Battle Scars

by Jason Fox

  The black ocean became steely sky as the boat twisted upwards and over. For a second the world seemed weightless, the horizon spiralling above us, and then … Crash! The Ellida had flipped back, landing at the base of the wave, its fury washing over us. Through a porthole I watched as the wreckage of our capsize floated past: I saw at least two pairs of shoes, a box of protein bars, a water bottle, and then a pair of milky-white legs swimming towards the upturned hull of the boat, our craft – so insignificant against the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean – slowly righting itself. I pulled myself upwards and looked around. Aldo was OK, drenched but unhurt. Our cabin was a watery wreck, though, pulped into a slopping soup of sleeping bags, kit and clothes. Outside the three lads pulled themselves back on to the oars, heaving their spirits into another battle with the next oncoming wave, then the next one and then the next. Our mission – an attempt to set the world-record row across the Atlantic by travelling from Lagos in Portugal to Venezuela in a boat measuring 8.5 metres in length and only 1.2 metres in width – had become as dangerous as any mission I’d served on in war.

  With our belongings gathered and the crew in OK shape, Aldo and I huddled up for warmth, moving through the procedures we knew would help us to stay fit and healthy under such testing circumstances. And then? A video blog. In the footage that was recorded moments later, only after the boat was back in action, I looked rough – my clothes soaked through, the skin around my face becoming gaunt due to weeks of regimented nutrition and a work routine that operated around the clock: two hours rowing, two hours rest. Surrounding us was an unpredictable environment that threatened to swallow the boat whole at any moment. All of us were ragged, the transcript of our to-camera chat revealing the stresses we’d been put under.

  Aldo: We’re absolutely battered … We managed to row for about twelve hours throughout the night, and then four hours ago we rowed in to what can only be described as one of the worst squalls I’ve ever been in. Probably I was near hypothermic, without doubt. [Turning to Foxy.] I don’t know if you were?

  Foxy [Laughing]: I was cold, yeah … There were phenomenally strong, 30–35-knot winds. We then tried to put out two sea anchors to steady us as we headed through the winds and keep us on course, but the wind was that strong, we lost both of them. We now have a power anchor that’s stabilizing us and we’ve battened down the hatches – again. We’re now eating and waiting for this to blow through. It could be three hours, it could be three days – we’re not sure at the moment.

  Aldo: And at the minute, our cabin is completely drenched, we’re completely drenched, so it could be another night of spooning, Mr Fox.

  Foxy: Lucky me!

  Aldo: But it’s the only way we’re going to stay warm in this cabin. It’s been an epic [adventure] so far.

  As we hunkered down, I wondered if the challenge put in place all those months ago – five men in a boat, battling with the Atlantic – hadn’t been a bloody stupid move. The adrenaline was flying around. Had we bitten off more than we could chew? Is this boat strong enough? Are we gonna fall apart? I was holed up in a tiny cabin, shivering, listening to the boat as it creaked and groaned under the tidal pressures swirling around outside. Certainly my younger self might have been surprised to see me in that situation: during my twenties I’d experienced a recurring dream where I was caught up in a massive tidal wave, the water looming up over me, turning everything dark as I awoke in a flap, assuming I’d died; I was always petrified by that scenario.

  I had overcome my fears, though, because I needed the challenge.

  Now, in The Ellida we were being battered and our fragilities were exposed to the elements. The chances of us emerging from the situation in one piece were worsening with every passing wave, but I wouldn’t have traded my position in that cramped, watery coffin alongside Aldo for a pint in a warm boozer at home. No chance. I had followed on from Alex’s advice to listen to my heart, and my heart had told me to seek out adventure. Now I was toiling through a treacherous expanse of water that could crush us in an instant. But in the near-death I felt alive.

