My Atlantic rowing adventure is off … for now. The “for now” is the most important part of that sentence. I cannot do anything about the other part. That is all in the past. However, what I am going to do from now on is under my control and will either bring my dream to row across the Ocean into fruition, or make it remain just a dream.
To get to the point, I saw an ad for an ocean rower to join a team to row across the Atlantic as independents on the Ocean Rowing Society’s social media page, which I follow. I responded half-heartedly, not really hoping to be selected as I was sure that there would have been a lot of candidates with a lot more rowing and ocean-going experience. To my surprise, after a short interview on Zoom I was offered the job. The other two members of the team were from Australia and seemed very motivated to do it. In fact, the main driver of the project Brian wanted to become the oldest person to row across an ocean at the age of seventy five. The other one Floyd was his future son-in-law, and the marriage was all planned to take place straight the row is finished.
They had approached a famous Dutch ocean rower who sounded great on paper. An accomplished adventurer in his youth, who had cycled from Amsterdam to Beijing, as well as across a few continents and off-the-beaten track places like Greenland and Siberia (in Winter!), he then took up ocean rowing where he has accumulated quite an impressive portfolio of ocean crossings including a 281-day solo row across the Pacific. In the recent years, he has taken crews across the Atlantic in his boat as a commercial project.
Ocean rowing could be quite an expensive undertaking – specially-designed boats are not cheap (the cost of a fully-equipped brand-new one easily reaching £100K), then there are costs of getting it to the Canary Islands (a common starting point) and getting it back from the Caribbean (a common finish line), as well as supplies, accommodation et cetera, et cetera. The main attraction of doing it with the Dutch skipper for us was the relative affordability with the fees covering pretty much the whole package which came with his vast experience as a bonus. Going to Amsterdam, I almost felt like a passenger who “just” needed to row – a difficult job, but not sufficient to get us from point A to point B. I was a bit nervous about meeting the crew – after all, we had to be living together on a very small boat in quite extreme conditions, so team dynamics were very important. I was not nervous about the skipper – he sounded impressive enough to guide us, rowing passengers through treacherous waters of the Atlantic.
It turned out that I needed not worry about the crew – we hit it off right from the start and had a great time together. On the contrary, everything about our skipper was just not right from the time he showed up at the station with a strong smell of alcohol around him. He was barefoot looking quite ripped and tanned in shorts and tank top. Nearly everyone around us was wearing shorts and t-shirts, but no one was barefoot. That detail made him stand out and look like Tarzan, a cool non-conformist character who keeps living on his terms and outside of what the society currently accepts as “the norm”. I kind of liked that and even forgave him the smell of booze.
He took us to a fishmonger to taste the traditional Dutch herring, the initiation process for the teams that he rows with. The herring was great, and it was quite clear that he genuinely wanted us to get along. It was also clear that he wanted to impress us by the fact that he was a well-known figure in that part of the World. The salesgirls at the fishmongers did not recognize him, and he was clearly taken aback by that fact. “Normally, everyone knows me around here”, he kept on saying.
He then took us to see the boat, which was kept in a hangar on an industrial estate. The boat was an R45, which is the biggest of them all with three rowing positions and two cabins. According to the skipper, it has done 10 Atlantic crossings, and it showed. It looked old and shabby, likely not to have been washed since the last crossing 8 months ago. It was full of drawings and writings left by the previous crews, which the skipper liked to keep. He considered them a part of the boat’s history. One stood out for me – “Motivational quotes are for people who are too weak to just get shit done!”. I liked it!
The boat that has done 10 Atlantic crossings.
Some more historical graffiti in the bow cabin.
We explored the boat for a bit and then went to the skipper’s place. I do not remember what we did, or what we talked about on that night, but I do remember doing 100 push-ups and 100 crunches as part of team-building challenges. This is what his normal practice had always been, and again I kind of respected that. He promised that we would take the boat out for a row on the following day, and we went to bed early. We all slept in one room in sleeping bags on three separate mattresses, but the accommodation on the boat was going to be even more limited so I saw that as part of our preparations for the row and did not mind it one bit.
We woke up early on the following morning, had breakfast and prepared for a theory session about what we were supposed to source for our trip. We also discussed nutrition (just take a scoop or two of the freeze dried food diluted with cold water throughout the day), hygiene (shave your balls before the row, and wipe your bottom with baby wipes after every shift to prevent bum sores), and common injuries and medical conditions onboard the boat (basically, the help is far away, the rest is up to you, Leo). We also drew a picture of the boat with some compartments, which we duly numbered according to the master copy that he gave us. We never had a chance to find out what those numbers meant. Overall, it was becoming clear to us that this was going nowhere, but we really wanted to take the boat out.
