Row, row, row your boat
I was only 16 kilometres outside New York harbour when things began to go wrong with my attempt to row west to east across ‘The Pond’. On my port side, about eight kilometres distant, Long Island stretched out into the Atlantic Ocean for about 160 kilometres. To starboard was the open expanse of the Atlantic and the favourable currents of the Gulf Stream, on which I was hoping to hitch a ride.
I had cast off from the marina in glorious sunshine with a light westerly zephyr, but after just four hours at sea, the wind picked up and a stiff sea breeze from the southeast began blowing me straight towards the shores of Long Island.
I could already taste the indignity of being washed up on the beach less than a day into my trip. So, to stop my drift landwards in the steadily increasing wind, I deployed my parachute (or ‘para’) anchor for the first time. This piece of equipment is designed to hold the boat as stationary as possible without attaching it to a solid object such as the sea bed. A ground anchor is more reliable, but when the bottom of the ocean is up to seven kilometres beneath you, a parachute anchor is the only solution to control the boat.
In theory, deploying the para anchor is a simple exercise. In reality, you have to stop a four-metre parachute from billowing into the air and then put it in the sea without it tangling. Once it has inflated with water, you feed out the lines that attach it to the boat. These are about 100 metres long and have to be fed out simultaneously, which isn’t so easy on your own!
Once it was deployed, the boat’s bow came up into the wind and my rate of drift slowed down to 0.2 knots. This allowed me to rest and get a weather update while awaiting a sympathetic change in the winds.
Be prepared
The growing popularity of rowing the oceans stems partly from the fact that it’s relatively easy to do. No great technical skill or talent is required, only a modicum of fitness and a good dose of bloody-mindedness. That said, solid preparation and familiarity with your equipment gives you a strong advantage over much of the competition.
I particularly enjoy the simplicity of ocean rowing and most of its associated gear, which can be broken down into several basic categories: the boat and rowing equipment; communications; navigation; sleeping; safety and emergency equipment; clothing; electrics; and cooking and food. The equipment used to fulfil these requirements should be robust, simple and reliable. It must also be capable of being made redundant, so that if it breaks or fails, the success of the voyage isn’t compromised. I used my Atlantic row as a training run for my forthcoming around-the-world trip, and in the process learnt about the pieces of equipment that work and the items of gear that are unreliable luxuries.
The one bit of kit that can’t really be made redundant is the boat itself, so this must be prepared with unstinting care and attention to detail. Little things – such as making sure that protruding fixtures and fittings are protected with padding or cut flush to avoid injuries – are as important as structural work. The boat is your best friend, so it pays to look after it. After all, if it comes to grief, so will you.
If this worst-case scenario does occur, the life raft is an option, although not a very attractive one. I always think that if your boat became unstuck, then the conditions must be very severe; the likelihood of surviving in a life raft in cold waters for a prolonged time would be slight.
I believe that it’s definitely preferable to stay on a stricken craft than take to the raft – but there are exceptions to this rule. For example, if the boat caught fire, then the life raft would become an attractive choice. I take a life raft on my trips largely for the psychological reassurance it provides. Knowing that if one boat goes down you can get into another is quite comforting.
On the Atlantic trip, I had a small, single-seat life raft supplied by RFD Beaufort, which makes the rafts that are packed into the ejector seats of military jets. On my around-the-world trip, I will be carrying a larger, four-person RFD raft that weighs 54 kilograms. This will be the heaviest single item of kit on the boat. The raft needs to be bigger and stronger to withstand the conditions of the Southern Ocean, where rescue is a lot farther away than in the busy highways of the Atlantic.
On the grid
While the life raft is the safety item of last resort, communications devices are the safety items for daily use. My Argos tracking beacon operates independently of the boat’s power system, allowing it to continue working in the event of a power failure on the vessel. Argos relays the boat’s position to a centre in Toulouse every 90 seconds. There is also a ‘presence’ button on the beacon that can be pushed daily to show that you’re still on the boat. There are versions available with up to 16 pre-coded messages, although this can allow room for confusion and speculation in case of distress. This is an excellent bit of kit as it’s totally automatic: you simply turn it on and it continuously transmits position updates to your shore team for about 90 days.
For live communications with the shore team, I use the Iridium satellite network. It’s the only satcom network that offers worldwide coverage. On my Atlantic boat, I used a Motorola 9505A handset with an external antenna. I always used the phone inside the cabin so that it wouldn’t be exposed to the weather, and this system worked well.
