‘We were nervous about meeting him because we had never met a real adventurer before,’ said Janette. ‘We were only there to pick his brains and ask him all sorts of questions about adventuring and how to make an adventure happen, and that’s when he offered to be our first sponsor. He said he’d like to join our £250 Club. It was extremely kind of him. I have a feeling he felt a little bit sorry for us.’
It was a start, we determined. All we needed to do was find a lot more Geoffs.
Meanwhile, the boat was coming along. She had been moulded and finished in carbon, and while we were waiting for her to be fitted out, Charlie invited us all down to an open day at Rannoch Adventure. It was the first time we really dipped our toes into the ocean-going rowing community, and they were a radically different bunch from the river rowers we were used to. They were a much wilder bunch. There is some snobbery between the river rowers and the ocean rowers. River rowers think ocean rowers can’t row; they think they have zero technique. Apparently, you don’t need to be able to row to cross the ocean; you just need to be able to keep going. Although none of us would fancy sharing that point of view with any of the blokes at the open day. But ocean rowers are certainly different. They were much more international, much more adventurous-looking, with salt-stiffened hair and sun-blasted skin, and they had all done something a little bit out of the ordinary. Some of the guests were old customers of Charlie or rowers from previous Atlantic races, and Angus, Charlie’s nephew, was talking about entering the race that we were already signed up for. We milled around the workshop, checking on the progress of our boat and talking to as many of the guests as we could, hoping to glean as much helpful information as possible.
At around midday they held a raffle and embarrassingly, again, we started to win almost everything. It got to the point where we no longer wanted to go up to collect our prizes. The atmosphere in the room was becoming a little frosty to say the least, as people started to turn around and stare at our increasingly uncomfortable faces. We won a day out with Charlie training on a boat, which was useful. We also won a Raymarine autohelm. Having never rowed further than the pub, we had little comprehension of its importance. It was only when Charlie asked to buy it back from us for £400 that we realised quite what a prize it was. His daughter, Lottie, kept telling us to keep it, saying we’d need it out there on the ocean, but we sold it back to Charlie, only for us to buy it back from him six months later! That was a hugely important day for us.
Initially, our ocean-crossing meetings were held at The Grange. We’d row the river on Saturday morning as usual and then retire to the sitting room, by the fire, with our cups of coffee and reviving biscuits. But by this stage, we were meeting more often at each other’s houses in the evening with our piles of paperwork spread out on kitchen tables, laptops out, and maybe sometimes some wine too. We’d trawl through the lists of things we were supposed to have done or achieved since the last meeting. Queen of Admin was Niki. She was uber-organised and would make a list for absolutely everything. If any of us wanted anything done, sorted, sourced, checked, double-checked, placed into a Dropbox file, the person to ask was Niki. Though her arch-rival in Dropbox was Janette, for we soon learnt that there was nothing Janette liked more than making a bullet-point list and popping things into a brand-new file of her very own making. The logic of the file and indeed the list was not of paramount importance. But Janette is a woman who defies logic.
Helen was in charge of all communications and PR. She was the one who was always trying to work out how we could raise our profile in order to raise more money. She was the one who decided we should get ourselves out there a little more; we should start meeting people, talking about our project and our plans and be a bit more… inspiring.
But for that we needed the boat.
‘Rose.’
We decided to call her Rose. We needed a girl’s name, obviously, and we were from Yorkshire and we’d already started to use the Yorkshire rose symbol on some of our marketing and sponsorship forms, so to call our boat Rose seemed like a good idea. Our team name, despite over a year of brainstorming, was eventually cracked by Mark. He suggested Yorkshire Rows to Frances over dinner one evening. It was a simple, clever play on words that required little or no explanation and, more importantly, we all liked it. Even Helen.
Eventually, in October, we received the phone call from Charlie that we had all been waiting for. Rose was ready for collection and Charlie was offering to take us out on her for the day, as a way of honouring one of our many Rannoch open day prizes.
