Rowing After the White Whale

by James Adair

  ‘Mate, you’re rowing way too fast – we’ve got over three thousand miles to go,’ I said.

  ‘Come on, Adair, stop fannying about with the camera and concentrate on the rowing.’

  ‘I still can’t believe we’re actually doing this.’

  ‘Woohoo!’

  During the first morning the swell was around two metres and we shouted excitedly as we ran briefly down the waves. We recorded a top speed of 6.2 knots on one wave. Things were going well, better than expected. We cleared the outer limits of the port and started to head for the aptly named North Island, the northernmost isle of the Abrolhos group. We rowed the first six hours together and then I, having lost a bet, had to row the first shift alone.

  The rowing was fine; I didn’t feel tired but I did start to feel queasy. By the end of my two-hour shift I felt positively sick. A two-hour lie-down didn’t help. When I came out for my next shift at dusk I sat down on the rowing seat and promptly threw up over the side. Luckily, following Simon’s advice, I had only eaten tinned fruit that day so it came up very easily.

  ‘Are you okay?’ asked Ben.

  ‘Yeah, fine,’ I said, leaning over the side again to throw up.

  As we entered our first night I felt better with an empty stomach. I clipped myself onto the boat with the sort of cord that surfers use. It was disorientating being on such a small boat, unable to see where the waves were coming from. The lights of the coast were clearly visible, but as the daylight faded I was treated to the most amazing sight: more stars than I’d ever seen before. It was incredible. Every few minutes a shooting star would streak across the sky. Beneath us the bioluminescence lit up green and gold whenever the oars broke the water. This was the wild beauty we’d dreamt of. But, as night wore on, the on-shore breeze picked up and throughout the night we took it in turns to row into it, trying with all our might simply to stay stationary.

  13 At the Mercy of the Shelf

  ‘The oarsmen violently forced their boat through the sledge-hammering seas.’

  Herman Melville, Moby Dick

  Daybreak on our second day didn’t herald much of a respite. The wind stayed against us. We were exhausted after our first night on the ocean and we didn’t yet have our sea legs, which meant we were crawling around our tiny boat like a couple of drunks. I couldn’t stomach any of our freeze-dried food or snacks so, apart from a tin of fruit, I ate nothing. We tried to row into the wind but by mid-morning we decided it was pointless and we’d be best to deploy the parachute anchor, which inflates underwater and limits the travel of the boat backwards.

  The only small issue was that we’d never deployed one before and had only had a half-hour briefing from Simon and Tony back in Geraldton, a town we were going to see again sooner than we might have hoped if the wind kept blowing us backwards. Ben got the para anchor out and then paused.

  ‘Which end are we supposed to tie it to again?’

  ‘I’m pretty sure it’s the bow. I guess it’s the bow we want pointing into the wind.’

  ‘Can we stop using nautical terms, it’s confusing. Front or back?’

  ‘Ben, it’s a boat, I think we should use nautical terms.’

  ‘But you only learnt the difference between bow and the other one a couple of days ago.’

  ‘Stern.’

  ‘Back.’

  ‘Whatever; let’s put this thing on one end and see if it works.’

  ‘Okay, I’m pretty sure it was actually the back; that means the biggest surface area against which the wind can push to inflate the parachute.’

  ‘That makes sense, right let’s deploy it off the stern.’

  ‘Agreed, let’s put it off the back.’

  We then debated some more about which rope attached to what and where the retrieval line should be tied. Ben admitted he’d forgotten how to tie a bowline knot, so I did the knots while he paid out the line.

  The para anchor was in and it made an immediate difference. We stayed on it until late afternoon, lying in the cabin, regaining our strength. We would need it that night. Having pulled in the para anchor we set off again, rowing in two-hour shifts, trying to get away from the coast. Throughout the night we fought the on-shore breeze and managed to stay pretty much where we were. By daybreak on Day 3 we were a total of thirty-one miles from Geraldton with about twenty miles left until North Island.

  Our third day at sea was beautiful. The sun shone hard and wildlife swarmed around us. Gulls and petrels flew overhead while jellyfish and seaweed drifted below. However, we were still in sight of land and the occasional butterflies that fluttered around the boat reminded us how close we remained. Despite our excitement and the hot sun we’d promised ourselves not to swim, play music or relax at all until we were off the shelf, so we did nothing but row and sleep in those first days. By now the seasickness had worn off and we were tentatively trying our first freeze-dried meals. After a few mouthfuls we’d throw the rest overboard and declare another variety of meal completely inedible. The only one we could finish for the first week or so was porridge.

  As the sun went down on Day 3 we were presented with our biggest test yet: the relentless on-shore wind pushing us back to Australia. We rowed flat out for twelve hours into this headwind. Every time we tried to point the bow into the wind it would push us around so that we were beam on. In some ways it was better than being on the para anchor because at least we were doing something, battling the wind instead of just lying in the cabin while drifting slowly backwards. But mentally it was very draining having to row with one oar for so much of the time as we tried to bring the boat round to point in the right direction. However, we were absolutely determined to get off the shelf and we had convinced ourselves before setting off that it would be the toughest part of the trip, so we fought hard and proudly reported to each other at the end of each shift how little distance we’d been pushed backwards. By the end of the night we’d limited our travel back to Australia to a mere two nautical miles, a relative triumph.