With the addition of a data kit and Contact 3.0 software provided by HumanEdgeTech, I used the Iridium system to send and receive emails, and also to post live updates and photographs on my website via a personal digital assistant (PDA). This is one of the smallest systems available with these capabilities, and was ideal for my purposes. With this in place, I was able to report in weekly – at one stage, I organised an air-droppable resupply that, fortunately, became unnecessary – and I could also use it to speak to friends and family. The unit is portable, so I could have used it in my life raft in an emergency. On my next expedition, I’ll supplement the Iridium configuration with an Inmarsat C system.
I carried three global positioning system (GPS) receivers on board. The primary and two back-up units worked flawlessly during my Atlantic crossing, and made navigating straightforward. Had all three broken, I would have used my compass. If that failed, I could have used the sun and stars for navigation: I might have missed the UK, but I could certainly have reached Europe.
When choosing the GPS units, I made sure they had no moving parts so that they wouldn’t be affected by the violent motion of the boat. I stored the back-up units in waterproof bags and placed one in the emergency escape bag. This is known as a ‘grab bag’, because you grab it on your way to the life raft.
You may be wondering how all these bits of electronic wizardry are powered. In the Atlantic, I had solar panels on the cabin roof that charged the boat batteries even when it was foggy or overcast. My forthcoming trip requires rather more thought due to the expected rain, wind and low-angled sun. I will be taking lots of solar panels and supplementing these with a small wind generator. This will be detachable in the event of lively weather.
I’ll also carry a methanol fuel cell. The Max Power fuel cell is a brilliant piece of gear that converts methanol into electricity for only a small (seven kilograms) weight penalty. Five litres of methanol provides 340 amp hours of energy, which is enough for running all equipment continuously for 48 hours or, more thriftily, for a week. The fuel cell is a backup to the solar and wind power to keep the batteries at optimum efficiency, but it could power the boat’s systems independently if required.
Most of the electricity is used by the most important machine on board, the Spectra Cape Horn Xtreme watermaker. This desalinator removes salt from seawater to make delicious, drinkable water. It uses a lot of power and has to be run for up to 45 minutes every 24 hours to provide three to five litres of water for drinking and cooking. If the batteries are low and not charging optimally, I only make a small amount of water until it’s bright and sunny again. My backup to the electric watermaker is a Katadyn Survivor 35 hand-operated desalinator, which can produce more than four litres of drinking water per hour of pumping.
Wear it well
In terms of comfort, clothing comes pretty high on the list of priorities. For the Atlantic row, I managed to get Reed Chillcheater to sponsor me for all of my clothing. I used this and overall, it was very good, especially the Transpire Fleece, which I wore constantly.
On top of this garment, I wore an Aquatherm dry top and dungarees. This was an excellent combo for rowing as it was light, flexible and had plenty of room to row in. The only downside was that the dungarees began to give out after being chafed and worn away for four months; a bit of gaffer tape soon stifled those leaks.
The Chillcheater clothing is a little too lightweight for my next expedition, on which I will be using a mix of clothing comprising Musto oilskins and mid-layers, and Fourth Element thermals. This should cope with the activities of rowing and deploying the para anchor, as well as periods of inactivity in the cabin.
This is just a sample of my preferred equipment. The trick to finding the kit that suits you is to try everything and see what works. To that end, I will be going up to Arctic Norway for extended sea trials of the boat and equipment this spring to find out how my gear performs in the cold, damp and rough polar oceans that I will be facing at the end of the year.
Pioneers of ocean rowing
In 1896, the first men crossed the Atlantic ‘without sail or canvas’. George Harbo and Frank Samuelsen still hold the speed record for two people rowing from the USA to England of 55 days. Their equipment comprised an open 18-foot (5.5-metre) clinker-built boat called The Fox. They wore oilskins and had rations of tinned meat and butter, a barrel of biscuits, and eggs, which they boiled in their coffee. They cooked on an open stove, which at one point set their boat on fire. Navigation was done with a sextant and almanac. Their achievement made me feel daft in my boat with its onboard GPS, telephone and watermaker. My crossing was a pleasure cruise in comparison to their voyage.
Turning to technology
Technology has made ocean rowing considerably easier and far more comfortable since the days of Harbo and Samuelsen, when a rowing boat looked like a rowing boat, cabins were the stuff of dreams, water had to be carried, dehydrated rations were in their infancy, and communication was virtually non-existent.
Now, we have comfortable cabins, radios (thanks to the BBC World Service, you can listen to the Ashes in the mid-Atlantic), satellite phones and watermakers. Things have undoubtedly become easier: boats are lighter, there is shelter from the elements, and there is communication with land at the press of a button. What hasn’t changed in more than a century of ocean rowing is the fact that every rowboat needs someone pulling on the oars to make any sort of meaningful progress.
