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Is it any wonder there
are at least two adventurers living on Earlham Road in Norwich?
After all, Earlham Road was the address chosen by Sir Edmund Hillary as
the perfect place to stay awhile, after conquering Mount Everest (it was
where his sister lived).
Fifty years after Sir Edmund conquered Everest, University of East
Anglia graduate Andrew Vinsen landed
in Barbados as one half of the first British team across the line in the
Woodvale Atlantic Rowing Race 2003.
It had taken Andrew, and team mate Alasdair
McGregor, 55 days, 11 hours and 10 minutes, to cross the
finishing line.
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But December 13 was also
the day Saddam Hussein was captured, so the news that Andrew and
Alasdair had come fourth overall took a back seat.
Andrew had graduated from the UEA the year before, in Linguistics and
Danish (his mother is Danish), and this was his first real adventure.
During his time at the UEA, he had been captain of boats, at the UEA
Boat Club, and then rowing coach.
The 25-year-old had
trained on the River Yar and had then raced on the Atlantic Ocean for 12
hours out of every 24 - two hours on and two hours off. He only had an
hour and a quarter's sleep maximum at any one time. He described it as
an amazing experience: "You wouldn't believe how still, calm and flat
the ocean can be."
On Andrew's return, fellow Earlham Road resident
James "Tiny" Little turned up on his doorstep with a
bottle of champagne.
Tiny, landlord of the Alexandra Tavern in Stafford Street, plans to row
the Atlantic single-handed, setting off from the Canary Islands on
January 20, and was amazed to discover that Andrew lived on the same
road as he. "I managed to pick his brains non-stop for three hours,"
said Tiny, who will set out in a small rowing boat from La Gomera on the
3000-mile voyage to the Caribbean island of Antigua.
His journey should take around 100 days. Only 25 people have completed
the east-west Atlantic solo rows before.
Tiny said: "I think if I was to do it with anyone else, I'd drive them
mad."
Andrew added: "It's a completely different concept what Tiny is
undertaking. There's no one to bounce ideas off. I'm not sure if I would
be able to go out on my own and do it again, even having done it once.
It's a massive undertaking."
Sitting in his pub, Tiny holds a list of Rosker freeze-dried food. The
list looks a bit different to the menu at the Alex, but he assures me
the "bacon with mash & peas" travel lunch comes highly recommended.
He will need 8000 calories a day to provide the body with fuel he needs
to row.
Tiny, who spent 14 years in the Navy, said: "I've always had a hankering
to row the Atlantic since Chay Blyth and John Fairfax."
He bought his boat, Womble, which has made the journey three times
before, in Barbados. Even Womble's creator Elizabeth Beresford has sent
Tiny a card wishing him well on his challenge.
Tiny is rowing the Atlantic to raise money for the Davenport Trust, a
new Norfolk charity set up to help young people, their parents, siblings
and friends to spot the key warning signs that indicate depression.
The trust takes its name from Shaun Davenport, a bright 17-year-old who
went to Hewett School.
Shaun took his own life a year ago this month; he was suffering from
depression, but at the time of his death neither he, nor any of his
friends, family or teachers had detected it.
Tiny said: "When Shaun died last year and the charity was set up, I
thought, 'What can you do, Tiny, to get the charity off to a good
start?'"
His wife and two teenage daughters are all behind him. Anita has told
him he needs to take a bottle of champagne with him, as he explained
there was the "small matter of a 25th wedding anniversary when I'm out
there!"
Tiny was 18 stone before he started training for his row, and he had
been turned down for life insurance. He joked that was down to "sitting
on a stool for 17 and a half years, building myself up".
But with the help of Norwich Sportpark and Dereham-based dietary
advisers, Nutri-Tactics, Tiny had shed more than four stone for his
voyage. He has, however, put on weight to ensure that he has surplus to
burn off during the row. Christmas, no doubt, helped him do that. He
planned to spend Christmas "putting in appearances in the pub in-between
training sessions: rowing up and down the river, watching people doing
Christmas shopping."
At 49, training for his Atlantic challenge has made Tiny "feel like a
young man" again. He admitted: "It's a bit of a mid-life crisis, I
think."
Tiny leaves Norwich on Saturday, but Andrew may not be far behind him on
the adventure trail.
Andrew's next planned adventure is the Polar Challenge 2005, a race to
the magnetic North Pole in the Arctic, with team mates Alex and Jeremy
Hinton from Suffolk.
And Tiny's Altantic Row might not be his last challenge, as he aims to
raise more than £50,000 for the charity.
You can donate online by logging on to
www.tinysatlanticrow.com
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