Together, in Janette’s husband’s van, we all drove down to Burnham-on-Crouch full of excitement laced with anxiety. We couldn’t stop talking, discussing what Rose might look like. This was the first time we would get to see Rose and row in her. What would she feel like? Would we be able to handle her? After all, none of us had ever been in an ocean-going rowing boat. What if we couldn’t manage her? What if we weren’t good enough? What if we had made some terrible mistake and couldn’t actually row her at all?
There was also a lot of money at stake. Mainly Janette’s. But, houses aside, none of us had ever spent so much on a single item in our lives. It was enough to makes us all feel a little queasy.
We were silent as we drove into the yard outside Charlie’s workshop.
Turning the corner, we suddenly saw her. There she was, all shiny and white, sitting on a trailer behind Charlie’s car. Her lines were sleek, her curves were smooth.
‘Oh my God! Look at her!’ declared Janette, clutching her chest as she opened the car door. ‘She is beautiful.’
And she really was. She was bigger than we thought and so very streamlined, like she could cut through those huge waves like a hot knife through butter. There were three seats on runners, should we need to row three up at a time, and there was one double cabin at one end of the boat and another smaller cabin at the other. One was full of navigational equipment and was loosely referred to as an office, and at the other end was the ‘luxury’ double suite.
We all fell in love at first sight; it was a very emotional moment. She felt plucky, determined, cute yet tough. She was so full of character that it was like we had discovered another person.
‘Hello, Rose,’ said Helen, patting her on the backside/stern. ‘Welcome to the team.’
‘So, do you like her?’ asked Charlie as he came bounding out of the office towards us, a large smile on his face.
‘She is lovely,’ nodded Frances.
‘So lovely,’ agreed Niki.
‘She is more than we hoped for,’ added Janette, looking a little teary.
‘I expect you’re keen to take her out onto the water,’ he said.
We all stared at each other a little nervously. Take her out? Now? That was the reason we’d driven all this way, but it felt a little sudden. What if we damaged her? Rowed her into something? Ran her aground? She looked so box-fresh; we didn’t want to scratch her anywhere.
‘Hop in,’ said Charlie, oblivious to our reticence.
We all squeezed into Charlie’s car as he drove very confidently and surprisingly quickly, towing Rose through the narrow streets of Burnham-on-Crouch, straight to the Co-op car park.
‘Out you get,’ he said, nodding towards the shop. ‘A trolley each should do it.’
‘Do what?’ asked Janette.
‘A trolley of water each,’ he said. ‘That should be enough ballast.’ ‘Ballast?’ asked Helen.
‘She’s made of carbon fibre so she’s as light as a feather. You put her on the water without any ballast and it’ll be like trying to control a paper cup in a hurricane. She’ll bounce and fly everywhere; you’d be straight into the side of a yacht before you know it. Plastic bottles of water are really heavy – a trolley each should do it.’
‘I’m at least one trolley on my own,’ piped up Janette.
Charlie looked at her. ‘We’ll need a few more than that!’
Perhaps the Co-op in Burnham is used to girl gangs with an ap
parent desperate thirst for Highland Spring, because no one batted an eyelid as we cleaned them out of nearly every case of mineral water going. Wheeling our trolleys out, we met Charlie back in the car park; by now he was standing in the middle of Rose, ready to stash pack after pack of mineral water in the bottom of the boat.
‘Keep going!’ he shouted as we hurled them up at him. ‘We’ve got to make sure she sits nicely on the water.’
About half an hour later, we were in the slips, dressed in our waders, about to launch her out into the water. Niki (of course!) produced a bottle of champagne from her exceptionally deep handbag and we proceeded to christen our girl.
‘May God bless her and all who row in her!’ declared Frances, popping the cork loudly across the water and baptising our baby in a fizzy foam bath.
We clapped and cheered. ‘To Rose!’ we repeated. ‘And all who row in her!’
