Aldo Kane. Blog day 12. (Written Thursday 18th Feb)
After a few days of being schooled by the North Atlantic things started to look up. We finished our epic 3 day big wave surfing intro as quickly as it started. As we rounded the headland of the canaries we found ourselves able to start rowing again, a welcome break from just surviving hour by hour. Over the next 12 hours we tried to break back into our 2 on 2 off routine with great difficulty. Everyone feeling particularly battered. Through the night we hoovered progress steadily and by day break we had slid silently past the last of the Canaries, Gran Canaria.
I thought for this blog I might try and write what a normal 24 hours is like on board the good ship Ellida from my point of view. It’s mainly going to be roughly the same for us all but this is what and how I see it. I’ll start as if I’ve just been given a shake for my first night time shift, usually about 8pm after a good feed and a snooze.
I look at my watch and I know I have another 1 minute and 40 seconds before I need to start getting dressed. That leaves me about 2 minutes to get outside and start rowing. I don’t need to get dressed as I’ve been wearing the same shorts and shirt for the last 12 days. I wipe my face and scratch at my head, I have dried salt crystals all over my skin. I’m on my knees pulling on my Musto jacket which I’ve basically lived in also for the last week. I zip it right up and pull the collar way above my ears, with my hat on, the outside world is a long way away. Within seconds the hatch is banged to give me the 1 minute warning, as if I need any. I open the hatch and step out struggling to keep balance with my spindly atrophied legs and clip my life line onto the safety rail. Initially I can’t see anything but I can hear the hiss of the North Atlantic breakers all around me. I close the hatch quickly and pass brief salutations to Ross as I relieve him at his post, usually at the back or middle of the boat. At the same time, this is happening to two other guys on the team at the aft end.
I drop my piece of sponge and lambswool onto the seat and sit down bracing for the pain. In only 12 days I’ve lost enough muscle from my glutes that I can literally feel my arse bones run over what sinew I have left in my arse. The point load is unbearable but I grab my oars with my gloved hands and reach forward for the first time that shift. I drop my blades simultaneously into the dark gloup and pull hard, everything hurts but is instantly lost for minutes, lots of minutes as I watch in amazement as the water around my oar paddles illuminates as it’s agitated. The green phosphoresesce keeps me fixed, trance like long enough to bed the pain in. Eventually I look up and i’m back in the zone.
I get into a rhythm with foxy and Bailey who are up front, we have barely spoken but somehow we know what each other is doing and thinking. At this stage there is no need for words, just courage as we pull too. I look up and am reassured as I see we are motoring away from Polaris, ever onwards to the South. The Nav instruments that we all face give off a strange glow which illuminates the rower in front. Sometimes if they have their hood up they look like the Reeper rowing slowly across a spooky lake towards me, the Reeper never reaches me as i’m always rowing with him.
The two hours go by fairly slowly with everyone lost in their own thoughts. Out here at night there is no past, there is no future, there is only now. The pain we feel keeps us connected to our reality, the reality that nothing else matters or will matter for a very long time. We live at night from minute to minute, hand over fist over hand over fist, the mental toil is a simple but powerful one that could easily destroy the very infrastructure of out expedition. Discipline and routine are our friends in these dark hours. We plod on for another two night time shifts in the knowledge that there’s never been a double night and light always follows, the sun rise is beautiful and with it brings an emense feeling of well being and energy, today is a new day!
Day time mode is what we have to look forward to, it’s where we get to see each other after the long nights. The morale is high even though conditions are bad, it’s kind of like when you’re a kid and you’ve been at home all weekend with your family and on Monday morning you can’t wait to catch up with your mates. We share stories of our toil and get the jet boil flashed up for hot wets and scran.
Me, foxy and Matt are on the oars and it’s Matts turn on admin duties. That means he gets the food heated up and takes care of some boat husbandry like bricking up the gash and sorting out the days nutty rations. He hands the scran out to the boys who are off duty first and ensures he gets some too. It’s all day breakfast again, every spoonful goes down with an urge to hurl it back up, we can’t wait to get stuck into our dry mountain house rations. It’s a slick routine and we get ours too on handover. All the sporks are licked clean and stuck back in the jet boil for safe keeping. The sea has claimed a few already.
My shift change comes with precision and before I sort my personal admin out and sleep I need to use the facilities. We started out the trip with two washing buckets for our clothes and two for poos. during the course of our routine thrashings at anchor by big bad waves we now only have 1 bucket left ; )
It’s a tricky one but we all have to do it. I unclip the bucket and move it to midships where I clip it back on again. I pre prepare my wetwipes and load the bucket with about 4 inches of sea water for ballast. I drop shorts and sit comfortably on the bucket like Oor Willie and look out to the horizon. Except it’s not the horizon, it’s Olly and he’s only 12 inches away. I gaze into his eyes whilst he looks straight through me. It’s become the norm now and nothing fazes us. It feels good to live the simple life, I stand up and empty the contents overboard upwind, these few seconds are frought with anxiety for obvious reasons. I laugh to myself as I watch the contents go deep 6 and think about the Billy Connel “Jobby Wheeker” sketch. I clean the bucket out with wet wipes and stow it back in the admin area. Now isn’t the time to bring up the conversation with the boys about when we start using the bucket for washing clothes in.
I clamber aft back to my cabin for a well deserved 2 hour break as I settle down for sleep I notice how we have all changed physiologically over the last 2 weeks. We are all gaunt with black tired eyes, our knees have little folds of skin where our muscle used to be and our faces are wrinkled and weather beaten, dehydration has made us all age. I start to drift off to sleep knowing that out here, there is no past, there is no future, there is only now.
Aldo
Addendum: since writing this blog post we have been hammered again by another fairly brutal localised storm. To say it was a low point not just on this trip but in my life would be accurate. I’ve slept in some strange places and in some extreme conditions but last night took the biscuit. I’ll leave it for one of the other boys to describe in tomorrow’s blog.