on to Agadir the following day. With luck, Big Blue (which as I write is rocking her way across the Atlantic aboard a thousand-foot container vessel) will reach Agadir about the time we do.
We expect to have her reassembled, provisioned, and ready for the crossing by January 8 or 9, although the actual date of departure will depend on the weather.
Our route will take us about 400 miles south along the African coast from Agadir to the little fishing port of Tarfaya, in what was once the state of Western Sahara, now part of Morocco. After a stop there, we will continue southwest in an attempt to pick up the westbound trade winds and equatorial current, which, if our hopes are fulfilled, will carry us out to sea. I find it fitting that we should be starting this undeniably remote adventure on the coast of Africa, which to me has always seemed the “remotest” and most mysterious of populated continents.
Most of my food is already with the boat in the shipping containers, on its way to Morocco. It includes a lot of freeze-dried stuff: Thai noodles, stroganoff, macaroni and cheese, rice and beans, bacon and eggs, potatoes with ground chicken, plus dozens of half-ounce packets of powdered Gatorade, four boxes of protein bars (twenty-four to a box), and twenty vacuum-packed cheese and bacon sandwiches. These last delicacies are of a sort reputed to have been sent into space with the astronauts and have a “best-before” date that I will not have to worry about in this lifetime.
My kit, as prescribed by Angela, is a strange little doll’s closet of trinkets, electrical gadgets, and toiletries: headlamp, flashlight, pens, folding scissors, razors, a waterproof digital camera, waterproof containers of one sort or another, a sleeping bag, an odd little blue velour “traveling” pillow, a Moleskine notebook, reading glasses (two pairs), sunglasses (two pairs), a couple of plastic “sporks,” a water bottle, an insulated mug, a food bowl, sunscreen, various heady-smelling ointments (including diaper rash cream), sea soap, a “miracle” towel, mechanic’s gloves, half a dozen asthma inhalers, and clothes for a variety of conditions that will include daytime temperatures as high as 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the deep tropics and night lows of, say, 50 F, and, of course, rain and wind.
Most importantly, I have a seat cushion made of a thick honeycombed gel which took me weeks to decide upon and buy and which I have been using to magnificent effect on the rowing machine for the past ten days.
If you to go to bigbluerow.com or to rocexpedition.com, you will find photos of the boat and of our training, will get at least sporadic updates from the journey and will be able to follow our progress on a map of the Atlantic, where we will appear as a tiny dot. We will also appear as a tiny dot in real space and time on the actual Atlantic—but let us not get poetic. If all goes well, the dot will reach Barbados sometime around mid-February.
As you know, we will be chasing not just a world record but a fine six-person rowboat, a tri-hull named Hallin Marine (formerly Triton), which will be leaving the Canary Islands a week or more prior to our own departure and may well establish a new record before we get to Barbados. So in effect we will be chasing Hallin’s record, not the existing thirty-three days. A more conventional single-hulled rowboat named Sara G will also be setting out from the African coast at about the time we do. So we are braced for rivalry against muscular British rowers who I am led to believe carry far higher pedigrees than do we. Indeed, our respective crews remind me of those dog teams that compete in the Alaskan Iditarod or Yukon Quest dogsled races across a thousand miles of subarctic wilderness. Some of the teams are highly pedigreed purebreds, or carefully bred crosses, while others (the canine version of the Big Blue crew) are made up of strays from the pound and are apparently the more resilient for it.
All of this “racing,” I might add, is unofficial—a projection entirely of our being out there at the same time as the other boats and with the same ambition. Yet another vessel, Britannia ii, will be leaving Africa or the Canaries with, I believe, a crew of eight just after our departure, except with no stated ambition to set a record. For all of this, it is unlikely that we will either see or hear from any of these boats, before, during, or after our respective crossings, unless of course we should happen to meet on the sea floor or fetch up within a couple of hours of one another on the coast of Mauritania or Gran Canaria.
The final two members of our crew of sixteen were added this week. Unfortunately, we lost a rower, Anne Maurissen from Belgium, who signed on a few days after our training session but fell on the ice on Christmas Eve, in Brussels, and fractured her wrist. I never met her, but in her emails sensed a kindred spirit, so I will miss what she undoubtedly would have brought to the crew.
Our latest additions are a twenty-four-year-old British medical student named Liam Flynn, who rows recreationally on the English south coast, and a thirty-one-year-old Tasmanian woman, Margaret Bowling, who is reputed to be an organizational whiz and will apparently be assisting Angela with the command.
While I have been attempting to play down any symphonic goodbyes, I want to say that I have appreciated the good wishes that so many of you have sent my way. As of the moment I have received well over a hundred messages, some of which I can barely read for the depth of their grace and goodwill.
I am heading out optimistically and with great respect for my fellow crew members, for our builder, David, and for our captain, Angela. And of course for the ocean. As the writer Simon Winchester said of the Atlantic, “It is a gray and heaving sea, not infrequently storm-bound, ponderous with swells, a sea that in the mind’s eye is thick with trawlers lurching, bows up, then crashing down through great white curtains of spume, tankers wallowing across the swells, its weather so often on the verge of gales, and all the while its waters moving with an air of settled purpose, simultaneously displaying incalculable power and inspiring by this display perpetual admiration, respect, caution, and fear.”
We will be counting on the trade winds to move us along—and on all the energy we can muster for our rowing.
And so I go—deeply appreciative of your support and of your good wishes for the trip.
I look forward to reporting to you all upon my return.
Happy New Year! Farewell for now.
Sincerely and affectionately,
Charlie
AT TRUDEAU AIRPORT in Montreal the next afternoon, as I lay on a padded bench attempting to get a little rest, I mentioned to Steve that I had a swelling and an ache in one of my ankles. I believed I had picked up a minor injury in training that had been accentuated by long hikes around downtown Toronto as I tried to find anything I was missing in clothing and kit items. Ever the pragmatist, Steve informed me that if it was blood-clotting—“thrombosis,” I believe he called it—it would either shake loose unannounced and kill me instantly (in which case I had nothing to worry about) or would dissolve without shaking loose (in which case I would live on and had nothing to worry about).
At perhaps 5 p.m. (having found something to worry about) I went on an extended tour of the airport in search of Tom, who had taken the train from Toronto rather than flying with the rest of the Canadians, and with ninety minutes to go till boarding for Casablanca was nowhere to be found. I called his wife, Luisa, who said he had left on a later train than he had intended and should now be in Montreal.
A kind of gallows watch ensued, during which one or two of us would saunter down the long row of international gates, hoping to catch a glimpse of Tom’s distinctive bald head or hear the equally distinctive kazoo of his voice. My concern was that as we got to within forty-five minutes of takeoff, he would, for security reasons, not be allowed on the plane.
The flight was eventually called, and the six of us lingered in the departure
