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My bicycle
creaked woefully after 20,000 tough kilometres, first in BC, the
Yukon and Arctic Siberia, then on to Moscow and west through
Europe. By the time the night skyline of Lisbon, Portugal
finally appeared, my body ached with fatigue, but to behold
Europe's westernmost port, the city of discoverers, I felt a
surge of joy. Half a millennium ago, adventurous voyagers
departed Lisbon to chart the unknown coasts of East Africa and
Brazil. Now in October 2005, two members of a small but daring
back-to-basics seafaring community awaited me in Lisbon.
One was a
wise and weather-worn Brit, Kenneth Crutchlow, founder
and president of the Ocean Rowing Society (ORS).
Crutchlow's mission is to provide safety support to anyone bold
or mad enough to attempt crossing an ocean by oar. Since 1969,
when Crutchlow witnessed the arrival of the first rower to cross
an ocean solo, he has helped to nurture the growth and maturing
of the sport, to the point that when I met him on October 9,
2005, rowers were simultaneously active on the Pacific, Atlantic
and Indian Oceans.
Lodged in a
Lisbon hotel with Crutchlow was the Turkish adventurer Erden
Eruç, a 44-year-old former Seattle software engineer reborn
as an extreme sportsman and motivational speaker, with the goal
of inspiring children worldwide to harness their dreams. He is
attempting to row solo around the world and to climb to the
highest summit on six continents along the way, in memory of a
mountaineer friend, Göran Kropp, who fell to his death while
rock-climbing with Eruç near Seattle.
In Lisbon to
launch an 9,000-kilometre training row across the Atlantic Ocean
and Caribbean Sea, Eruç will make history's first attempt to row
to Central America from Europe. After gaining this experience
will he begin his solo circumnavigation by rowing west alone
from Costa Rica.
Rowing with
Eruç will be a 27-year-old Canadian journalist aiming to
document the joys, trials and dangers of 120 days at sea, from
storms and sharks to fresh fish and sunsets 4000 kilometres from
shore. That Canadian is me.
Ocean rowing
as a sport began in 1896 when two Norwegian Americans, the
fishermen George Harbo and Gabriel Samuelson, read
of a newspaper publisher's $10,000 reward for the first to cross
the Atlantic by oar. The men rowed from New York to the Isles of
Scilly, Southwest England, in only 55 days. Their record for the
fastest Atlantic crossing still stands.
"Their
crossing was very well documented, by the rowers and also
observers in the shipping lanes, so the ORS accepts the claim,"
says Crutchlow. Because their open rowboat capsized so often, it
was extremely fast and light, having lost all supplies. The
hardy rowers survived on rainwater and food received from
passing ships.
Seven decades
later, a second pair rowed the Atlantic, and then in 1969, the
first solo crossing – by England’s John Fairfax, from the
Canary Islands to Fort Lauderdale – was achieved on the same day
the Apollo mission brought humans to the moon. While other
reporters broadcast news from space, Kenneth Crutchlow, a young
reporter and pioneer long-distance jogger, was on the beach to
welcome Fairfax ashore.
"The boat was
adorned with the jaws of sharks Fairfax lassoed along the way,"
Crutchlow recalled. On a subsequent row in 1971, this time
across the Pacific to Australia, a shark took a bite of Fairfax
that almost killed him. While a badly infected Fairfax suffered
below deck, his female rowing partner Sylvia Cook powered
the boat another 1,000 kilometres to shore.
In 1974 a
young Peter Bird, another stand-out ocean rower, plunged
into offshore rowing on a tandem Atlantic crossing. By 1983 he
had achieved the first solo Pacific crossing, surviving two
hurricanes and a capsize. Inspired to archive the growing body
of ocean rowing statistics, Crutchlow founded the ORS that year.
By the 1990s
Crutchlow offered logistical support to Bird as the rower
prepared for the tempestuous North Pacific, eastward from the
Asian mainland. Bird and Crutchlow flew to the Russian coast
five times in the 90s to launch Bird’s ill-fated efforts,
storing his wooden boat in Vladivostok between each bid. By
Bird’s fifth attempt, in 1996, undetected rot had weakened the
boat and a wave crushed the cabin during a storm. The boat was
recovered but Bird was lost at sea.
Crutchlow
established the Peter Bird Trophy for Tenacity and Perseverance
upon the death of his friend. Among its recipients was
Victoria Murden, the first woman to row an ocean solo (the
Atlantic in 1999). Despite honouring ocean rowers, Crutchlow
notes, the ORS doesn’t encourage people to row oceans – “but to
those who do, we try to help them do it safely.” To date, over
230 rowboats have attempted an ocean crossing, and 142 – roughly
two thirds – have finished with success. Only seven rowers have
perished at sea.
Eruç
does not intend to become number eight. The morning before I
pedaled into Lisbon, Crutchlow flew from London to meet Eruç,
with two hefty ARGOS satellite transmitting devices as hand
luggage. The beacons are administered by a joint French-American
government agency to aid science and monitor fishboat locations
at sea. Back in 1982 Crutchlow explained to the agency that
ocean rowboats advance the study of offshore ocean currents, and
managed to gain access to the units that are now a standard for
ocean rowers. With an ARGOS signal linked to an internet map,
the world can track a rower daily. If the rower flicks a switch,
the ORS will coordinate a rescue.
When I parked
my bike and awoke Eruç with a one AM phone call from the lobby
of his Lisbon hotel, the burly ex-wrestler was enthusiastic to
show me his recently refurbished rowboat. Afloat in a nearby
marina, the bright yellow dingy named KaslaGit – Turkish
for "go by muscle" – was dwarfed among masted yachts. An
enclosed cabin at the stern, where one of us would sleep as the
other rowed, was barely the size of a two-person tent. On deck,
thin rails supported a sliding seat, and at the bow another
cabin housed anchors, food and tools. Seven metres in length,
this would be our home for a third of a year.
"Enclose the
body, free the mind," Eruç mused, already eager to begin “four
months of salt, sun and solitude." Eruç envisioned a departure
in just three days, now that I had arrived to row with him.
Since August he had tackled preparation of the rowboat he
purchased the year before, driven by the challenge of simply
reaching Lisbon, our starting time, by early October. But I was
still buzzing from a 5.5-week race across Europe from Moscow. I
had never even seen a proper ocean rowboat, and compared to
Eruç's well-prepared belly, I was little more than lean muscle,
skin and bone.
Days later
hurricane Vince kicked up winds to 100 kilometres per hour near
Gibraltar and dumped rain on Lisbon, revealing a leak in our
food storage hatches. While Lisbon's "Associação Naval" sailing
club kindly fixed what could have rotted our boat at sea, I
busied myself at the all-you-can-eat hotel breakfast buffet. My
contours gradually rounded out. We sipped coffee with the
Canadian Ambassador to Portugal. Olympic rowers admired
KaslaGit at the dock. The weather calmed.
Gazing beyond
Lisbon's port horizon, I felt the call that stirred the souls of
Portuguese explorers five centuries ago. Eruç and I were ready
to row.
Follow
Erden Eruç and Tim Harvey through daily dispatches and on
www.around-n-over.com, and visit the ORS at
www.oceanrowing.com |