On the river, Rose felt much bigger than anything else we had ever rowed. It was a distinctly odd feeling, sitting down at the oars and taking them in each hand, ready to set off on our journey. Here we were – Yorkshire Rows – finally aboard our boat that was going to take us across the Atlantic. But the sky was darkening overhead and it was beginning to rain and Charlie was bawling in our ears, warning us not to bump into a nearby yacht and to set a proper course out of the marina towards the River Crouch and the wider estuary.
Thankfully Charlie took the helm, as none of us wanted the responsibility of getting Rose out into the open water. She was pulling right and left as we pulled left and right, and it took all of Charlie’s energy and expertise to keep her on a steady course.
Once we reached the middle of the estuary he told us to stop rowing. At first we thought it was a comment on our skills, or lack thereof, but he wanted us to rock the boat. He wanted us to see just how much we could push her, just how much she could take. Under his instructions, we all stood on one side of the boat and tried as hard as we could to turn her over. It was impossible. Even with all our weights combined, we couldn’t get her over. It was a far cry from the skinny riverboats we were used to, where all you had to do was itch your nose, lose concentration, think about what you might have for lunch, and you were straight in the water. But Rose was solid. Rock solid. Despite her incredibly light frame, she was sturdy, dependable, someone we could rely on.
On out into the estuary we rowed. We were all trying very hard to keep a rhythm, to keep together, in the hope that we might impress Charlie. But he remained unmoved. It was pouring with rain and his eyes were on the horizon, straining to see the pub where he was planning to stop for lunch. As the wind got up, so the waves on the estuary grew bigger and, despite all our ballast, we still bobbed around on the water, like a ping-pong ball. We’d experienced a few breezy days on the river, but nothing compared to this.
‘Keep going!’ said Charlie as he pointed our bow towards a pretty white Georgian pub close to the shore. ‘Not much longer.’
The fish and chips and scampi in a basket were all the more delicious after the two-hour row, as was the half pint of shandy.
‘Right, I’ll see you later then,’ announced Charlie as he accompanied us back to Rose. ‘I’ll walk back.’
‘Really?’ There was a note of panic in Helen’s voice.
‘You’ll be fine,’ he shrugged.
‘Walk?’ questioned Janette, who clearly felt she’d rowed half-way to France by now.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘It’s only a couple of miles. You’ll be okay. You know where you’re going.’
We were about to row an ocean; surely we could find our way back to Burnham-on-Crouch?
‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Frances, who was looking forward to having Rose all to ourselves.
‘Of course,’ nodded Niki. ‘We’ll be fine,’ she added as we very confidently pushed off.
Dressed in our mismatching bobble hats, baggy leggings and granny cardigans, we must have looked quite a sight as we boarded Rose. But with Janette at the helm, we launched, our oars moving in perfect unison. It felt fantastic to be in charge of Rose. The freezing wind might have been blasting our scarlet cheeks, our noses might have been running slightly, but we were at last working in harmony. Our oars dipping in and out of the water as if powered by one person. Not a glitch, not a crab, not a clash. We were smooth. Focused. Rose was part of our team. And although she was the fifth member and the last to join, she completed us.
‘Hey – you ladies can row!’ he shouted at us over the slate-grey sea. ‘You can really row!’
‘Yes, we can!’ replied Janette. ‘Yes, we bloody well can!’
SHIP’S LOG:
‘It’s those little steps in the right direction that get you to the next place in your journey. Sometimes you want to give in, and it’s tempting to do so, but you keep going because you know that for all the bumps in the road, there will certainly be some smooth parts, and when you hit them you will feel so good.’
(JANETTE/SKIPPER)
CHAPTER 8
Back Home
‘It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen, they went out and happened to things.’
LEONARDO DA VINCI
If our rowing skills were not in doubt, our orienteering most certainly should have been. For within half an hour we were completely lost. How it is possible to get lost on a straight piece of river when you are travelling simply from A to B, who knows? But we did. And then, of course, we made the fatal mistake of taking out our mobile phones and searching on Google Maps, which is never a good idea in the pouring rain in the middle of a busy estuary. Added to which, we were all convinced that we knew exactly where we were going. Only none of us could agree where.