  Team Essence’s formation began with Ross Johnson and Mat Bennett. Ross was an ex-Royal Marine sniper. Mat had also been in the military, operating as an RAF copper, but following their service the pair of them became brokers in the City. Apparently Mat had always fantasized about rowing an ocean, and the original plan had been to cross the Atlantic as a four-man team on the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge, a race involving around 30 teams from all over the world sailing from the Canary Islands to Antigua and Barbuda. At that stage, Aldo and Oliver – a bloke who was openly afraid of water, and of both open and confined spaces (which might have dissuaded some crews from taking him on) – made up the foursome; he had previously worked in advertising and film production. I was an unknown face to some of the team. But having all met up on Aldo’s stag do in the run-up to the race, the four became five and I was installed in the set-up. We soon became inseparable, later referring to ourselves as the ‘Rogues of Ocean Rowing’.

  The only snag was that the race organizers hadn’t been entirely happy with us changing our team’s personnel. We’d tried to reapply as a five-man crew but Talisker weren’t accepting of the alteration and for a while I became fearful of losing out on my place. Following on from the work with Channel Four’s Who Dares Wins and the dive expeditions in Madagascar, I knew that a rowing adventure, brimming with risk and reward, was the perfect end-game to my therapy. I’d need to train, and train hard, in the build-up. There were mission-planning sessions to execute. And once on the water, the work was likely to be as arduous as anything I had undertaken in the Royal Marines, given that it required us to be crossing the ocean for nearly two months. When I thought about it, the mission wasn’t unlike a military job: we’d figure out our roles in a planning phase, before moving into training, and then muddling our way through when everything inevitably went south during the operation. It sounded ideal to me. So I was worried that missing this therapeutic dice with death – through an administrative detail – would set me back emotionally.

  ‘Nah – they don’t own the ocean,’ said Ross, having realized that Talisker were opposed to reinstating our team. ‘We can do whatever we want …’

  A new mission brief was set. Forget the race: this time we were to row the Atlantic, alone, unsupported, and having heard that somebody had already done it in 52 days, our competitive spirits soon spiked. Right, we’ll do it faster, then! We later learned that the first attempt hadn’t actually made it to land; they’d hit a rocky outcrop in the middle of the sea which ended their adventure. But that news only encouraged us further. A competitive timer had been established for the team: beat 52 days and set a world record – that was all that mattered. We soon involved ourselves in training details, rowing around the Essex coast in The Ellida as a warm-up before taking on a slightly bigger challenge, the five of us traversing the North Sea to fully familiarize ourselves with the boat’s workings.

  What should have been a fairly stern test of our resources was actually quite easy – perhaps too easy. The trip was supposed to last five days and should have been gnarly as hell; we’d expected to receive a taste of the sea’s perils. Instead the water was flat and glassy and the journey only took forty-eight hours, but it did give us a glimpse of the monotony awaiting us on a much longer voyage. Three men had to take on the oars for a two-hour shift, while the other two rested. We soon discovered this to be a grind: the time between work stints rarely allowed enough time for any considerable recuperation, and there was the possibility that people might become irritable and tempers would fray.

  Still, I was confident the crew would hold together. Mat had been the schemer behind the operation, having funded the trip and entering us into the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge in the first place. He was a dedicated bloke. I knew Aldo to be practical and experienced from his time in the Marines, and his role as a trained medic was likely to come in handy, too; he’d become adept at patching up all sorts
of ailments and injuries. Ross seemed to operate in permanent flippancy, but his unshakable attitude of not giving a crap was likely to be a positive, and sitting next to him when one of the other lads was having a meltdown would later prove a psychological lifesaver for me. The only one of the crew I’d become concerned about was Oliver – he didn’t like the sea or open spaces, claustrophobia was a problem, and the challenge was a million miles away from his comfort zone. Everything about the row had the potential to send him into a flat spin, but the bloke seemed eager to press ahead. The group was strong. Whenever the five of us had got together for drinks, to discuss the mission logistics or training details, our evenings were lit up by hours of boozy planning.

  At times, I worried about how I might cope for such an extended period of time on the water. Not long before we embarked for South America, I’d taken a short holiday to Ibiza and for a day or so I’d looked out to sea with apprehension.