  ‘It’s now clear why the Indian is so tough,’ I wrote shakily in my journal.

  14 Downing Tools

  ‘There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole Universe for a vast practical joke.’

  Herman Melville, Moby Dick

  By the time the sun came up on Day 4 we were in serious pain. Our hands and bottoms ached as they tried to adjust to their new workload of twelve hours a day. My fingers were in particular agony while Ben was finding it hard to sit down. We found that even while we weren’t rowing our hands remained locked in position as if we were gripping imaginary oars. We called this affliction ‘claw hand’ and it would dog us for many weeks to come.

  ‘Claw hand’ did some damage to our campaign on Day 4. As we had rowed hard through the previous night, fighting against the elements, the rowlocks on our boat kept coming loose. At this stage it was a two-man job to fix them, with one person locking the bolt at the bottom tight while the other turned the nut on the top to tighten the rowlock again. There we were, Ben leaning over the side with our most important tool, the brand-new pair of dolphin nose pliers, while I was balancing on the gunwale with the second most important tool, the only spanner that fitted these nuts perfectly. ‘Ready,’ said Ben, who had his hand over the side locking the bolt in place. I started to turn the screw and then all of a sudden my claw hand seized and I dropped the spanner overboard. Seeing the spanner sinking, Ben reached down and tried to grab it and in doing so managed to drop the pliers. We watched as the stainless steel tools disappeared soundlessly into the blue. We then looked at each other and burst out laughing. What else could we do, losing two of our most important tools so early on like that.

  ‘At least we’ve still got Paddington,’ I joked. Ben had lashed a small Paddington Bear, a gift from his mum, to the prow the day before we left.

  ‘And the solar-powered fairy lights,’ he replied, referring to a gift from my sister.

  ‘We’v
e definitely got our priorities right.’

  In the end we managed to find an adjustable spanner and, in conjunction with a one-size-too-big spanner held at an angle, we fixed the rowlock. It wouldn’t be the last time we would have to do running repairs with odd-fitting tools.

  Later in the day the wind changed to come from behind us and we used the respite to row like maniacs for North Island. It seemed easy to get through the pain and discomfort we felt in those early days because we were so intent on getting off the shelf. Our energy levels and enthusiasm were still high. By the dawn of Day 5 we were nearing our waypoint at the northern tip of the Abrolhos.

  The Abrolhos was the scene of an infamous shipwreck and mutiny when the Batavia, a Dutch East India Company vessel, ran aground on 4 June 1629. The ship had been deliberately steered off course when a bankrupted pharmacist, Jeronimus Cornelisz, conceived of a plan to start a new life in some distant land and to bankroll it with the trading gold on board. Cornelisz had been fleeing religious persecution in Holland but when the vessel was wrecked he turned persecutor enlisting the help of the other mutineers to enact the cold-blooded slaughter of over one hundred of the survivors during the following months. Justice, or revenge, was eventually done when escaped members of the crew, including the captain, returned to the islands with reinforcements from the Dutch trading post at Batavia, modern day Jakarta. Their 33-day trip there in an open boat is a story in itself and is famous as an early feat in navigation and courage. On their return most of the mutineers were executed, Cornelisz’s second in command was broken on the wheel whilst Cornelisz had his hands hacked off before being hanged. Two of the lesser mutineers were marooned on the mainland where their genetic legacy has been traced among the Aboriginal people who must have adopted them. The episode endured as a lesson that even the supposedly civilised Europeans could be reduced to shocking barbarities when they considered themselves beyond the reach of the law and consequently the punishments for mutiny remained remorseless amongst the great seafaring nations.

  Knowing of this dark episode in the history of the islands added to the treacherous atmosphere of the shelf. The bare islands we had to row past were proven ship wreckers, the conditions infamously difficult and we felt as far away from home as those who had shipped aboard the Batavia some three hundred and eighty years before us must have felt.

  ‘We’re eight miles from North Island and the end of the shelf,’ I wrote in my journal, but I was wrong; the shelf was by no means finished with us yet.

  15 The Looming Seas

  ‘The vast swells of the omnipotent sea.’

  Herman Melville, Moby Dick

  With the wind behind us, we made North Island in quick time so that we could stop in sight of the infamous breaking wave that crashes over the island’s north-westerly tip. After carrying out some repairs, including the troublesome rowlocks, we had our lunch and, given the heat, started debating the merits of having our first swim. It seemed appropriate given the calm conditions and the fact that we’d managed to reach what we thought was the edge of the shelf. Then, just as we were agreeing that a swim would be nice, a massive shark breached the ocean about twenty metres away. The shark’s jaws snapped shut as it crashed back down, taking with it a sea bird that had been floating along on the surface.

  ‘I think that was a great white,’ I shouted excitedly.

  ‘Definitely, that was massive.’

