T H E M A I L

O N S U N D A Y

From Caroline Graham

THE lone British rower plucked from the brink of death in the Pacific said last night: ‘I thought I was history. A few more hours and I would not have made it’
Andrew Halsey, 42, an epileptic who set off from California last July to row 7,500 miles to Australia, spoke exclusively to The Mail on Sunday about his 266-day ordeal which ended when the US Coast-guard launched a Ј100,000 air and sea rescue mission on Wednesday. Halsey, who lost more than four stone during his ill-fated voyage, said:
‘I have been to Hell, and back. I ran out of food at the end of January and have been surviving on flying fish, sea birds and the odd shark since then. I literally did not eat a thing for 16 days. I was too weak to row. I just lay on the bottom of the boat and waited to die.'
Severely dehydrated and suffering from exhaustion, the former bricklayer from Clacton, Essex, was carried from his 28ft glass fibre boat, the Brittany Rose, by Korean fishermen diverted to the area by rescuers.
-‘I am too weak to move. Help me’
Halsey said: ‘I look like a concentration camp victim. I am skin and bones and very weak. Only the will to survive kept me going.’
I was the only journalist on board the C-130 Hercules rescue plane which scrambled from Barbers Point Coastguard Air Station on the Hawaiian island of Oahu at 11am on Wednesday morning, less than two hours after Halsey set off two emergency beacons.
Carrying medical supplies and food, the Hercules took four hours to fly 1,300 miles south-east of Hawaii to the remote spot signaled by the beacons.
Pilot Mark Harrison said: ‘It is like searching for a needle in a haystack. We have the beacon position, but Andrew is drifting and it is almost impossible to see such a tiny craft in the middle of the Pacific. He is too small even to show up on our radar system. We have to rely on our skills, training and good old-fashioned luck.’
Twenty miles from where Halsey was believed to be, the Hercules dropped from 19,000ft to 200ft. Captain Harrison then lowered the plane to just 5O ft above the waves. Suddenly, a crackle sounded on the short-wave radio inside the cockpit before a weak, but unmistakably English, voice said: ‘This is the Brittany Rose. I need help.’
As a cheer went up among the seven-man coastguard teap1, Halsey added:
‘I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear you guys. I am too weak to move. I am lying on the bottom of the boat. Please help me.’
An unsuccessful supply drop left the emergency rations bobbing on the waves just 5O ft from Halsey’s boat, but he was too incapacitated to reach them. After the Hercules — carrying the same crew that rescued Richard
Branson when be ditched his hot air balloon in 1998 during a round-the-world trip — made its eighth sweep over the flimsy craft, Capt Harrison said: ‘This is no good. This guy is going to die in a matter of hours if we don’t get someone to him.’
 A South Korean fishing vessel, the Dae Hae, was spotted on radar less than 40 miles from Halsey’s position. The Hercules tried to contact it, only to be told repeatedly: ‘We no speak English.’
 Back at the control center in Hawaii, Lieutenant Patrick Baker, in charge of the mission, found a Korean-speaking translator who diverted the 56ft boat to pick up the rower. Safe on board, Halsey spoke to a coastguard doctor before telling me: ‘I am exhausted.

‘I was screaming out with hunger’

Everything that could go wrong went wrong. The weather was terrible 90 per cent of the time. There was one storm after another. I lost food supplies; I have not been dry in nine months. By the end of January my last bag of lentils and rice ran out and I had to survive on my wits.
 ‘I managed to rig up a hook on the end of a line and trailed it over the side of the boat. Every waking moment was spent trying to get food. When I wasn’t trying to catch fish or birds, I was bailing out water or sleeping.
 ‘I managed to kill a couple of small sharks, which swam alongside the boat and late those raw and stretched bits out in the sun to dry. I kept the teeth as souvenirs. A bird knocked itself out on the boat one night so I snapped its neck and ate that for a few days.
 ‘The last meal I had was a flying fish, which landed on the deck one day by sheer luck. I heated up small strips with a cigarette lighter. It tasted fantastic.’
 Halsey became so obsessed by food he created recipes in his mind. He said: ‘I tried to stop myself going nuts. I was starving so I thought about food constantly. I kept imagining going to a supermarket and buying pasta and meat and thinking about what I would cook.
 ‘Then I would open my eyes and see nothing but ocean in every direction and my stomach would be screaming out in hunger. I had enough water, but even that was running out by the end.’
 The rawer nearly died several times. He said: ‘I got hit by a freak wall of water on New Year’s Day and ended up in the sea. It felt like forever before I got back on board. I gashed my arm badly and had to patch it up with butterfly stitches.
 ‘I lost count of the number of epileptic seizures I had. I was attached to the boat with a safety harness, but I capsized a lot. There was one day a few weeks ago when the waves were about 60ft high and I capsized three times. I didn’t think I was going to make it.
 ‘My boat got badly damaged by the storms. I became even weaker. There is not an inch of my body, which wasn’t bruised or bleeding. I have huge open sores on my bottom. My legs are wasted away. I would sit in the boat, waist-high in water, weeping and shaking.
 ‘Then I got stung by a huge jellyfish. My body went into shock. I fell asleep for about four hours and I started shaking and having hot and cold shivers. My eyelids swelled up with an allergic reaction.’
 Halsey said he created imaginary people to speak to. He explained: ‘It sounds nuts, but it was the only way to stop myself going completely crazy I made up this German character and a Cuban Mafia guy I called “Cubie”. They became my friends. You have to talk to someone or you lose your mind.
 ‘I would have the occasional good days - when I would see a great sunset or a pod of whales, but most of the time the weather just beat me into the ground. I went through weeks of Hell’
 At one stage, Halsey ended up going round in circles off the coast of Mexico because of strong currents. He covered more than 6,000 miles, but only traveled about 2,500 miles from his start point.
 He said: ‘ The winds were gusting up to 50 miles an hour and they were always against me. My communications equipment broke, then bits of the boat broke.
 “I tried to keep my spirits up singing songs like Row Your Boat and Wandering Star but they didn't help much by the end,' It was only the thought of his teenage daughter Brittany, after whom his 'vessel, that 'kept him going. Halsey has not seen the 15-year-old since 1991 when his ex-wife Kimberley took her to America.
 He said. ‘The driving force behind wanting to do this row was that somehow Brittany would here about it and want to get in touch. The only thing, which survived this whole trip, was a photograph I had of her.
 I would look into her smiling face and it gave me strength.’ Weeping, he added: ‘I just want to see my daughter. She is my reason for living.’
 Brittany, who lives with her mother in a Florida suburb, is aware her father has been rescued. Mother Kimberley said:
 ‘Andrew was never the best father. If Brittany wants to contact him, she can. But I think this is a pretty lousy way of going about getting her attention.’
 ‘The winds were always against me’
 Halsey, who successfully rowed the Atlantic in 116 days in 1997, is due to be transferred from the Korean fishing boat to a tanker called the Kosiani on Friday. He will then sail to Honolulu to arrive on April 18, the day before his 43rd birthday.
 He said: ‘the best birthday present I could wish for is to put my feet on dry land for the first time in nine months. I am looking forward to a nice steak and lobster. The trip hasn’t put me off seafood.
 ‘I am determined to get my strength back and then try to row the Pacific again.’
 But a US Coastguard spokesman said: ‘it is a miracle Mr. Halsey survived this time. It is only because of the professionalism of our rescue forces that he made it. We would strongly recommend that he does not try such a foolhardy adventure again. Next time he may not be so fortunate.’