  Hang on a second. What’s going to happen to us on the water? I thought during one idyllic sunset at the beach. This is quite a serious thing. We could get into all sorts of trouble.

  I visualized The Ellida rowing away from a land mass that was safe and secure, our small vessel nothing more than an insignificant speck in the Atlantic, slowly moving towards an expanse of nothingness. I pictured what everything might look like once we were stuck, alone, in the middle of the map, the water stretching out around us for thousands of miles. It seemed like a daunting prospect – intimidating, even. Thankfully, those moments of self-doubt only appeared in flashes and the stress rarely lasted too long. Any dark thoughts were overwhelmed by a need to operate within a tight-knit team that carried a hardcore focus. I knew if one of us were to get into trouble at any stage on the voyage, the others would immediately fall in line to help. As in The Brotherhood, an unspoken bond had formed within the five-man unit, and I knew that I could trust in every dude on The Ellida – even Oliver, with his fears, was regarded as a highly capable crew member. I might have been rowing away into the void, but it was a step I needed if I was to really reconnect with my juvenile self. I had to become comfortable with the uncomfortable again; I needed to find out about myself under extreme pressure. The time had come to forget about the past and stop worrying about the future. It was about living in the now.

  The North Sea training mission did give us one episode of terror, when our small vessel was nearly capsized by a gigantic container ship. We had been rowing past a series of oil rigs when we noticed a tanker heading towards our path. The vessel dwarfed ours and would have sunk us without realizing had we been unfortunate enough to collide with its hull. Our crew powered on – We need to start rowing, now! – but the ship seemed destined to strike us; even the concerted effort to increase our speed couldn’t shake the sense of dreadful inevitability as our courses aligned. As its large, steel bulk moved slowly into our route, its exterior missed us with only 500 metres to spare – that might sound like plenty, but in nautical terms it was very much a near miss. We had been given our first lesson that even in moments of calm, the ocean was a dangerous adversary.

  30

  The flying fish first struck us a couple of weeks into the trip after we’d pushed into the heart of the Atlantic. Sleek and silvery, they looked fairly harmless as they propelled themselves in and out of the waves, but at night, as the water’s larger, scarier predators hunted them down, their movements became more rapid. They darted around at greater velocities, sometimes landing in the boat, where they usually slapped into whoever was working on the oars at the time – Aghh! The yelps always had the team laughing, but everyone dreaded the moment when it was their turn to take a wet hit. When the sun rose in the morning The Ellida would resemble a fishmonger’s shop, as several fish carcasses would be littering the deck, their stink of rot attacking the nostrils.

  Unsurprisingly, given the trail of dead we were throwing into our wake, we were later accompanied by some more sizable wildlife. For a while, the dorsal fin of an oceanic whitetip shark followed in our slipstream, silently moving alongside The Elida, presumably to check on what was edible and what was not. On another occasion an even more ominous shape seemed to loom in the wave behind us – broad and bulbous, I could have sworn it was a great white. For a short while there was an extra effort not to tip our fragile boat into the drink, where one of us might lose a leg or two should the dinner-bell ring.

  At times, daily life resembled a 3D episode of the David Attenborough documentary series Blue Planet. We watched humpback whales breaching and blowing in the distance; a pod of orca later moved past us as we approached the South American coast, landfall still several days ahead of us. At other times the horizon was peppered with hundreds of dolphins as they raced across our path. I remember one morning where an army of what we thought were sailfish cruised past, their purple and pink fins drifting on the surface like discarded crisp packets, a strong breeze moving them purposefully through the water. Oh, they’re really colourful, I thought. I really like those … It was only once I’d returned home to England and settled in front of Blue Planet for real that I learned the horror of what the ‘crisp packets’ really were: Portuguese man-o’-war jellyfish, their signature tentacles killing any unfortunate prey with whip-like stings. While they are rarely fatal to humans, in some cases the stings can cause severe aftershocks, such as heart problems or difficulty drawing breath.

