could smell eggs and bacon. She said there was somebody with us who likes eggs and bacon. She could feel somebody with us. I’d be saying, “Well, my dad liked a cooked breakfast but he wasn’t that bothered.” We were trying to think who it might be, and then, in the end, for some reason, we came up with Frances’s Aunt Edith. Who unfortunately doesn’t seem to exist. Then Janette would say, “Somebody’s with us who likes a floral slipper. Anyone? Anyone partial to a floral slipper?” Then we’d rack our brains trying to think of someone. It was really funny.’

  But then the more we felt the rhythm of the sea and surrendered ourselves to its power, its charm, the more we achieved what in meditative terms is called ‘flow’.

  ‘I had moments where I forgot completely about responsibility, because the sea does that to you,’ said Janette. ‘Looking at those stars, it does take your mind away. It takes your mind to a place where you’ve never been before. Well, where I’ve never been before. It is a bit like meditation, I guess. It takes you completely away from yourself. Night-time was amazing. I liked it better than the day. Whether it was rough or calm, I loved the night because I could see all the stars, and I loved it when the moon came out because I could see everything then. Sometimes at night you can hear and see the fish. When Niki and I were on duty one night there was an enormous pod of dolphins. She saw them first. She’s so good at spotting wildlife. She always saw everything first. There was a massive pod of dolphins and we’d stopped rowing to watch. There were loads of them flying through the air, twisting and jumping, all lit by the moon.’

  ‘As soon as we saw wildlife, we all downed tools,’ said Frances. ‘We’d all stand up, but we also didn’t want to damage any of the animals with our blades on their heads. So we’d pull them on board and watch the turtle or the dolphin.’

  ‘One night, it was round about sunset,’ said Janette, ‘Niki and I were rowing and all of a sudden we saw a whale come steaming past us, really close, on a mission, just going for it. Normally they’d stop and circle us for a while. They’d just circle around the edge of the boat and keep circling until they worked out who we were. The night-time was spectacular. It was a dome of stars; often I’d mistake them for boats because they’re quite low. They look like they’re on the horizon. The clear nights were particularly beautiful.’

  We used to refer to the moon as our bedroom light and would wait for it to come up every night. It was extraordinary, the difference it made. We could read by the light of the moon. We could see each other, see the ocean – without it the world was very black. Its cycle was fascinating. And the full moons were breath-taking, with the whole ocean glittering and shimmering before us. We would also row towards it, keeping it to one side of the boat. We could always tell when whoever was steering had fallen asleep at the tiller (mainly Janette), as the moon would suddenly appear at the wrong side of the boat.

  ‘We had one night where I just looked behind me. It was really calm and it looked like a path of fairy lights in the air,’ said Helen. ‘I said to Frances, “Am I seeing something? Can you see?” It just looked so magical. And she said, “Yes, I can see what you are seeing.”’

  ‘It was phosphorescence,’ said Frances.

  ‘A footpath of sparkling lights,’ added Helen, ‘like the yellow brick road from The Wizard of Oz. I remember thinking, “It looks so magical, am I hallucinating?” We felt really close to space, the stars – the moon was our friend. We couldn’t wait for the moon to rise as that meant we had light. It’s amazing how much you can see by the light of the moon. That was definitely one of the best moments. That, and seeing the whales close up.

  ‘We didn’t see many. There’d be days and days and days when we didn’t see anything other than weird birds. We’d ask ourselves where these things had come from. We were thousands of miles away from land. And they looked like mini-dinosaurs. They would swoop down. I remember
Niki shouting at me, “Helen, there’s a sign, there’s a sign! There’s a whole bunch of feathers for you, right there!”’

  But it was the whales we really loved. We’d been warned that they were dangerous; one flick of the tail and the whole boat would go under. Yet we never felt worried or at risk, which was probably foolish of us. We just felt immensely privileged to see something so beautiful in the wild. Particularly when we were visited by a mother and her calf.

