That time I decided to row an ocean

At many a party or social gathering in recent years I would regularly get the same question popping up and had what seemed like an off the cuff response.

“So what’s next?”

“I don’t know? Maybe row across the Atlantic Ocean?”

The reply to that was normally a bit of laugher and a comment along the lines of “Fuck that!”

Although I would reply as if it was a throw away answer to such an open ended question, in all honesty the seed was planted nearly a decade beforehand.

Once leaving the Royal Marines I entered the world of private security, anti piracy to be precise. This found me working on a variety of merchant shipping vessels, from SAGA cruise ships, cargo vessels and mostly large LNG (liquid natural gas) ships. The company I was working for employed almost exclusively former Royal Marines, using that as their unique selling point to both the shipping industry and the insurance companies covering them. The piracy threat was at its highest a year or two prior to me joining the company and due to the rise of armed guards on many vessels the threat level dropped, plus many of the ships I worked on were far too big and fast to be considered by the would be pirates. The beauty of working with teams of former marines is that we all spoke the same language yet would be separated by decades and conflicts yet would have plenty in common due to the brotherhood nature of the corps. I had the opportunity to meet men who’s thirst for adventure didn’t die when they had left service, one of these individuals was Mick Dawson. I was informed by Bowe, the team leader that Mick had rowed a few oceans and over the next nine days of the transit we teased out some small stories of his experiences of his crossings over our meal times.

It really intrigued me how and why someone would put them through such an arduous challenge, a few things stuck with me about what he said. There was no where to hide when on the rowing boat as you spent most your time naked, even defecating into a bucket in front of each other and if you started the journey with a friend there was a strong likely hood that you wouldn’t be friends after. As with many things I take an interest in, I bought and read a book on the subject, I got hold of a copy of The Crossing by James Cracknal and Ben Fogell. It was an enjoyable read but the thought of living life for a couple of months 2 hours at a time, at the mercy of the weather and sea state. It was bad enough getting a boat from the shore to the ships and doing the cross boarding, they had been hairy enough at times and I felt the sea was somewhere I was really outside my element. The thought of doing it myself was well and truly put to bed, none the less the subject always intrigued me and I always took an interest in any articles I saw regarding an ocean crossing.

As the years past, bouncing from one challenge I had set myself to another, the idea of a rowing across the Atlantic had began to rear its ugly head. At first I began to give it conditions, for example I would only do it as a team of four. The reasons being that there is a bigger team which changes the group dynamic and its likely to be quicker, with two people rowing at any time you can shave weeks off of the crossing. Another thing I began to think about is if I were to undertake such a challenge it needed to be sooner rather than later as I had limited free time as it was and with the way my life headed i was only going to have less.

I don’t believe in fate or determinism yet i do think that we do manifest our reality to some extent, in the modern age this is made easier due to our access to people and information online, i digress.

So one of my customers who i was tattooing was a serving marine and his brother who was in the Army also did a lot of photography and video work and offered to take some pictures of some of my apparel that i was selling at the time. They teamed up and sent me a few images and used them and I subsequently began to follow his brother on instagram, he began to post some images of a Royal Marine team who were preparing to cross the Atlantic. As is the way with social media, i then began to follow them as it added water to the seed in the back of my head.

Before I knew it a few months had passed and I saw an image of the team arriving in Barbados, this prompted me to leave a donation on their fundraising page and look at their journey to this point.

Over the coming weeks I began to Google the potential to purchase a second hand ocean rowing boat, but as soon as I started looking in to it I then realised how little I knew and the mountain of a task in front of me to even get started.

Then sometime around April/May time I was scrolling through the stories on instagram when I saw that the Cockleshell boys had put up a post requesting volunteers to take up a challenge.

It was a vague post which sent my mind racing, was this just a short row for a few days up the North Sea or across the Atlantic. I was at work at the time and couldn’t stop my mind going through all the potential options, so rather then have that going on in my head I decided to shoot them over a message via Direct Message on the app.

I had a reply shortly after asking for my email address to send over all the information, I did so and then waited out for a response.

David Bruce sent me an email with a PDF attachment which roughy outlined plan for a self supported row across the Atlantic Ocean due to commence in December 21, seven months time! I sent “Brucey” an email asking if he would be free to chat at some point as I wanted to find out the finer points before approaching Marina with my own proposal. To which I got “Amazing mate, still plenty of time to go. There’s a boat with no crew yet or there’s a couple of pairs looking for extra bods. What’s your number I’ll add you to the group on WhatsApp”

I couldn’t help but laugh as I felt like my loose enquiry had been taken as an accepted application, it definitely seemed by design.

That evening I told Marina that I had something that I wanted to discuss with her, which always has an ominous feel to it. Once the kids were in bed we sat down on the sofa and I began to explain to that an opportunity had arisen for me to row the Atlantic. She first asked how long did I think it would take? To which I have a fairly conservative answer of around 5 weeks, it was my best intention to be as quick as possible but in the back of my mind I knew it was likely to be a longer trip. She half rolled her eyes and said I’d better get it done and out of the way whilst the kids were young and it’ll be unlikely that I’ll shut up about it until I’m done.

I then felt like I was in a position to reply to Brucey and obtain more background on what I signing myself up for. I shot him over a message and would call him when I finished work. It was a Thursday afternoon and once back home eagerly called him up, it turned out that he and the others in his grot (room) were having a few afternoon drinks. He seemed fired up to chat to me and asked if I had a team in mind or wanted to join a boat as there were a few others in my position. I explained that I was looking for a team myself and he stopped me and said he’d call back via what’s app with some of the other lads. Minutes later I was on video call with Brucey, Oscar and Ben. A brief intonation out the way we were left sat awkwardly looking at each other on our phone screens, out of a bit of nerves and my ability to drivel on about nonsense I took the lead a prattled on about ideas to raise money and we briefly discussed trying to get together for a few training sessions. It all was a bit of a blur (dum dum ting) however after finishing the call I felt really good. It seemed like a pipe dream of this happening was starting to grow legs. It felt like time to make it official and in the 21st century that seems to mean posting it on social media. So that’s what I did, my relationship with social media is like most peoples, something I require for work and maintaining contact with those I’m unlikely to see walking down the street, yet fighting the urge of getting sucked in. Procrastination is the enemy of action and social media feeds that cycle.

I had a great reception from a lot of people across my friendship spectrum, and my initial reaction was great but then I had the voice in the back of my head telling me that I’d put it out there and had to follow through. My fear wasn’t that I wouldn’t do it out of choice from my end but that we’d fail to get the boat to the start line and I’d whored myself on social media for nothing.