Inspire

I had gone into my charity boxing bout as the underdog. The only way to go was up. In some ways, I couldn’t really lose, because as far as the press was concerned, I’d lost before I’d started. But now, here, with an Olympic rower, we were the boat to beat. By teaming up with an Olympic legend, I had put extra pressure on ourselves to perform and to win.

If we failed or lost, I wasn’t just letting myself down but James Cracknell too. The shame would be too much. And I found myself obsessing about pleasing James more than anything.

Rowing across the Atlantic was like the ultimate apprenticeship in stoicism. There was not a single moment or break from the relentlessness. We were always tired, or nervous, or sick, or hungry, or irritable, or sleep deprived, or sad, or anxious, or thirsty. Or all of the above. If I’m honest, I can barely think of a single moment of contentment in those seven weeks because I was always worried about what might happen next.

We had to poo into a bucket, and we tried to fill the food vacuum created by 12 hours of rowing each day, which equated to about 10,000 calories. It was monotonous and overwhelming.

I have never really suffered from boredom. I’m pretty good in my own company, but for the first time in my life I had been psychologically outmanoeuvred by the ocean. I didn’t know what to do with my mind. I wasn’t sure where to take it. The loud inner voice kept screaming ‘3,000 miles at half a mile an hour!’ It was deafening. I had to calm myself down, for I could feel panic and anxiety rising within. I have never battled my own inner voice of doubt as much as I did during those first seven days.

I know it probably sounds glib to say this, but I reckon it would be a breeze if I were ever to do it again (which I won’t). It was awful, but the awfulness was largely down to my lack of mental strength. I don’t want to destroy the myth, but rowing the Atlantic isn’t particularly physical. It is so much more a mental battle of mind over matter, of mind over muscle.

Although I had tested my mental fortitude before, the Atlantic Ocean was on a whole new scale. There was not a single easy day. Life was perpetual uncertainty. Whenever things seemed to be going well, something happened to bring us back to reality.

First the electrics failed, then the water desalinator, which converts saltwater into freshwater, died on us, and then the rollers on our seats broke. The disasters continued. The water-maker broke, the rowing seat broke, our hands broke (with blisters), we ran out of food, the satellite phone wouldn’t work. Anything that could go wrong did go wrong. It felt like we were constantly fighting fires. Our emotions peaked and troughed more than the ocean waves.

It was like a never-ending nightmare. Every time we made progress and fixed something, another problem came our way. The breakages and the boat failures began to inhabit my subconscious. I would daydream about things breaking, the loud inner voice of doubt forever looming large.

The result was that almost every action filled me with dread and fear. I can still recall the sinking feeling every time I started the stove, to heat water for our rehydrated meals. If the stove failed or broke, which statistically was very likely in the damp salty air, then we would be stuck. There was no replacement and we couldn’t call in a mechanic.

That fear of things breaking made me feel sick. Physically sick. We are so used to calling in other people to help when things go wrong, from the plumber and the electrician to the police officer or the ambulance. On land, we become used to a life of deferring to others, but out there on the ocean we were alone. Really, truly, alone. We stood or fell by our own mistakes. There could be no one to blame but ourselves.

For both James and myself, this was a departure from our normal lives. James had spent his career surrounded by experts, from dietitians to sport scientists. All he had to do was train the muscle and do his thing. (That makes it sound easy, which it unequivocally isn’t, but I hope you’ll get my point.) I am often surrounded during filming assignments by teams of people who make sure there is food, fuel and water, but here, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean thousands of miles from land, we were on our own.

The thing about the ocean is that it begins to wear and tear both man and material. Both we and our boat began to fall apart. As well as the blisters on our hands, boils were forming on our bottoms. I never knew how painful boils could be until I had to row 12 hours a day on them. I would fixate about them. But it turned out that the physical and mechanical problems were the least of our worries.

A near-death experience changed the whole narrative. We were less than 1,000 miles from the finish line when we were capsized by an enormous wave. I was rowing at the time and James was in the cabin. All I remember was my head breaking the surface of the water and the sight of our upturned boat and mountainous seas all around. Strangely, I didn’t feel fear. Just resignation. I couldn’t see how we were going to get out of this one. So I resolved to meet my maker.

What does it feel like to stare death in the face? Honestly? It feels a bit shit. I was embarrassed at my failing. Typical, I thought. Trust me to fail at life and die too young. There were no angels in the sky like in the 1980s film Cocoon. I didn’t start to chat to God or a dog. There was no tunnel of light. It was just me and the ocean and a feeling of impending doom.

My past didn’t flash before my eyes and I didn’t scream out that I wasn’t yet done with life. Funnily, I remember looking at the hull of the boat and wondering why there were so many barnacles clinging to her.