  Our time on the water was gruelling, but my military training helped to keep me calm under pressure. Often it was my job to navigate, and both Aldo and I were relied upon to perform a lot of the seamanship duties – if anything to do with safety came into play, or the power anchor needed to be operated, it would become our responsibility. Via our radio I was in regular contact with my dad, who constantly scanned the weather reports for the crew, warning us of any incoming storms while commenting on The Ellida’s course. Meanwhile, I was sometimes having to give advice to the less experienced rowers. Do this, do that; tie this off, tie that off. For the first couple of weeks I had to keep a handle on everything, but by the end of the trip Mat, Oliver and Ross were up to speed and able to take on the more technical work themselves.

  The capsizes were usually horrendous and there were several dunks during the journey. The Atlantic could birth some hellish storms, and during unpleasant weather we tried to position the boat on the top of a wave as we travelled along, rather than attempting to climb its face. We’d found it was the most effective way to ensure momentum was always with us. Whenever we were caught out, the whole crew would move to the rear of the boat to add more weight, enabling it to stay on the tip of a crest, rather than sliding backwards. Disasters were inevitable, though. On one deceptively bright, sunny day, the ocean pitched and tossed, moving us along on a watery roller coaster where we attempted to maintain our balance. From the cabin, as Aldo and I rested, we watched as The Ellida moved up the front of a huge wave. We could feel its power as we shifted – and it was getting bigger and bigger and bigger, until we were tipped at 45 degrees. Through the Perspex I saw the faces of Ross, Oliver and Mat. Their silent screams of terror were hilarious – at first. As they raced as a team to the back of the boat I knew we were in a messy situation – we were sliding back! No transference of weight was going to help us. The boat flipped and in an instant we were upside down and floating in seemingly picturesque, crystal-clear waters, while a violent wind raged around us.

  In the moments of chaos after a capsize, I was always reminded of a gunfight. The adrenaline raced; instinctively, muscle-memory and the experience of working under pressure came into play. My attitude was always the same in the thick of a near-disastrous incident: Right – that’s happened. Move into action: what do we do to fix this? Once the safety of the lads had been ensured, my first instinct after any overturn was to check on our electrical equipment, wiping it down and using a diffuser spray to clear any water from its internal workings. Nothing could fix the misery of a sodden mattress, though, or those layers of thermal clothing soaked through befo
re another freezing-cold shift had even begun.

  The first time we capsized was at night. As I opened the door to swap positions, a wall of water rose up and smashed me into the cabin. I screamed like a twelve-year-old girl. Often during rest periods, we sealed the hatches on the side of the boat so securely that when we awoke we’d lurch upright, gasping for oxygen. Whatever the weather outside, one of us would open the nearest hatch quickly again, allowing a rush of air into the cabin. We might have been suffocating, but it was reassuring to know our windows were firmly shut.

  Miraculously, nobody was injured during our adventure, though all of us at some point succumbed to dehydration or hypothermia. Meanwhile, boils became an issue for every member of the crew. Oliver developed a deep abscess on one of his toes, which Aldo had to clean out on a daily basis, eventually packing the wound in an attempt to save it from amputation. We lived off freeze-dried food and supplements; my daily treat was a hit of Berocca vitamins in the morning, the effervescent tablet dropped into a glass of desalinated water that always delivered a slightly briny taste. But by the seventh week, with Venezuela appearing as a dark line in the distance, all of us fell apart at the seams, like mountain climbers entering Mount Everest’s infamous ‘death zone’. Everybody ached. My knees were in bits having been continually smashed against the oars as I rowed, and I was unable to sit down, such was the pain shooting through my arse cheeks whenever I took a seat. Aldo eventually located the source of my embarrassing ailment. A boil had formed on the edge of my hoop. It had to be cleaned daily, otherwise the infection might have turned into a dangerous abscess, and so the poor bloke tended to the sore every morning, applying an antibacterial ointment as the rest of the crew howled with laughter, my backside parked over the side of the vessel. ‘You owe me for this, man,’ complained Aldo, every time he set about his unpleasant task.