The Crossing

Conquering the Atlantic in the World's Toughest Rowing Race

Ben Fogle, James Cracknell

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781843545125
• eBook ISBN:
  9781782392507
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

'Read this... Two very different men fight, play games and nearly lose their lives.' The Times When James Cracknell and Ben Fogle decided to compete in the Atlantic Rowing Race, they thought they knew what awaited them: nearly three thousand miles of empty ocean, stormy weather and colossal physical stress. But their epic journey would become a living hell that tested the strength of every fibre of their being. Forty nine days later James and Ben were the first pair to cross the finishing line.They had pushed themselves physically, psychologically and emotionally to the limit. They had survived without water rations, lost the few clothes they had in a freak wave, capsized, hallucinated, played games, wept, fought, grown beards, nursed blisters and rowed 2, 930 miles. They will never be the same again.

Chapter Six

Depression: Stormy Weather

Friday, 9 December 2005, 9 a.m.

1 All Relative (four-man boat), 719 miles

2 Spirit of Cornwall, 558 miles

3 Atlantic 4 (four-man boat), 553 miles

4 EDF, 536 miles

5 Atlantic Prince, 522 miles

6 Team C2, 520 miles

Woodvale press release:

Although the Atlantic Rowing Race 2005 is very much a race – and whereas in reality there isn’t much spare time in-between the standard daily routine of rowing, sleeping and eating – it is amazing to see just how inventive the teams have become in finding ways to amuse themselves.

Single-handed rower Roz Savage from Boat No. 15 – Sedna Solo has been very productive and has been growing her own vegetables. Roz ran out of fresh food a few days ago so she implemented her seed-sprouting plan by putting chick peas and aduki beans in a seed sprouter, watering them twice a day and, hey presto, two days later she’s got fresh crunchy bean sprouts. Apparently, the ancient Chinese mariners used to do the same on long voyages to avoid the scurvy.

While life in the Atlantic seems to have taken over all of our lives, it’s hard to think that normal life continues on back at home. Phil Harris from Boat No. 4 – Row4Life, had a dose of reality today when he received some fantastic and exciting news. Phil’s wife Nikki gave birth to twin sons, Joshua and Samuel, at Whipps Cross Hospital in Essex just after 10 a.m. this morning. On behalf of all the staff at Woodvale Events – many congratulations to Phil, Nikki and their families on this fantastic news. Who knows, Joshua and Samuel could follow in Dad’s footsteps and be a potential Pairs team entry in a future ocean rowing race!

Posted 09/12/05 04:32:45 PM

JAMES

My dad called to say that we were the pair in second place. With the wind behind us we’d made great progress and our decision to take a southerly course seemed to be paying off. I never really doubted Ben’s navigation! I got off the phone and stuck my head out of the cabin: ‘Mate, we’re up to second!’ We took the opportunity to go all American for a few minutes, Ben yelling, ‘Whooo! Yeah!’ as we gave each other a high five – the ocean does funny things to your mind.

Ben’s initial excitement didn’t last long. When I came out of the cabin for my shift, he looked very down. ‘What’s up, buddy?’ I asked, surprised at the drastic change in mood.

‘I can’t cope with the pressure of being second,’ he replied.

‘How can there be more pressure on us in second place than there was when we were in seventh?’ I exclaimed in frustration.

‘Because I don’t know if I can keep this pace up.’

‘But it’s the same pace we were doing yesterday and you felt all right then. You should be pleased. We haven’t changed anything to get into this position, and the course that you planned seems to be giving us the best weather.’

‘I just don’t want to race all the way there.’

‘We haven’t done anything different! Look, I was supposed to be the negative one on this boat; we’re up to second place, enjoy it.’

I felt deflated by Ben’s lack of enthusiasm. I was convinced that if we started doing well in the race he would become caught up in it and the chance to be the first boat to Antigua would spur him on. I needed his help. I was struggling trying to motivate us both and we needed to keep as high an average speed as possible, we hadn’t taken enough food for a leisurely crossing. Ben was never late out for a shift and never complained about the workload, but all the drive and motivation was down to me and I couldn’t keep it up for another two months.

My mood dropped even further when the weather report came through on the satellite phone, forecasting a tropical storm in our area of latitude and longitude. The weather reports so far in the race might have come from Michael Fish for all their accuracy, often predicting north-easterly trade winds – winds that would blow us all the way to Antigua – that still hadn’t made an appearance. Today, however, there was no doubt that the weather around us was changing.

The wind dropped and the atmosphere became charged. Our sensitivity to meteorological changes was becoming more acute the longer we spent at sea, and we soon learnt that the weather had almost total control over the speed of our progress. If the phrase ‘calm before a storm’ could be used at any time on our journey, it was now. Something major was on the way – and if a storm hit there would be no option but to put down the parachute anchor and sit it out.

I was adamant that we should make hay while the sun shone and suggested that we row together for most of the night, before the storm hit. As soon as we were forced to shelter in the cabin, we could then use that time to recover from the extra rowing.

Ben didn’t want to do it; he believed that our shift system was the only thing keeping him going. I couldn’t force him to row for most of the night, of course, so we stuck to our pattern.

BEN

The difference in our reasons for being on board Spirit and our strategies for getting to Antigua were something we debated endlessly. I could never get James to recognize the distinction between getting to Antigua as fast as we could, and winning the race. For me, getting across the ocean in as short a time as was physically possible was my sole objective. I was always happy to be in first place, but it made no difference to my commitment to the race, or my strategy on the oars. I gave my sessions 100 per cent all the time, there was nothing extra to give simply because we happened to be further along a journey that other people were undertaking separately. James couldn’t accept that I couldn’t push harder. And so we would begin again a disgreement we had been having since we first met back in the UK.