James was obsessed about barnacles slowing us down and had insisted that one of us jump into the water each day to scrape the shells from the bottom of the boat. It was unpleasant and uncomfortable. We had argued about it and now I could see that it hadn’t even made a difference – the hull of the boat was covered in barnacles, not that it mattered now. We had bigger things to worry about. Like survival.

I am not scared of death. I don’t want that to sound blasé, but it’s true. I am fearful for my loved ones who would endure the loss, but I’m not fearful of death myself. We have a strange relationship with death. We rarely talk about it even though it is an inevitability for us all. Mortality just isn’t very sexy. Death is still the stuff of hushed tones. Setting aside any specifics of spirituality, religion, beliefs or non-beliefs, it is merely the place we will end our lives.

I think we should talk about it more.

In the wilderness, death is a part of life. The line between life and death is much more visceral and tenuous. Nature is red in tooth and claw and the circle of life incorporates death on a daily basis.

In much of modern life, death is an inconvenience. It obstructs the anti-ageing, immortal promise of consumerism. Death doesn’t really sell. Immortality, and the market for pills, potions, vitamins, supplements and serums, sells.

Death isn’t part of our life script. Until you stare it in the face in the middle of the Atlantic.

I wasn’t ready to die. I had too much to live for and I wasn’t ready to fail at life itself. Survival instinct is an extraordinary thing. In times of trauma, it really does take over.

So I banished death and opted for life.

I don’t recall swimming to the upturned hull of our boat. I can remember hauling myself out of the water and the boat somehow righting itself. I recall the crushing relief of hearing James’s voice from the cabin. He was alive. I was alive. But we were drifting in our little rowing boat, alone in the Atlantic Ocean.

We had lost almost everything. Our water desalinator, our solar panels, the batteries and all electrics. We had no GPS for guidance. No satellite phone. No VHF radio for communication. We were lost at sea with little hope of being found.

I was ready to activate our EPIRB, the emergency beacon used to summon rescue, but James had other thoughts. He threw a wet towel at me and told me I had five minutes to pull myself together and get back on the oars before we lost a place in the race.

Despite our near-death experience, James was still focused on the race.

We still had the basics to carry on, including two oars, some paper charts for navigation, a magnetic compass and emergency bottled water in the ballast of the boat, packed for such an eventuality and emergency.

In that moment, my inner voice of doubt disappeared, replaced by certainty and hope. If we could overcome the ultimate ocean test of a capsize, then it felt like nothing was going to stop us.

Interestingly, my surge of confidence coincided with a steep decline in James’s physical and mental well-being. He had been plagued by ill-health and, in the absence of a doctor onboard, he had overprescribed himself Tramadol, a highly addictive and hallucinogenic painkiller. With weeping ulcers on his bottom, he was finding it difficult to concentrate, let alone row. James’s decline and my strengthened resolve – which came first? I’m not sure if my strength came from his weakness or whether I was just rising to the challenge.

I have often experienced the same dynamic with teammates, almost like a tag team for good days and bad days. I think it is a subliminal survival instinct that keeps you from the double dip, which is when both teammates’ emotions dip at the same time and a feeling of despondency and helplessness takes over. That definitely kicked in when we were facing our harshest challenges in the Atlantic Rowing Race, and played a huge part in getting us through to the end.

After six weeks at sea, I began to look forward to those two-hour sessions on the oars. I could smell and taste the finish. Quite literally. You see, I worked out ways to trick my brain. I trained myself to break the whole journey up into tiny 20-minute goals that would each be rewarded with a piece of chocolate or a fragrant sweet.

I learned to relive experiences in my mind. Like turning on a projector, I would revisit my childhood. It brought light to the darkness and it lifted my morale.

The sleep deprivation was a monster. For the first time in my life I suffered from chronic insomnia. My tiredness began to spiral out of control. But what both James and I learned during that row across the Atlantic Ocean was that there is always more. However low you feel, however wretched the situation, however monotonous something is, the human spirit can always absorb more.

Rowing the Atlantic Ocean was a war of attrition. The sun, the saltwater, the storms, the isolation, the hunger and the sleep deprivation all ground me down. They smothered me, but my spirit, our spirit, was stronger.

If I have one regret, it is that I didn’t enjoy the experience more. It felt more like an endurance. I think if I had relaxed more and worried less, then not only would it have been more enjoyable but also a hell of a lot easier.

There were of course moments of great beauty, like the time we were joined by a whale, immense beneath our boat. But they were fleeting. I had a lot of time to think during those lonely seven weeks at sea. It was a frozen moment in my life when I could abstain from outside interference. It allowed for great introspection and moments of clarity.