  ‘She was huge and grey,’ said Helen. ‘And then the baby just came over, right next to the boat, and lifted its head and blew. That was a really special moment because we were all mums in the boat, and we felt the whale trusted us with her baby, that she knew we were the same. That we would never harm it. It was a really important moment. Sometimes it was like the ocean read our thoughts. Earlier, when Niki had an infected finger, there was a possibility that she might have to leave the boat. We were phoning Caroline. We were phoning Thor. We were phoning everybody about her infected finger. It was all very much touch and go, as, if it went on much longer, she would be in serious trouble. Then we made the medical decision that we were going to have to lance it. She went into the cabin and Janette got the scalpel and sliced into the skin and was squeezing all this pus out of her finger, but that’s when the big pod of dolphins arrived. We’d had quite big waves that day and we were all tired and Niki was in pain, but then we just saw all these dolphins flying through the waves. It’s like the wildlife came to us just when we needed it most…’

  And the longer we were out there, the more we appreciated the little tricks the weather used to play on the ocean. We could sit in the boat and watch a small squall develop. A little black cloud would appear out of almost nothing and we would see it heading towards us. We’d been rowing in bright sunshine, waiting for it to arrive. Then we’d close our eyes as it approached, in anticipation of the rainstorm about to be unleashed upon us. It would soak us out of nowhere and then disappear, leaving a stunning rainbow in its wake.

  ‘They would span from one end of the horizon to the other,’ said Niki. ‘Arching across the whole sky. They were absolutely beautiful. They were like a reward for surviving the rain storm in the first place.’

  And then, of course, there were the sunsets.

  ‘Pink and grey clouds,’ said Frances. ‘When it was cloudy it was more beautiful than ever, because the pink and orange would bounce and reflect off the sky. The light was extraordinary.’

  ‘It is absolutely magnificent out there,’ said Niki.

  ‘I felt like I was on another planet,’ said Janette.

  ‘It was like we were on a huge round table and we were the centrepiece. And the clouds were travelling around us,’ said Frances. ‘It was a privilege to witness such beauty. It was something none of us shall ever forget. It was as if we were guests in another world… for a while.’

  SHIP’S LOG:

  ‘Some of the best moments in our lives are the hardest – when our mind and body are stretched to the limit, when we take up the challenge and flow with it. There were many times on our journey when we were completely involved in an activity, which became our full focus, and we were in flow. We found our strengths collectively and we worked with them together to achieve things we did not know we were capable of.’

  (JANETTE/SKIPPER)

  CHAPTER 15

  Antigua

  ‘Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.’

  THOMAS A. EDISON

  It wasn’t until the arrival of the second support yacht that we realised quite how lonely we had been. We had not seen another face, another person, for nine weeks. We had become so wrapped up in our own world that it was almost a revelation that anyone else or anywhere else existed. We were so used to our routines – rowing, sleeping, eating, making hot water (Helen), cleaning the solar panels and toilet (Frances), checking for water ingress, replacing seat wheels and doing bilge duties (Niki) and monitoring rubbish (Janette), as well as the endless rowing – that when Manfred Tennstedt (the skipper of the support yacht) announced over the radio that they were coming to see us to check on how we were and to get some footage of us for a documentary, we became giddy to the point of hysteria.

  Helen was on lookout, scanning the horizon, scampering up and down the boat, looking for any signs of life other than flying fish and dinosaur birds.

  We were now, by this stage of the race, rowing three up during the day, with one of us steering (we had long since given up hope of repairing our autohelm). It was exhausting and we were shattered, but we had little choice. Our progress was being hampered by squalls and currents determined to send us off course, so after another of our many meetings, we all decided we would have one last crack at it, one final push to get there before the end of February.

  ‘I had the number 22 in my head,’ said Helen. ‘So I was convinced we were going to get there on 22 February. Someone told me 22. I had this feeling. Niki was always saying, “We’re never going to get there. We’re just going 2 knots or 1½ knots the whole time.” I said, “Niki, we don’t know that.” They say that when you get to a certain point the trade winds and the currents will help you, so I just knew that we would speed up at some point, but that time never seemed to come. Our families were waiting to book their flights. I kept saying we would be there by 22 February, that we’d speed up, but we were only going 29 or 30 miles each day and we had over 200 miles left to row. Gareth and Mark were asking when to book for Antigua, and Carsten was telling them it could be March. But I still had this 22 in my head. Anyway, as we crept up to that date I knew it wasn’t going to happen, and so did the rest of our families. They all had to change their flights.’