JAMES

The edge was taken off my frustration by the beauty of the night, with a still cloudless sky lit up by a full moon and a blanket of stars. For the first time so far in the race I actually enjoyed a night shift, and felt incredibly lucky to be out in the middle of nowhere, able to see all the constellations without the haze of London’s pollution dimming their power.

I was basking beneath the stars when I heard a loud ‘phoooff’ beside the boat. Our close encounter with a tanker meant I was much more sensitive to anything out of the ordinary, and I immediately stopped rowing and looked around. No lights, no tanker, in fact nothing in sight.

I started rowing again, uneasily.

‘Phoooff’ – there it was again.

‘Phoooff’ – and again. I looked towards the noise and saw a pod of dolphins about six feet from the end of my oar.

Almost as soon as they appeared, they were gone, only to reappear with a ‘phoooff’, this time on the left-hand side of the boat. They were obviously checking out what kind of animal we were, and they can’t have been too impressed because they dived under the boat a couple more times and got bored and disappeared. It was the first time I’d ever seen a dolphin and what a way to see them. Perhaps life out here wasn’t so bad after all. I tried to tempt them back with some chunks of energy bar, with no luck (mind you, Ben and I were already bored with the energy bars, so I wasn’t too surprised).

Saturday, 10 December 2005, 11 a.m.

1 All Relative (four-man boat), 802 miles

2 Atlantic 4 (four-man boat), 620 miles

3 EDF, 598 miles

4 Spirit of Cornwall, 597 miles

5 Team C2, 576 miles

6 Atlantic Prince, 570 miles

The news got even better the next morning; we had taken the lead in the pairs race. We were now one mile ahead. Amazingly, after eleven days of hard rowing it was that close. Ben’s enthusiasm was muted; he was clearly worried that I was going to flog us to death in order to keep the lead. I can understand his concern; I was definitely beginning to get caught up in the race. Having thought at the start that our chances of winning rested somewhere between no chance and absolutely no chance, it was now dawning on me that it was a possibility and I thought we should take a risk and see how fast we could go. I tried to reason with Ben; the quicker we went, the quicker we’d be in Antigua and he should look at it that way rather than thinking of it as racing.

My semantics weren’t fooling him. I was going to have to be either more subtle or more forceful.

BEN

‘We’re in first place,’ announced James with astonishment.

For three days we had followed the prevailing north-easterly winds, picking up speed all the time. At long last, James and I had started to settle into the rhythm and routine of daily life, and now to add to the buoyancy of our mood, we were also in the lead.

First place. First place. The words felt unfamiliar and strange. After all our struggles in La Gomera to get to the start line, it seemed inconceivable that we could actually be leading.

‘Are you sure?’ I asked incredulously.

James nodded with satisfaction.

How had we managed that, I wondered. To be frank, since the start of the race we’d been busking it. We weren’t even sure we were heading in the right direction. We knew we had to head south before turning west in order to benefit from the prevailing winds and currents, but how far south was open to conjecture.

After the horrors and realities of the first week at sea, James and I had resigned ourselves to simply crossing the ocean. To finish, we had both agreed, was an achievement in itself – but against all odds we found ourselves in pole position, and it felt good.

I had never been in the lead before in anything, and I couldn’t help but break into a big smile. I couldn’t wait to tell Marina, but before I had a chance the sat phone beeped and a text message flashed on to the screen.

‘YOU’RE IN FIRST PLACE, I’M SO PROUD,’ read the message.

Once news of our position was absorbed (I agreed, being first couldn’t be a bad thing) I reflected upon the consequences for me of this ‘good news’. Our top position would be accompanied by James’s plans to change tactics and that was utterly deflating. The moment we hit pole position James would, without fail, up the ante to try to get us to stay there. It was too much. I have always liked to be the outsider, it’s given me something to prove and it has guaranteed less pressure on me because whatever I did I would always be better than expected. Up until hitting first place I had just assumed that my role as the underdog would remain secure. We wouldn’t be first and I’d be the fall guy for us not winning. I had always accepted that. From the first time I asked James to be my partner, there was such a difference in our abilities it seemed only natural that James was always going to be the tough one and I’d be the handicap. After all, I’d made a career out of taking part whereas James is a professional winner. Once we were in first I felt I had to step up and perform and meet James’s revised expectations.

There was also a problem outside the boat: the wind had shifted and the weather was about to deal us a heavy blow. It had been a long night and now we were beating into a strong headwind. Our speed had been reduced from a healthy 3.5 knots to a little under a knot. The westerly wind was picking up all the time, and rowing was becoming harder and harder and our progress less and less viable.

Sunday, 11 December 2005, 8 a.m.

1 All Relative (four-man boat), 815 miles

2 Atlantic 4 (four-man boat), 644 miles

3 EDF, 613 miles

4 Spirit of Cornwall, 599 miles

5 Team C2, 597 miles

6 Atlantic Prince, 587 miles

JAMES

The weather was changing quickly. The sky filled with cloud and the wind began to pick up, coming at us from the side and making it increasingly difficult to stay on course. I was so frustrated: we’d just taken the lead, only to get stopped in our tracks. I became angry that we hadn’t rowed two-up during the night, as it was clear we were going to have to stop if the wind carried on building like this.

The question was, at what point did we stop and put the anchor down? Although called an ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the author
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Prologue
• One La Gomera
• Two Race Day
• Three The Start
• Four ‘Ten Minutes To Go’: Settling into the Routine
• Five The Real Race Begins
• Six Depression: Stormy Weather
• Seven ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’
• Eight Hitting Zeta
• Nine Capsize
• Ten Falling Apart
• Eleven The Finish
• Epilogue