by Julie Angus
“It’s land!” Colin yelled.
I turned around, searching for an aberration on the horizon. I saw a thin line of blue sky sandwiched between the low cloud ceiling and the ocean, and in it the shadow of distant land.
As we continued rowing, we realized we were approaching a busy shipping port. We cowered among giant freighters plying the waters around us. The occasional cruise ship, lit up like a colossal Christmas ornament, filled us with a mixture of dread and envy. We kept our VHF radio and flares handy in case of pending collisions and continued rowing uneasily.
Strange, low, choppy waves made tandem rowing difficult, and we found that rowing individually in sprints was faster. One of us rowed intensely for half an hour, as though in an Olympic race, before we quickly swapped spots. By continuing this relentless routine through the night, we travelled against the current at one knot. Torrential rains soaked us to the bone. Rowing quickly warmed us, but our teeth chattered between shifts. Huddling beneath a wet blanket didn’t help.
The navigation lights of Limón’s port beckoned through a minefield of anchored freighters as we neared shore. The current finally released its hold on our boat.
“We made it,” Colin said quietly.
It seemed unreal. I had just completed something momentous, and the next morning we would step onto land. I should have been in a celebratory mood. But the last three and a half days had been the most trying of my life. We had barely eaten or slept. I shivered in the cold. I wanted to vomit. The most exciting thing at the moment was that I could finally rest. We dropped anchor in the shallow waters between moored freighters and fell asleep.
WHEN I OPENED my eyes, it was still dark, but I could smell coffee. Colin was already making breakfast.
“Good morning, Tiger,” he said. “How does it feel to have rowed across the Atlantic Ocean?”
“Amazing,” I said.
We were scheduled to arrive at the port in two hours. We would be greeted by the Discovery Channel film crew, officials from the Canadian Embassy, customs and immigration authorities, and local media. It would be a dramatic contrast to the solitude of the ocean, and we both needed a bit of time to prepare. As we sipped our coffee, we reminisced about moments at sea and watched our piscine pets swimming beneath us. Fred and Ted were still with us. We recognized Fred from the thin scar that marked his back and Ted by the notch out of his tail. We had named others, too, but Fred and Ted were dearest to us because of all the experiences we shared. They had been with us for most of our ten-thousand-kilometre journey.
“We could take them back to Canada with us,” Colin said, half-seriously. “You know, put them in a plastic bag and ship them home.”
“I’m going to miss them,” I said, knowing that taking them home was impossible.
Fred, Ted, and the other fish had been more than just companions. They had helped sculpt my experience on the ocean. In a way, they had been our guides across the sea. They did not lead the way, but their presence opened my eyes to a world I wanted to understand. So often, when I struggled with my own insecurities and doubts, I peered into the waters at their tiny bodies wiggling furiously to keep pace with us and laughed. They reminded me to pay attention to the here and now, to observe the world instead of getting caught up in a frenzied rush to nowhere. On the ocean, just as in regular life, it is possible to become self-absorbed and lose sight of what’s important.
For me, this journey had started twenty years before, when I stared into my aquarium, wishing I could live in a fish’s world. This voyage had taken me as close to that childhood fantasy as I could imagine. When we began, I thought of the ocean as a separate world from the one we live in, but throughout the journey, I discovered just how interconnected we are. The health of life on land depends on the vitality of the seas, which cover over 70 per cent of our world. Yet, because of our dependency on it and activity in it, we’ve caused fish stocks to dwindle, turtles to become endangered, and coral reefs to die. It’s a very delicate balance, and we need to learn much more about it. We have mapped the moon better than we have the sea floor, and even though we discover hundreds of new ocean-dwelling species each year, an estimated one million or more species remain to be found. It can be hard to cherish something we do not understand.
I joined Colin outside and we slid both pairs of oars into the water. We rowed the final hundred metres of the Atlantic in tandem, not because rough weather required it, but because we wanted to celebrate this event together. During these past six months we had shared an incredible array of experiences. For the rest of our lives, we would reflect on the Christmas we had spent in the middle of the ocean, the hurricanes that had submerged us in five-storey waves, the colossal turtle that had loved our boat almost to death, and the great white shark that had peered up at us from an arm’s length away. These moments united us and changed our perspectives. They exposed us in our rawest element and brought us closer together. We began this journey worried about all the things that could go wrong between us, but instead we discovered how to work as a team in even the most dismal conditions. We both knew now, more than ever, we had found the right person to spend our lives with.
EPILOGUE
COLIN AND I spent two weeks in Costa Rica, devouring fresh fruits and vegetables and spicy Caribbean dishes. Although we’d completed our Atlantic crossing, we had one last leg to finish—an 8,300-kilometre bicycle journey back to Vancouver. Conveniently, friends flying to Costa Rica on vacation brought us two lightweight bicycles from home. We arranged to store Ondine in a secure compound in the Port of Limón and prepared to depart.
We pedalled out of Limón considerably plumper than we’d been on arrival, and made our way through Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, and the United States and finally into Canada. After two months of steady cycling, we reached Vancouver on May 20, 2006. A crowd of cheering friends and family greeted us; music played, cameras snapped, and I cried. It was a great homecoming. For Colin, it was the completion of a long-held dream; he had travelled 43,000 kilometres around the world to complete the first human-powered circumnavigation. And I was thrilled to have journeyed halfway around the world from Moscow using only a bicycle and a rowboat.