Also, it was the day that I first saw him drinking red wine from plastic bottles. It was really hot outside, probably more than 30 degrees, but it did not stop him from drinking and smoking. At one point we calculated that he smoked 3 packs throughout the day.
Finally, he was ready to take us to the storage facility where the boat was kept. Upon arrival, we discovered that the space inside the hangar was too tight for the car to manoeuvre, so the boat had to be physically pulled out of there to a place where the car could be connected to it. So, the three of us pulled the trailer along with the boat that weighed about one ton out while the skipper reversed his car into a suitable position. We then hooked it to the trailer and were off to the place it could be launched into the water. Somewhere halfway through we realised that we had forgotten to take the oars with us and had to do a little roundtrip back to the hangar to fetch them.
We finally arrived at the boat launching place at about six in the evening. There was a parking lot and a boat ramp leading into a canal. Our mission was to position the trailer on the slope in a way that would allow us to attach the rudder to the boat. It had to be screwed in from the inside of the stern cabin while another person was holding it from the outside. The skipper said it was too hot for him to do it, so we had to take turns trying to fix the rudder the right way around, using some rusty wrenches that did not quite fit the screws in an unbearable heat inside the cramped plastic cabin. It was very nice of all those Dutch people who were trying to either launch their boats or come out of the water to wait for us to finish our job without any verbal lubrication. The Australians said that back home we would have been given more hands-on advice, guidance and even correction of our life course. Someone would have even launched the boat themselves if they had felt that things were not progressing fast enough. Laurent, the boat man did save the day, and we were finally in the water…only to discover that the rudder was attached the wrong way round.
Finally on the boat enjoying a dip into the lake after a very hot day.
This was becoming to look a lot like “Three men in a boat” type of adventure, and at some point, it became more funny, than irritating. We finally were sea-worthy and were on our way into the open waters of a big lake. It was getting late; the temperature came down to the comfortable levels with a gentle breeze blowing in the right direction. The boat was flying, and we all had smiles on our faces especially considering the long wait and discomfort that we had had to endure to enjoy our time on the water. We had a swim in the lake, which added to the perfect end of an otherwise tedious day. It was amazing. We spent a couple of hours on the water, and headed back home as it started getting dark.
We talked about our plans for the following day and decided to go out on a long row along the canals and waterways to Amsterdam and onto the North Sea. We were planning to spend three days and two nights on the boat. Now it was on the water all ready for us. Nothing was going to stop us from doing what we had come there to do – to get used to long rows on the actual boat that we were going to take across the Atlantic with the actual people that we were doing it with. We had a great time cruising along the canals admiring the views while our skipper was trying to steer the boat out of danger. He was getting more unsteady on his feet, which was getting worse every time he disappeared into the cabin to have a sip from a plastic bottle with a red liquid. He kept missing suitable mooring places, finally parking the boat at a construction site where we had our lunch.
Passing by traditional Dutch houses.
We continued rowing for some time enjoying the experience and soaking up the atmosphere. They guys kept giving me tips on how to improve my technique, and it was all starting to come back to me. I used to row on flat water when I was a kid and did have some muscle memory of it which was now being woken up. I was also experiencing some déjà vu – we were rowing past some chocolate factories and the smell of chocolate was irresistible! It immediately brought back some childhood memories as the rowing club I was training at was situated right in front of a chocolate factory in the centre of Moscow. I recalled rowing or running along the Moscow River and breathing in that irresistible smell of chocolate. It had been annoying too as I remembered being hungry most of the time. Besides, I knew that the Soviet chocolate was not a good quality, but the smell was chocolaty enough for me to crave for it. Anyway, it was a sweet (literally) blast from the past and made my rowing experience even more enjoyable.
A chocolate factory with containers full of cocoa beans in front of it.
We encountered a coxed four crew rowing along a canal, who were very friendly and invited us to their rowing club for drinks and a very much needed break. We moored our boat and spent some time in their company. They saw an ocean rowing boat for the first time and were fascinated by our plans to row across an ocean. They offered us soft drinks and allowed us to stay and have dinner at their club, which we bought at a nearby café. They then locked the place up and left. We had a good time eating our dinner on the pontoon and enjoying the sunset. The skipper was still planning to go out into the North Sea for an overnight row. We were still giving him some benefit of the doubt, although we were running out of patience as the guy kept drinking wine from his plastic bottle throughout the day. Deep inside we all knew that this was going nowhere, but we were so good as a team, and we were so close to the start line… Then the skipper started throwing up on the pontoon. That was a sad sight; it was as if our dreams were being disposed of as a red-wine-coloured vomit. It was clear to all of us that this was the end of the road.