It was during one of those long nights that I decided to propose to my then-girlfriend, Marina. We had only known one another for a year, but the time at sea made me realise she was the one. I proposed the day after reaching the finish line, with a ring made from a small piece of string from the boat. It was a fitting conclusion to the hardest adventure of my life.

Ten days after the capsize and 49 days after starting the race, we crossed the finish line. The Atlantic Ocean had tested our resolve and we had passed the examination. It was pretty overwhelming. I wish I could bottle that feeling of euphoria when we crossed that line. It makes me a little teary to think back to that extraordinary moment.

Imagine spending nearly two months on edge, surrounded by a deafening noise amid chaos and disruption, and then everything is silent? For the first time in months I could hear birdsong and the sound of waves lapping on the beach. There was no movement. No wind. No fear. No anguish.

It was the greatest achievement of my life. I had never done anything that had stretched me as much as rowing the Atlantic. Fourteen years later, I can still remember the night we arrived at English Harbour, Antigua, at the end of our mammoth journey. The stunned silence as we pulled into our safe haven. The small gathering of family and loved ones. The camera flashes. The tears. The hugs. The sweat and salt. The inability to walk properly on our painfully thin legs.

It is difficult to explain the feeling, but I shall try. Imagine a combination of relief and exhaustion, happiness and elation, numbness and disbelief. It is a pretty heady mix and one that I don’t think I will ever experience again.

I really don’t think I could ever recreate that feeling of sheer happiness in those few minutes of reunion on the shores of that Caribbean harbour. Boredom and misery and the fear of death were all banished and replaced by safety and security, family and love, satisfaction and familiarity and certainty. The monotonous hum that had been a constant companion over the past seven weeks had been subsumed in a calming stillness.

In actual fact there were quite a few people there to greet us in the middle of the night, but for some reason I remember so clearly the quietness and the whispered tones.

We had finished the race in third place – we were first in the pairs class but third overall behind two crews of four, out of a total of twenty-six starting boats – but the bare statistics didn’t really register with me, compared to what I had discovered about myself.

The Atlantic really was a game changer for me. It provided enduring life lessons. I learned to respect nature and to believe in myself. So many of us take our sanitised, clinical environment for granted, but out there on the water we were forced to work with the ocean and not against her. Most importantly, I came to realise that nothing is impossible as long as you believe in yourself.

Lose control of that belief and you’ve already failed. The Atlantic can be surprisingly forgiving but it doesn’t suffer fools. Those seven weeks at sea taught me a huge amount about myself but also a great deal about the ocean herself.

I can’t say with hand on my heart that it was an ‘enjoyable’ experience. There was little obvious happiness or laughter during those challenging days at sea, but I think that was more self-imposed than something the ocean imposed on us.

Above all, I learned the art of self-preservation. Half the battle was self-guarding my own mental and physical well-being. I didn’t always succeed, and I battled more demons than on almost any other expedition, but I fought for my spirit and, ultimately, I won.

What is it like living in your own mind for seven weeks without distraction? Once you surrender to the boredom and the notion that you are in it for the long term, it becomes almost cathartic.

That adventure taught me how to cope under duress and how to carry on when all around you in your world seems to be crumbling. I learned to shield myself from the dark cloud of doubt that followed me and James all the way across the ocean.

The ocean can be a cruel mistress. She has claimed many lives over the years. Those 49 days at sea had taught me so much about the nuances of life, the slow wear and tear of mind and body. Like a beautiful dance we had learned to move together with the sea. The ocean had given me the strength to be brave in my moment of fear. We had been lucky. We scraped through despite our early lack of preparation, because the extended nature of the race had given us a chance to catch up as we rowed.

As we adapted to the ocean, as we moved and worked together and with it, I replaced my fear and withered self-confidence with hope, respect and durability. Pitting myself against the ocean gave me the opportunity to blossom into a fully paid-up apprentice who had earned his first stripes in the school of wilderness. I discovered that we are all capable of so much more than we give ourselves credit for. In society we are often held back by presumptions and assumptions. We fail to push ourselves to the limit of our abilities for fear of failure, public ridicule or humiliation. But in the face of the immensity of nature, these concerns begin to pale in significance.

Out in the Atlantic, thousands of miles from society, we were free to succeed or fail on our own terms. The difference being that failure on the ocean could result in more than just a battered ego. Rowing the Atlantic strengthened my self-confidence and taught me to believe in myself. It instilled in me the perseverance to carry on against all the odds. It showed me that I can achieve my goals, even when the going isn’t easy. And it demonstrated that if we believe in what we are doing, we can endure whatever comes our way. The ocean had taught me to take control of my own narrative and believe in myself.

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