dock I unwisely positioned myself on the bridge beside the commander, who quickly realized there was an empty seat on the starboard hull. She invited me quite jauntily to take it.
What was I to say after fifteen months of training—no thanks?
Within seconds I was in the seat, feet in the stirrups, pulling furiously on my big sweep oar. As fate would have it, I was seated behind Ryan Worth, a former collegiate rowing star and now a coach at the University of Tennessee. I am not exaggerating to confess that during the first twenty minutes aboard I clattered my oar off Ryan’s perhaps twenty-five times, each time offering up a plaintive little “sorry, Ryan”... “oh, sorry, Ryan”... “woops, sorry, Ryan,” etc.
It perhaps goes without saying that banging your oar off the oar of the rower in front of you is an unacceptable blunder, a no-no of the first order, among practitioners of this ancient team sport. Thus it was that about twenty minutes in, Ryan shipped his oar (which is to say drew it aboard without releasing it from its rigger), turned to me and said in a most patient and amicable voice. “Okay, I see where we’re at, Charlie. And what I normally take about three months to teach my freshman rowers I’m going to teach you in thirty seconds”—in other words, listen and listen good! And he proceeded to give me three or four fundamental instructions—about leg extension, about shoulder positioning, about pace and control and breathing—all of which I began immediately to incorporate into what I might presume to call my technique.
The next day, I got further instruction from Liz Koenig, a former varsity rower from the University of Rhode Island, also a coach, and within twenty-four hours was, if not exactly rowing like a pro, or even a “real” rower, rowing with sufficient awareness and capability that I was able to present a plausible impersonation of a guy on an ocean rowing team.
On Saturday night, we gathered at the Shelter Island Community Hall, a rustic old place without heat, where we met several dozen residents of the island, many of whom had seen the boat taking shape and had been invited to come out and meet the crew. One by one, we stood to introduce ourselves and to say something about our reasons for being here. Sylvain spoke about the need to challenge himself and to excel—said that by pushing the physical body he hoped to expand the spirit. Steve said he wasn’t sure what exactly had motivated him, except perhaps a desire to drive himself to the limit, in effect to see what was out there.
Aleksa spoke of a love of whales, Ryan of the pleasures of risk, Zach of a fascination with the unexperienced world. Tom said he had met the crew, had fallen in love with them, and wanted to consummate the romance. At sixty-seven, he also wanted to become the oldest person to row an ocean. Liz, meanwhile, said that as a twelve-year-old rower she had looked at the map and wondered if it would be possible to row the Atlantic—and was about to find out.
Louise had set out to row the Atlantic several years back, with another woman, and had had to stop just two days out of the Canaries because of her partner’s acute intestinal poisoning. “I love the sea; I love adventure,” she said with characteristic aplomb. “This time I’m going to make it.”
David said his motivation was to get us home safely and in one piece. It was no small order. Indeed, a question I’d been asked several times in recent weeks was what sort of safety equipment we would have aboard. “None,” I liked telling people, adding that we’d at least have a set of oars in case the engine broke down. We would also have life jackets and safety lines and survival suits, plus a pair of inflatable life rafts.
And we would have EPIRBs (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons). Until recently, I had never heard of such devices, which when activated send a distress signal to computers ashore, showing their location on a life raft or capsized boat, or with a swimmer. As I understood it, at least a couple of our crew would be bringing EPIRBs of their own, while the boat too would have a pair.
Privately, my concerns were less about the uncertainties of our travels than about the fateful certainties: exhaustion, salt sores, inadequate nutrition, plus what was invariably referred to as “extreme weight loss.” I also admit quietly to a lifelong neurosis about storms on water, which I had so far managed to suppress (or perhaps to face, as Mr. Jung might have seen it); and to an all-but-daily paranoia over whether or not my many months of training would hold up once I got out there on the main.
If there was a hitch in the weekend, it was (seen in retrospect) that our new captain was perhaps a trifle remote, reluctant to take the initiative and gather us in a group so that we could raise questions and discuss issues or information pertaining to the weeks ahead. But having little perspective and not wanting to seem impatient or overanxious, we let it go, allowing that Angela probably had too much on her mind for now, and that the time for more detailed discussion would come.
More importantly, we left Shelter Island with the deeply heartening memory of how Big Blue had coursed along the island’s east side after being launched, sitting as high and light as a water spider, touching speeds of nearly four and a half knots.² And how the following day on the north side of the island, with a little current beneath her, she had clocked out at nearly seven knots, a speed we imagined she would touch again easily with the trade winds behind us and the equatorial current underneath.
Back home, satisfied that the adventure was a go, we bought our air tickets for Morocco and began buying food and kit. At Shelter Island, David and his lieutenants put the finishing touches on the boat. During the first week of December, having done what they could for now, they took Big Blue apart, packed her into shipping containers, and hauled her to the docks in New Jersey, from where she would begin her voyage to North Africa.
4
ON DECEMBER 23, I bid a quiet farewell to my children in Thunder Bay. Eden, who was fifteen and in Grade 10, had in recent months grown somewhat cavalier about any show of affection toward me and was brisk, even jokey, in her goodbyes. Georgia, my seventeen-year-old, had woven me a little gold bracelet, about the thickness of butcher cord, which she fastened to my wrist with instructions that if I kept it on she would always be with me and that I would have safe travels and a safe return. (In the weeks to come, as it wore thin, I would reinforce it with everything from electrical wire to fishing line to duct tape, increasingly paranoid that it would fall off and I would lose my angelic protection.) While I am anything but an ideal father, I am tearfully close to my children, and when I had exchanged hugs with the girls, Matt, my oldest, then twenty-two, asked me quietly if I was sure I was doing the right thing.
“No, I’m not,” I felt obliged to tell him, “but I’m going anyway,” to which he offered a rather pensive smile, not so much at me as at the floor.
“Well, good luck, Dad,” he said after a few seconds, “I understand.” And they hugged me and were gone out the door, clearly under the impression that they were unlikely to see me again.
The next day, Christmas Eve, I flew to Toronto and spent Christmas with my friend Trish, with whom I had had a close, sometimes fiery four-year companionship.
Five days after that, on the morning of December 29, Trish dropped me at Billy Bishop Airport on Toronto Island, where I rendezvoused with Steve and Nigel for our flight on to Montreal. For Trish and me, it was a landmark parting, uncharacteristically affectionate and gentle—in all a heartening sendoff. The previous afternoon, I had sat at her dining room table in east Toronto and penned a farewell to those who had sustained and befriended me during the long months of my training:
December 28, 2010
Hello again to all of you who, in your variety of ways, have so faithfully supported my Atlantic adventure! And goodbye, too—or let us say, farewell, as I count down
