Huzzah!
Panatlantic
Sat 9 Feb 2008 18:26
Well! What can I say?! Long time no speak and all that, there has been a
fair amount of water pass under the proverbial bridge since we were last
in touch!
Firstly may I take this moment to offer my huge thanks to Rachel for
taking on responsibility for the blog since we lost contact, something I
hadn’t asked her to do. James and I are immensely grateful, as I’m sure
are many of you in the blogosphere, so thank you Rachel, you star!
Secondly I need to apologise for the tardiness of this blog! As you will
no doubt be aware James and I arrived in to English Harbour on Tuesday and
it is almost inexcusable that I’ve taken so long to get near an internet
connection. I have, however, spent the past 72 hours rediscovering what
it’s like to be drunk (quite enjoyable it turns out!) and making the most
of my short stay in Antigua. I’m now sat at my computer in Shrewsbury,
bashing the keys with my tendonitis-riddled fingers, finally within sight
of an internet connection!
Our computer died a hero’s death some weeks ago now, despite all our
efforts to resurrect it, and despite receiving masses of advice from
computer aficionados at home we were unable to revive our computer and
thus ended our blogs! We were both very upset at this, as it had become a
real highlight of our day: What nonsense shall I write today? How can I
convince everyone that I have gone really quite mad?! James had also
created a wonderful story about Dora, which I hope he writes up upon his
return to the UK later today, it really is very funny! Dora remained with
us until the evening of our penultimate day whence she came out from under
the boat and with a wiggle of her little tail she swam off into the
sunset.
It has been mentioned by several people that the day after we lost our
computer, we started to post some serious mileages! It may be true that
writing our blog was distracting us from the task at hand, but I can’t be
sure of that, whatever is the case soon after losing contact with you we
started to motor along.
The winds picked up from the North East and started to blow very strongly,
the seas grew again and we saw our fastest speed of the whole trip when we
clocked 14.0kts when not even rowing! James had shipped the oars and was
passing our water bottles for me to fill when a massive wave broke over
our stern and we surfed down it at record speed! We ran with the weather,
breaking the 70mile mark for the first time on our trip. We got a little
carried away with all those miles though and it was here that we made our
first big mistake: we ran too far south. We didn’t really add to the
number of miles we needed to row (our bearing to Antigua only changed by 5
degrees) but it meant that we did have to have some northerly in our
progress, which brought us further onto the beam in North Westerly seas.
It was as a result of this northerly trajectory that we were caught on the
stern quarter by a very large wave that nearly ended our whole campaign.
James was at the oars on the sunset shift after a day of big seas, the sun
had just dipped over the horizon and immediately the seas settled. I lay
in the cabin and we chatted about the comparatively calm state of the
water when James looked up and said: “Wow, big wave”. Three seconds later
I was thrown into the roof of the cabin as the wave crashed over the deck
and through the cabin door. We were thrown sideways down the wave listing
at 90 degrees as water poured in to the boat. I scrambled up and looked
out to see James pulling his head from under the water as he held on to
the gunwale for his life. We turned on the auto bilge (that pumps water
out at 4 gallons per second) and watched as the water flooding the deck
poured out of the scuppers. James righted himself and held in his hands
one half of a smashed oar.
Upon inspection of the bomb-site that used to be our cabin, we noticed
that our satellite phone had broken, which meant we would be without
communication of any sort for the duration of the trip (2 weeks to the
day, as it turned out), that our inverter had also died, meaning that we
couldn’t charge any electrical appliances like cameras and our video
camera, which finally ran out of battery just after we first sighted
Antigua on our last day! And that various other bits and bobs (James’ MP3
player, all our lighters etc) had also gone the way of all things.
We were very fortunate that this was just a rogue wave, normally waves
come in sets of 3, had this been the case we would have been rolled over
by the second and third waves without a doubt, so for that we can be
rather thankful.
It did, however, set a precedent for the night as we got absolutely
battered. That night I reached 12.9kts as one wave broke over the stern,
quarter filling our footwell with foaming water and we continued to be
pummelled from all sides until the end of my midnight-1am shift, when a
bleary-eyed James appeared out of the cabin, having not slept a wink due
to the noise of crashing waves smashing against the boat, to behold me
soaked from head to toe and probably looking a little nervous! James
announced that it was not really his choice to continue rowing in such
conditions, I concurred and we put out the anchor and dived in to the
safety of the cabin.
So much for our decision to run South!
This left us with 500miles to go, 60 of which had to be in a northerly
direction, which meant some tough rowing on the beam, but the winds were
powerful enough that we still made good ground until the Atlantic threw
one final banana skin at us, dropping an area of low pressure right on us
with 250miles to go and stopping us in our tracks for 75 hours. I have
since been told that this was the first such low pressure system in the
area for 3 months, but such had been our luck on the crossing we had to
expect the weather to go against us again before cruising in to Antigua!
Spending 3 nights and 3 days in a 6ft cabin with a huge bulk of a man is
not as pleasant as it sounds. We battled for space in our sleep, elbowing
and kneeing each other throughout the long nights. Thankfully both of us
kept flatulation to a minimum, the cabin smelt bad enough already, a few
sneaky guffs might have finished us off.