As Colin and I adjusted to the regular world, people often asked me if I now found life mundane. Surprisingly, I didn’t find being home boring at all; on the contrary, it was an adventure of a different sort. On the rowboat we had dreamed of living in a quiet country home on Vancouver Island, so when we returned we set about doing just that. We retrieved our belongings from the storage locker in Vancouver and moved to the beautiful Comox Valley. Colin finished his book Beyond the Horizon, which detailed his circumnavigation and went on to become a national bestseller. Together we produced an expedition film that won several film festival awards, including Best Adventure Film at Taos Mountain Film Festival. We then organized a film tour that took us from Victoria to Halifax, and spent two months meeting almost seven thousand Canadians who came to our presentations.
Perhaps the most rewarding experience has been creating this book. The process has allowed me to reminisce and revisit a journey that has changed me immeasurably. When I think back to the Atlantic row now, it has the hazy edges of a vivid dream; it seems like an experience from another world. The girl who pulled so hard on those oars and who struggled against hurricane-force winds seems to be a character other than myself. But reliving the events in the pages of this book has added tangibility to my memories.
After surviving tempests in a rowboat, Colin and I felt quite certain we could weather those of matrimony. So on August 11, 2007, we were married. Our honeymoon—no surprise to those who knew us well—was a rowing trip. We designed and built two coastal rowing boats and cavorted around Vancouver Island for ten days. Now we’ve taken those same boats to Scotland and are in the process of rowing to Aleppo, Syria. Before you point out that Aleppo is not a coastal city, I should mention that the boats are designed to be towed behind a bicycle on land. When we’re on water, the bike
s and trailers fit into the watertight hatches of our boats. We are travelling on a network of canals, cycling paths, great rivers (Thames, Rhine, and Danube) and several seas, including the Mediterranean, the North Sea, and the Black Sea. As I write these words in May 2008, we are on the Thames River on the outskirts of London, having rowed and cycled here from John o’Groats at the northern tip of Scotland. In a week, we’ll cross the English Channel to France, and by October we’ll have reached Syria.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
THIS BOOK, AND the adventure, would not have been possible without the time, talent, support, and encouragement of a number of incredible people and companies.
The dedicated staff of Greystone Books guided me through a journey almost as difficult as rowing across the Atlantic Ocean. I’d like to thank Nancy Flight and Rob Sanders for embracing this project and for their invaluable advice in developing the manuscript. I am especially indebted to the talented Susan Folkins, who not only did a magnificent job editing the book, but managed to work with me as I was rowing and cycling across Britain. More than a handful of friends and family members motivated and encouraged me during the writing process; they were also a part of my cheerleading squad during the expedition, so I’ll thank them in that context.
While we were on the ocean, we relied on friends for endless support—not only for the occasional heartening word but for relaying weather forecasts, updating our website, transcribing newspaper stories, and a litany of odd requests such as getting two bicycles to Costa Rica or renewing a passport while at sea. Dean Fenwick did all this and more; not only did he become our de facto home-based coordinator, but before we left he ensured our boat and all the equipment we needed arrived in Portugal. His girlfriend, Sarah Evans, now a doctor, provided much appreciated medical advice. More thanks go to Mary Hearnden and Dan Carey, who ensured our life raft and EPIRB arrived in Portugal; Christine Leakey, who supplied us with weather forecasts and connected us with our lead sponsor, Truestar Health; Shelley Russell, for too many reasons to list; Corinne Hockley and her mother Leigh, for hours of transcribing; and many other dear friends, including Jackie and Vance Bellerose, Karen Best, Alex Binkley, Jason Brannon, Dennis Breymann, Liz Cameron, James and Shelley Campbell, Frank and Anita Carey, Cathy Choinicki, the Davies Family, Mario DeAlmeida, Jennifer Hamilton, Brad Hill, KJ and Murray Klonz, Greg Kolodziejzyk, John Tracey Leiweke, David Morgan, Carole Paquette, Bob Pope, Lloyd Pritchard, John Rocha, and Randi Spentzos. This is not, by any means, a complete list; many others have helped in pivotal ways, and even though they are not individually listed I would like to express my gratitude for their kindness.
An expedition of this magnitude is not possible without the support of companies who share our values, and we were lucky to work with a number of outstanding organizations. These include Truestar Health, Wallace & Carey Inc., Helly Hansen, Kelowna Flightcraft, Norco Performance Bikes, Specialized Office Systems, Iridium Satellite Solutions, Vancouver Rowing Club, LiferaftRental.com, Mountain House, ChristineLeakey.com, SiteAction.com, KOKO Productions, Rodney Bay Marina, Mountain Equipment Co-op, and Croker Oars Australia.
I need to thank my family the most, for at times, this adventure was undoubtedly more challenging for them than it was for me. I made my mother, Helga Wafaei, worry tremendously, and even though she didn’t entirely approve of my adventure, she still loves me unconditionally. The same is true for my father, Husam Wafaei, his wife Lina, and their children Nouri and Yasmeen, who have always been supportive and interested. My now-mother-in-law, Valerie Spentzos, was one of our biggest motivators on the ocean, and she continued her cheerleading while I wrote this book by creating a blooming oasis of dahlias in our garden and by plying me with farmers’ market cookies. Indeed, I am lucky to be so warmly embraced by Colin’s family; they are all great. His brother, George Spentzos, made our expedition possible by lending us enough money interest-free to purchase our rowboat, and Colin’s sisters Patty and Jane Spentzos have been equally enthusiastic.
The person most pivotal to the completion of both journeys is my husband Colin, who knows how much he means to me. I am also extremely grateful to the bus stop that caused our paths to cross.
JULIE ANGUS has written for several publications, including the Globe and Mail, the National Post, and enRoute, and her photography has appeared in Explore, Outside, and Reader’s Digest. She holds a master’s degree in molecular biology from the University of Victoria and lives in Comox, British Columbia. A film of the round-the-world expedition, including Julie Angus’s voyage across the ocean, may be purchased on her website, www.julieangus.com.