  ‘Shall we put off the swim for a bit?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  Now we had reached North Island we turned west and started to head directly out into the Indian Ocean. As we rowed west we were unnerved by the looming swell. The sea appeared completely calm but the glassy surface rolled in massive, undulating waves. At first we thought they would surely break on us and we held onto the sides of the boat in fear and anticipation. Instead they picked us up and put us down without a drop of water getting in the boat or a ripple breaking the surface. All the while, the blue sky and occasional clouds were reflected in these strange seas. We called this place ‘the looming sea’ and it seemed to herald the start of our adventures in deep water. Will it be like this all the way? we wondered naively.

  As we rowed out to sea more fins appeared behind us. I stopped rowing and fumbled with our film camera but I was too slow, they disappeared beneath us. Not long after this a huge pod of dolphins swam past us. Scores of them were breaching and jumping all around us.

  As the sun started to go down the vermillion sky was reflected eerily in the silent, looming swells. Stars started to emerge and, after the nights battling away into headwinds, everything seemed charmed and easy. Throughout the night we took it in turns as before, but with one slightly longer shift to give the other person a bit more sleep. And so the four-hour night shift was born. At the beginning of my longer sleep I lay awake for a few minutes with the hatch above my head open. The stars swam in front of my eyes as the looming seas lifted and lowered us gently so that it felt as if we were a ship adrift in space.

  When I took over from Ben later in the night he reported seeing whales right next to the boat, slapping their tails on the surface. In my long night shift I listened out but heard nothing. As we edged ever further out to sea the sweeping light of North Island’s lighthouse got fainter and fainter until it was swallowed up by the night. We had lost sight of land.

  16 The Vortex

  ‘The wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore.’

  Herman Melville, Moby Dick

  By lunch on Day 6 the wind was starting to pick up and consequently the seas became choppy and uneven. A large cargo ship appeared about two miles from us and I tried to speak to the master on our VHF radio. He didn’t hear or wouldn’t answer and kept ploughing on. As the afternoon wore on the wind built against us, pushing us back to Australia again. The waves started to wash over the sides and drench whoever was rowing. The massive outlines of ships crisscrossing the horizon now appeared regularly as we found ourselves in the middle of a shipping lane.

  The wind and sea picked up so much as to make it impossible to make any headway when rowing. It felt like we were stuck in a vortex. We were being drenched by the steep seas without being able to move much in any direction. It was still early days and neither of us had got into the rhythm of being at sea, so those shifts were lonely ones. Sitting on the rowing seat, in pain, waiting for the next wave to sluice over the deck was tough; it was our first real experience of getting wet and staying wet for hours on end. By the time night came we decided that rowing was getting us nowhere, so we took it in turns to sit out on deck keeping an eye out for ships. Every time one of those hulking masses of steel bore down on us we tried desperately to call them on the VHF and warn them of our position. Most responded and changed course, but others didn’t and came so close that we could see their bridges lit up in the bleak night. To while away the hours on deck we listened to audio books on my iPod. Overnight we were pushed back about six miles.

  The whole of the next day we remained stuck in the vortex, rowing for a couple of hours, going nowhere, then having a break to play magnetic scrabble. On the satellite phone we spoke to Tony who told us that the four-man team, who had left the day after us, were stuck in similar weather but were pushing north. He also told us that Roz Savage, a solo rower, who had left Fremantle a fortnight or so before, had taken a tow back to Australia as her watermaker had broken. She had previously crossed the Atlantic and Pacific, so had a huge amount of experience. This was nerve-racking news because our own watermaker was starting to play up. We’d run it for two hours a day, every day, without a problem, but it was now making a strange noise and failing to produce any water. We couldn’t turn back. We would ration what we had left and, when the weather improved, try to fix it.

  Later on Day 7 we were visited by another shark. With its rusty colouring, it looked like a small bronze whaler. Having circled us, it swam right next to the boat, its sandpaper skin brushing our side. Once again I rushed to f
ilm it, but it had gone. However, I got the chance to film another of the ocean’s wonders: the storm petrel. These tiny birds always appear in rough weather, hence their name. They would take light steps over the water, dipping their beaks in to scoop up plankton. They were totally unfazed by the huge waves they danced amid, never getting caught by any of them. We, on the other hand, were sitting ducks. Every few minutes we were swamped by another wave. Some of them were so powerful they would spin the boat around 180 degrees. After this, it would take ten minutes to row her back round into position only to be hit by another wave. It was dispiriting but we bided our time, waiting for the conditions to change.

  The next day, however, nothing changed. We were stuck in the vortex for another day, going nowhere, getting wet. With the boat so heavily laden with 120 days’ worth of provisions she sat low in the water and this meant that, instead of buoyantly floating over the waves as she was designed to, she took the full impact. Coming off a shift at this time it was nearly impossible to get dry in the cabin and the stifling humidity made it an uncomfortable place.

  With the watermaker still not working, we resorted to using ballast water to hydrate our freeze-dried meals. We carried 150 litres of ballast water to stabilise the boat. It was stowed in hatches down the centre line of the boat so that if she capsized the weight of the ballast water would bring her back up. The water came in plastic bottles so it could be drunk in an emergency, and it seemed we already had an emergency on our hands. We agreed that as soon as the weather calmed and we got off the shelf we’d have a proper go at fixing the watermaker.