The final shot of the team in front of the boat.
We had to go home now. The only last obstacle was the two-metre fence with spikes and barbed wire on top of it. We were locked inside the rowing club on the pontoon. Our only option was to keep on rowing in the hope of finding another mooring, which was still open to the outside world. It was already pitch dark. Luckily, the skipper sobered up a little bit and remembered a nearby boat place, which was one of his long-time sponsors. We rowed there and moored the boat without a problem. We then discovered that the place too was closed off by high fences with spikes and barbed wire on top. After a quick reconnaissance we discovered a short section with no barbed wire on top and decided to go for it. I was first to climb it. Upon reaching the top, I looked down and hesitated. Jumping off it was not an option – it was too high, and the landing would have been too hard. For a moment, I imagined that I might have fallen and injured myself badly. I could almost see myself lying in a hospital bed in plaster cast in a special ward for all idiots with various forms of self-inflicted injuries. I changed my mind and just climbed down the rails of the fence. I then helped the others supporting their feet and bums as there were descending onto the other side. In the taxi we kept quiet, apart from Laurent who was laughing quietly, but uncontrollably. “I can’t believe I have come all the way from Australia for this shit!”, he told me between the giggles. Ralph was sitting in the front seat, and we were waiting for him to puke, but thankfully that did not happen. We got home and went to bed straight away, leaving serious conversations for the morning after.
We woke up early and had breakfast. Unlike on the previous days Ralph was nowhere to be seen. We wanted to part on “good” terms out of respect to his previous achievements, to what he had been before. He did not show up. We waited for about two hours until it became clear that it was his intention not to come down. Maybe he was embarrassed, which meant that there was hope for him. We left some cash on the table for his troubles and left. Ten minutes later we got a message – “At least, you could have helped me get the boat back”, which is precisely what we wanted to discuss with him before parting our ways. Well, probably the guy was messed up beyond repair after all.
Looking back at what happened in Amsterdam, I am grateful for experiencing it. I learned a great deal about what I want and what I do not want to get from this adventure. First, I want this to be my own project, something that I take part in building from the very beginning. I do not want to be a paid passenger on someone else’s boat. It is like paying a fee for climbing Everest to satisfy your ego. You pay Sherpas to carry your bag to the top, maybe even to put a chocolate mint on your sleeping bag in the base camp, you tick a box, you impress whoever it is you set out to impress. However, at the end of the day you start out as an arsehole and come back as one! I want to do all the footwork myself, from getting sponsorship deals, sourcing a boat, sorting out equipment and logistics, building up the team, training and bonding and going through the whole thing together; taking up and sharing the good and the bad between each other.
I am grateful to the guys who shared this experience with me. We had some laughs together and had some good times. I experienced what a good team could be like, and I am sorry that it was not meant to be. I am also grateful for their patience and willingness to teach me how to row. Both guys are accomplished rowers, and I am just picking up oars after years of not having done it. With their help I felt that my muscle memory was back, and I was really enjoying myself on the water. I realised that I actually like rowing and will definitely try and develop my skills regardless of my preparation for the Ocean crossing.
We were very different people united by a common goal. We got along because we put an effort to do so. We had time for each other, we compromised. Above all, we really listened to each other. How many times does that happen in our daily lives? Most of the time we just wait for other people to stop talking, so that we could tell something about ourselves. Imagine if we just learned to really listen to others, and try to say something meaningful in response? We knew that team dynamics would be absolutely crucial on a little boat in the middle of the Ocean, and we intuitively started building it up right after meeting each other. I am encouraged by that experience – finding a good team to row the Ocean with is entirely possible. You do not need people with similar backgrounds and life experiences; you just need to try and get along, to listen and have time for each other especially when the going gets tough.
Lastly, I do feel sorry for Ralph. I was angry, but not anymore. There is no point of being angry at something that has already happened, something that you cannot change, but I do feel sorry and disappointed for him on a human level. It hurts me to think of what has become of once larger-than-life character, an adventurer who has pushed the boundaries of what is humanly possible, rowing 19.000 kilometres solo, cycling through Greenland and Siberia in winter etc. It was like seeing a shattered pieces of china on a concrete floor and trying to imagine how beautiful that vase once was. I hope there is a hope for him and there is still a chance he might pull himself together. As it is I feel more sorry for the guy than am mad at him.
My desire to row the Atlantic is stronger than before. I am obviously disappointed by this setback but am determined to get to the start line by 2025. I am excited to go on this journey and see where this takes me. As the say, amateurs do it for results, professionals enjoy the process. Watch this space.