‘I definitely remember that house over there,’ pointed Helen.
‘Well, that doesn’t tally with Google Maps,’ said Frances, looking down at her screen.
And on and on we went, rowing in circles, trying to work out which little marina off the big, fast-flowing estuary we were supposed to be aiming for. In the end, as the rain turned horizontal and the light began to fade we decided that any marina was better than no marina at all and we opted for the one closest to where we thought we should be, in the hope that it was the right place. It wasn’t. But it wasn’t terrible. It was the right marina, just the wrong mooring, but we had little choice by then as it was getting dark, so we found the closest available spot and went for it.
‘Careful!’ said Janette as we edged ourselves in. ‘That looks like a very posh boat ahead.’
‘Ahoy there!’ came a shout in the darkness. We all turned around. ‘Up here!’ We looked up.
On the deck of the posh boat, waving a bottle, was a rather jovial-looking chap. ‘Come on board!’ he suggested. ‘Have a drink.’
So we did. Turned out the jovial chap supplied paint to the Queen, and quite a lot of wine and crisps to us. We were joined in his cabin by another couple who lived in Burnham and, after a few drinks, everyone had promised to sponsor us. In our relief at finding a berth and a few much-needed glasses of wine, we’d forgotten about Charlie who, judging by the number of missed calls we each had on our phones, had been frantically trying to ring us, fearing we were lost at sea.
‘Where the hell are you?’ he shouted when Janette finally called him back.
‘We’re in a bay, somewhere near…’ Janette tried to explain to a relieved, if slightly irate, Charlie exactly where we were.
He tried to be annoyed even when he finally found us on the posh yacht, but it was impossible to resist the convivial hospitality of Mr Paint, who soon had Charlie sitting on his rather pleasant sofa, sipping a large glass of wine too.
As the evening wore on, we decamped from the yacht to the pub where we were staying that night. Mr Paint and his pals joined us and insisted we drank another bottle of champagne. His stories were as generous as he was, and eventually, after a lot of exhausted yawning, we thanked him profusely and said we must go to bed. How he made it back to his ya
cht without tumbling into the water, we never knew!
Upstairs in the pub, Niki was checking her bedroom door. She loves a gadget almost as much as she loves a list, and her Amazon addiction really should be treated. Along with a new toothbrush, pots of face cream and a travel brush, she’d brought with her a special laser security device that throws a beam across the door that sets off an alarm if tripped by an intruder.
‘Niki,’ said Janette, a little puzzled. ‘We’re in Burnham-on-Crouch, not Chicago, Washington or New York.’
‘You can never be too careful,’ replied Niki, glancing up and down the corridor before securing the room.
This was our first night sleeping together – in two separate twin rooms – and we were quick to work out how to split ourselves up. Janette and Niki shared together on the grounds that they both slept naked and snored, whereas Helen and Frances both wore pyjamas and did not. It was a simple equation that we stuck to while on land.
The following morning, we were grateful to see Mr Paint up and about, having clearly made it back to his boat in one piece, but we were sad to leave Rose. Charlie wanted some time with her to iron out a few teething problems he’d felt when we’d taken her out on the water, and we also needed to find somewhere to put her and somewhere to launch her from to practise before she could come home to Yorkshire.
Janette offered to have Rose on her farm, so we knew she had somewhere to go when we arrived in York. The only real problem was finding somewhere to practise. She is quite a lot larger than any of our usual rowing boats, so the Guy Fawkes’ Boat Club was out of the question, as there was no slip (or boat ramp) to launch her from. We needed proper ‘slipways’ where she could be launched into the water from her trailer, plus a substantial stretch of water to practise in, as Rose was a lot more difficult to handle and not a terribly agile boat. She is built for the open sea, for 40-foot waves, not a pootle up and down the Ouse between York and Poppleton.
Four Mums in a Boat Page 10