Olly is preparing for Global Row, the first solo circumnavigation of the world in a rowing boat, which is expected to take up to two years to complete. He will start and finish in New Zealand and overwinter on South Georgia.
For more details, visit www.virginglobalrow.com
January 2008
I had cast off from the marina in glorious sunshine with a light westerly zephyr, but after just four hours at sea, the wind picked up and a stiff sea breeze from the southeast began blowing me straight towards the shores of Long Island.
I could already taste the indignity of being washed up on the beach less than a day into my trip. So, to stop my drift landwards in the steadily increasing wind, I deployed my parachute (or ‘para’) anchor for the first time. This piece of equipment is designed to hold the boat as stationary as possible without attaching it to a solid object such as the sea bed. A ground anchor is more reliable, but when the bottom of the ocean is up to seven kilometres beneath you, a parachute anchor is the only solution to control the boat.
In theory, deploying the para anchor is a simple exercise. In reality, you have to stop a four-metre parachute from billowing into the air and then put it in the sea without it tangling. Once it has inflated with water, you feed out the lines that attach it to the boat. These are about 100 metres long and have to be fed out simultaneously, which isn’t so easy on your own!
Once it was deployed, the boat’s bow came up into the wind and my rate of drift slowed down to 0.2 knots. This allowed me to rest and get a weather update while awaiting a sympathetic change in the winds.
Be prepared
The growing popularity of rowing the oceans stems partly from the fact that it’s relatively easy to do. No great technical skill or talent is required, only a modicum of fitness and a good dose of bloody-mindedness. That said, solid preparation and familiarity with your equipment gives you a strong advantage over much of the competition.
I particularly enjoy the simplicity of ocean rowing and most of its associated gear, which can be broken down into several basic categories: the boat and rowing equipment; communications; navigation; sleeping; safety and emergency equipment; clothing; electrics; and cooking and food. The equipment used to fulfil these requirements should be robust, simple and reliable. It must also be capable of being made redundant, so that if it breaks or fails, the success of the voyage isn’t compromised. I used my Atlantic row as a training run for my forthcoming around-the-world trip, and in the process learnt about the pieces of equipment that work and the items of gear that are unreliable luxuries.
The one bit of kit that can’t really be made redundant is the boat itself, so this must be prepared with unstinting care and attention to detail. Little things – such as making sure that protruding fixtures and fittings are protected with padding or cut flush to avoid injuries – are as important as structural work. The boat is your best friend, so it pays to look after it. After all, if it comes to grief, so will you.
If this worst-case scenario does occur, the life raft is an option, although not a very attractive one. I always think that if your boat became unstuck, then the conditions must be very severe; the likelihood of surviving in a life raft in cold waters for a prolonged time would be slight.
I believe that it’s definitely preferable to stay on a stricken craft than take to the raft – but there are exceptions to this rule. For example, if the boat caught fire, then the life raft would become an attractive choice. I take a life raft on my trips largely for the psychological reassurance it provides. Knowing that if one boat goes down you can get into another is quite comforting.
On the Atlantic trip, I had a small, single-seat life raft supplied by RFD Beaufort, which makes the rafts that are packed into the ejector seats of military jets. On my around-the-world trip, I will be carrying a larger, four-person RFD raft that weighs 54 kilograms. This will be the heaviest single item of kit on the boat. The raft needs to be bigger and stronger to withstand the conditions of the Southern Ocean, where rescue is a lot farther away than in the busy highways of the Atlantic.
On the grid
While the life raft is the safety item of last resort, communications devices are the safety items for daily use. My Argos tracking beacon operates independently of the boat’s power system, allowing it to continue working in the event of a power failure on the vessel. Argos relays the boat’s position to a centre in Toulouse every 90 seconds. There is also a ‘presence’ button on the beacon that can be pushed daily to show that you’re still on the boat. There are versions available with up to 16 pre-coded messages, although this can allow room for confusion and speculation in case of distress. This is an excellent bit of kit as it’s totally automatic: you simply turn it on and it continuously transmits position updates to your shore team for about 90 days.
For live communications with the shore team, I use the Iridium satellite network. It’s the only satcom network that offers worldwide coverage. On my Atlantic boat, I used a Motorola 9505A handset with an external antenna. I always used the phone inside the cabin so that it wouldn’t be exposed to the weather, and this system worked well.
With the addition of a data kit and Contact 3.0 software provided by HumanEdgeTech, I used the Iridium system to send and receive emails, and also to post live updates and photographs on my website via a personal digital assistant (PDA). This is one of the smallest systems available with these capabilities, and was ideal for my purposes. With this in place, I was able to report in weekly – at one stage, I organised an air-droppable resupply that, fortunately, became unnecessary – and I could also use it to speak to friends and family. The unit is portable, so I could have used it in my life raft in an emergency. On my next expedition, I’ll supplement the Iridium configuration with an Inmarsat C system.