  So when Manfred arrived with the dawn on 23 February, he could not have appeared at a more opportune moment. We were down to our last. We were on our knees. We’d drained all the reserves of determination, energy and character that any of us had left. We knew our families we waiting for us to arrive, they were desperate to book their tickets, but we were still up to a week away from English Harbour, Antigua.

  The sun was beating down and the waves were calm as we rowed, pausing occasionally to stare out at the sea.

  ‘When did they say they were coming?’ asked Frances.

  ‘Today,’ said Janette. ‘They said today.’

  ‘Shall we call them on the radio?’ asked Helen.

  ‘Let’s give them a bit longer,’ said Janette.

  ‘But they said today,’ confirmed Niki.

  The anticipation was building by the hour. What were we going to ask him? What news did we want to know? It was so ridiculously exciting, the thought of having a visitor, out here, in the middle of the ocean!

  ‘There they are!’ declared Helen, pointing off towards the horizon.

  ‘Where?’ asked Janette, squinting.

  ‘There. That speck.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘It’ll be a turtle,’ said Frances, still rowing.

  ‘Or another flying fish about to hit me in the face,’ said Niki.

  Niki was always hit in the face by flying fish. None of us knew why. It was just always Niki and always in the face, especially at night. They’d come at her under cover of darkness, like kamikaze fighter pilots, and she’d get smacked in the chops when she least expected it. And then Helen would spend the next 10 minutes screaming as the fish flipped around in the dark and we tried to grab hold of it to chuck it out of the boat. Sometimes we’d fail. Sometimes they rotted for days before we could find the source of the terrible rank smell.

  ‘NO! I promise you,’ promised Helen. ‘It’s a boat.’

  A boat that took an eternity to arrive. We watched for what seemed like hours, for Skye, the Talisker support boat skippered by Manfred and his girlfriend Jemma, to get close enough to make contact. First, it was waving distance, soon it was hollering, then shouting, then shouting and waving and hollering. Questions were batted back and forth. How were we?
How were they? What was their gossip? Who had finished? Seemingly nearly everyone. Out of the 26 crews, 18 were already home. How was Antigua? Amazing. What was the atmosphere like? Electric. Was it packed? Rammed. We should enjoy it when we get there. Take our time. Come in slowly. Relish every second.

  They took out their cameras and started to film us rowing along for a documentary on the race.

  ‘He’s not harnessed on,’ said Frances, looking across at the boat.

  ‘No,’ agreed Helen, glancing over at Manfred as he swung over the side of his boat, wielding his camera. ‘How terribly dangerous. One slip…’ And she screamed.

  Manfred had hurled himself off the side of his boat and was swimming towards us. Seemingly, he was unimpressed at the idea that it would take just one rogue wave to sweep him away from us; one rogue wave between him and Guadeloupe and the coast of Venezuela.

  ‘Morning,’ he said as he swam through the waves.

  ‘It’s like coming across a real-life merman,’ declared Helen. ‘Covered in tattoos.’

  ‘How are you all feeling?’ he asked as he came towards us.

  We were so impressed by his swimming. We were so impressed by his calm in the water. That manly one-armed front crawl, holding onto his camera. We were just so impressed by his being there. We had so much to say, so many questions, we were all tripping over ourselves, trying to speak. We were so starved of company, so starved of information, that anything he said we laughed at, anything he told us we found fascinating. What was going on in the outside world?

  It was odd. We had been in a bubble for the past nine weeks. And we loved our bubble. We’d deliberately created it. It was our protection. Our way of dealing with the enormity of what we were doing, rowing 3,000 miles across the most unpredictable ocean on earth. Our world had become us and the boat. The closest thing to us was, in fact, space (so the tweet we received from Tim Peake was something we really treasured). Also, after so many days at sea (63 at this point), we had felt, like the dolphins, the whales and the flying fish, that we, too, had become part of the ocean. We had become creatures of the sea. We understood it better. We respected it more. We had fallen in love with it. We bashed ourselves less as our ability to read the waves improved. We could predict the sideways rogue waves coming a mile off and were ready for them. We could see mini-storms coming and would put on our wet-weather gear and sing loudly to ourselves as the rain poured down. It was like we’d been battling an enemy, a bitter enemy, that didn’t want us there, but after weeks of exhausting manoeuvres – of attack and counter-attack – we had grown tired of the war and used to each other’s company. We’d come to some sort of harmonious agreement to put up with one another, at least until we reached Antigua.