Finally, at 4am local time (8am GMT) the winds changed and we got back on
the oars, and boy did we row! We rowed 2 hours on and 1 hour off during
the day for 4 days, usually switching back to 1 hour on and 1 hour off at
night until our last night when we maintained the tougher schedule to see
us power in to Antigua. We were on a ¾ beam due to strong North Easterly
winds and took a lot of waves over the side of the boat, but undeterred we
continued to put in massive miles and the warm glow of Antigua appeared on
the night time horizon over 24 hours before we would have expected it.
With 30 miles to go we could easily discern the glow of streetlights,
which promptly disappeared for 2 hours as the heavens opened on us and the
sky went totally black as massive storm clouds rolled over us. But soon
enough it was visible again and before too long we could make out
individual lights.
With just over a mile to go to the finish line, with James and I rowing
together and averaging 20 minute miles, we suddenly heard the wonderful
sound of an outboard and a RIB carrying the race organisers, my mum and
James’ dad appeared next to us. For the first time in some years I had a
huge gush of emotion that almost overwhelmed me, finally releasing itself
as a huge whoop of joy. We bantered with the Rib for the next 20 minutes
before we heard the magical sound of the claxon confirming that we had
crossed the finish line. We both punched the air with joy and whooped some
more, then set to the task of rowing the final mile in to English Harbour.
We expected to row in to a classic British pontoon where we’d have a few
family and friends (plus stragglers) to greet us, but the reality couldn’t
have been any further from this modest prediction, and we were utterly
humbled and blown away by our reception.
We were joined outside of the harbour, still in the open sea, by 3 or 4
small boats; fishing vessels and zodiacs wanting to be a part of the
action, this soon increased to 6 or 7 boats as we entered the harbour, all
of them whooping and shouting and banging on anything they could to make
as much noise as possible.
We looked up to the battlements that guard Nelson’s Dockyard as we entered
English Harbour and couldn’t believe our eyes as half a dozen flares went
off and a crowd of 20 or 30 people waved and cheered at us from high on
the battlement walls.
Every one of the 50 or so yachts moored in the harbour was sounding their
horns, crews were all up on deck shouting and screaming and then came the
coup de grace: A bikini boat, laden with 15 or 20 bikini girls circled us
cheering and waving, and jiggling away of course: man that was a sight for
sore eyes! James is considered very attractive in a conventional sense,
but even after 63 days I just don’t fancy him, and the sight of this
bikini boat was almost too much to handle, and given I was wearing a
particularly tight pair of shorts it almost caused some embarrassment!
We looked over our shoulders towards the pontoon where 5 other ocean
rowing boats were moored up and were utterly dumbfounded to see an
enormous crowd had gathered, more flares were going off, and the noise of
fog horns and shouting was almost deafening.
We cruised in and threw our painters ashore so we could be tethered safely
and finally stood and acknowledged the crowds: I raised my arms, tilted
back my head and let out the biggest shout of my life.
We couldn’t move for being hugged and having hands shaken, my mum and
brother Rory were there, as was my Aunt Kirsty who had become so hooked on
the whole adventure she booked a flight to Antigua from Canada at the last
moment! The Met Police from Mission Atlantic were also there, having
finished an hour earlier, as were Joss and Ian from Pendovy Swift, Orlando
and Ben from Row Commando and George from Oyster Shack, it was wonderful
sharing the moment with these special people.
The whole occasion, from being contacted by the RIB to tottering away from
the dockyard some 2 hours later was the most concentrated period of
positive emotion that I have ever experienced, I experienced joy in a way
that I find difficult to write, but after 63 days 2 hours and however many
minutes it was, it is understandable I suppose!
Everyone who has rowed an ocean spends the next 2 days trying to learn how
to walk again, it is one of the funniest feelings, because your legs are
totally pissed! You feel absolutely fine, but cannot get your legs to do
what you want them to, plus for the first 12 hours or so we have the most
wide-eyed dazed look on our faces, it has to be seen to be truly
appreciated but having seen it in myself, and then in the rowers who have
arrived subsequently I can attest that it makes my ‘tired face stage 1’
look normal!
The next 3 days were wonderful, I got right on the booze and had a total
of 14 hours sleep, there was simply too much to do!
Most importantly of all was seeing the Jaydubyoo boys, Row of Life and
Ocean Summit come in, and making sure that I screamed and shouted as
loudly for them as I possibly could. James and I took all of our flares
and used them to celebrate the arrival of these three boats, each of which
have wonderful stories to tell that I couldn’t do justice to here.
And then yesterday it was all over! As I took off on BMI flight 722 I was
already asleep, I then slept through both meals and awoke again 50 miles
from Manchester, having slept my way home across the Atlantic! What a
bizarre thought, it took 63 days to go East to West, and I didn’t even
wake up to see my return journey!
So, gone are the mega yachts, the palm trees and the rum punches, and back
is frost, warm beer and road rage! I was treated to a wonderful sunrise
this morning though, the equal of any I saw in my whole crossing!
I am staying in my family home for the next week, and as Shropshire is
Britain’s most rural county I have neither broadband nor mobile phone
access. I would love to speak to (most of) you however, so please do call
my home phone on 01743351629. I should be back on my mobile again by
Friday night…. Given any luck!
I will also send another blog later on this week, to sum up and to discuss
how it feels to be back, but I felt I had to bash this one out as I had
been rather slack since arriving in Antigua.
Until later on this week, I hope you are all well, thank you for reading
these blogs and for being there with us throughout our journey.
Niall