I carried three global positioning system (GPS) receivers on board. The primary and two back-up units worked flawlessly during my Atlantic crossing, and made navigating straightforward. Had all three broken, I would have used my compass. If that failed, I could have used the sun and stars for navigation: I might have missed the UK, but I could certainly have reached Europe.
When choosing the GPS units, I made sure they had no moving parts so that they wouldn’t be affected by the violent motion of the boat. I stored the back-up units in waterproof bags and placed one in the emergency escape bag. This is known as a ‘grab bag’, because you grab it on your way to the life raft.
You may be wondering how all these bits of electronic wizardry are powered. In the Atlantic, I had solar panels on the cabin roof that charged the boat batteries even when it was foggy or overcast. My forthcoming trip requires rather more thought due to the expected rain, wind and low-angled sun. I will be taking lots of solar panels and supplementing these with a small wind generator. This will be detachable in the event of lively weather.
I’ll also carry a methanol fuel cell. The Max Power fuel cell is a brilliant piece of gear that converts methanol into electricity for only a small (seven kilograms) weight penalty. Five litres of methanol provides 340 amp hours of energy, which is enough for running all equipment continuously for 48 hours or, more thriftily, for a week. The fuel cell is a backup to the solar and wind power to keep the batteries at optimum efficiency, but it could power the boat’s systems independently if required.
Most of the electricity is used by the most important machine on board, the Spectra Cape Horn Xtreme watermaker. This desalinator removes salt from seawater to make delicious, drinkable water. It uses a lot of power and has to be run for up to 45 minutes every 24 hours to provide three to five litres of water for drinking and cooking. If the batteries are low and not charging optimally, I only make a small amount of water until it’s bright and sunny again. My backup to the electric watermaker is a Katadyn Survivor 35 hand-operated desalinator, which can produce more than four litres of drinking water per hour of pumping.
Wear it well
In terms of comfort, clothing comes pretty high on the list of priorities. For the Atlantic row, I managed to get Reed Chillcheater to sponsor me for all of my clothing. I used this and overall, it was very good, especially the Transpire Fleece, which I wore constantly.
On top of this garment, I wore an Aquatherm dry top and dungarees. This was an excellent combo for rowing as it was light, flexible and had plenty of room to row in. The only downside was that the dungarees began to give out after being chafed and worn away for four months; a bit of gaffer tape soon stifled those leaks.
The Chillcheater clothing is a little too lightweight for my next expedition, on which I will be using a mix of clothing comprising Musto oilskins and mid-layers, and Fourth Element thermals. This should cope with the activities of rowing and deploying the para anchor, as well as periods of inactivity in the cabin.
This is just a sample of my preferred equipment. The trick to finding the kit that suits you is to try everything and see what works. To that end, I will be going up to Arctic Norway for extended sea trials of the boat and equipment this spring to find out how my gear performs in the cold, damp and rough polar oceans that I will be facing at the end of the year.
Pioneers of ocean rowing
In 1896, the first men crossed the Atlantic ‘without sail or canvas’. George Harbo and Frank Samuelsen still hold the speed record for two people rowing from the USA to England of 55 days. Their equipment comprised an open 18-foot (5.5-metre) clinker-built boat called The Fox. They wore oilskins and had rations of tinned meat and butter, a barrel of biscuits, and eggs, which they boiled in their coffee. They cooked on an open stove, which at one point set their boat on fire. Navigation was done with a sextant and almanac. Their achievement made me feel daft in my boat with its onboard GPS, telephone and watermaker. My crossing was a pleasure cruise in comparison to their voyage.
Turning to technology
Technology has made ocean rowing considerably easier and far more comfortable since the days of Harbo and Samuelsen, when a rowing boat looked like a rowing boat, cabins were the stuff of dreams, water had to be carried, dehydrated rations were in their infancy, and communication was virtually non-existent.
Now, we have comfortable cabins, radios (thanks to the BBC World Service, you can listen to the Ashes in the mid-Atlantic), satellite phones and watermakers. Things have undoubtedly become easier: boats are lighter, there is shelter from the elements, and there is communication with land at the press of a button. What hasn’t changed in more than a century of ocean rowing is the fact that every rowboat needs someone pulling on the oars to make any sort of meaningful progress.
Olly is preparing for Global Row, the first solo circumnavigation of the world in a rowing boat, which is expected to take up to two years to complete. He will start and finish in New Zealand and overwinter on South Georgia.
For more details, visit www.virginglobalrow.com
January 2008
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