Rowboat in a Hurricane (2 page)

The statistics told me little apart from the fact that a determined and properly outfitted individual could row across an ocean. What I really needed to know was what would be required in the way of gear, finances, knowledge, and support. Even more importantly, did I have what it would take? Was I strong enough? Was I tough enough? Would my years in an office combined with an overly protective childhood render me a physical and emotional wreck as land disappeared in the distance?

Between books and talking to people, I gained much of the theoretical knowledge needed. Hundreds of books have been written on crossing oceans in small boats. Most concern sailboats, but much of the same information applies to rowboats. I became familiar with nautical navigation, ocean dynamics, food storage, first aid, and emergency procedures. As for the mechanics of rowing, I learned that propelling an ocean rowboat is not dissimilar to propelling a common rowing shell. I practised in a friend’s rowboat and later joined one of Vancouver’s rowing clubs. Information specific to ocean rowing was available online, posted by others who had done similar adventures and by the British-based Ocean Rowing Society. Much of this information was related to a gruelling five-thousand-kilometre rowing race from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean, which, interestingly for me, was advertised with the catch phrase “No experience needed.”

After months of wavering, I finally made the decision:
I will row across the Atlantic.
But saying these words and making the journey a reality were worlds apart.

The next crucial step would be to find a partner to do the journey with. Although many have rowed an ocean solo, doing it in tandem is more efficient, and I imagined much more enjoyable. I compiled a list of the ideal characteristics of a rowing partner and realized they were surprisingly similar to the traits I had looked for in a boyfriend. The ideal person would be calm, rational, determined, athletic, and not too insane (skeletons in the closet are a no-no when you are cooped together for months on end in a tiny boat). My fiancé, Colin, had all these traits, but I did not consider him a candidate for two reasons. I didn’t want to risk losing our relationship (a disproportionate number of couples break up on sailing trips, and a rowing trip of this type would be far more stressful). Plus, he had already left on a two-year expedition and was therefore unavailable.

I told a few friends of my new plan and sought their help in my search for a partner. The idea of my journey raised a few eyebrows and led to the occasional joke about my sanity, but most of my friends were overwhelmingly supportive. But unfortunately for me, those who had the right traits to join me in this adventure also had responsibilities or obligations that would not allow them to spend so many months away from their regular lives. I placed an advertisement on a rowing website and canvassed members of the B.C. Mountaineering Club and the Vancouver Rowing Club. Months slipped by and I was still without a partner. My friend and coworker Mary Hearnden was so determined for me to succeed that she shyly admitted, “If you can’t find anyone, I’ll go with you,” even though her passion was the mountains and not the sea. Through Mary, though, on two multi-day treks in the mountains of Manning and Garibaldi parks she organized, I found the ideal partner: Cathy Choinicki.

Cathy loves outdoor adventure, and that passion has taken her to remote areas around the world. When we met she was in her mid-thirties and working for Environment Canada, which afforded her enough flexibility for travelling, mountaineering, and her latest pursuit: sailing. She listened to my plans with rapt enthusiasm, and when I finally asked her if she would like to join me, she said yes.

I was euphoric that my ocean row was no longer a solo affair, that I would have someone to keep me company on the sea and to share the workload of preparing for the adventure. It seemed things were slowly coming together.

Our planned departure date was eleven months away, and within that time we had two tasks: to learn how to row and to raise one hundred thousand dollars to buy a boat and cover additional costs. Learning to row was the easy part. We trained daily, often at the Vancouver Rowing Club, which sponsored us with free lessons and offered us the guidance of one of their coaches, Alex Binkley. We made marked improvements physically, but our fundraising efforts weren’t following the same course. We created a website and a comprehensive sponsorship proposal package. Cathy’s good friend John Rocha, the marketing director for the Vancouver Canucks hockey team, guided us in our efforts. Other experts in marketing and sponsorship generously offered advice, and a team of professionals created a powerful promotional video for us. We sent our sponsorship package to hundreds of companies and placed dozens of cold calls. Months slipped by with little sponsorship success, until finally it seemed the only way to make our expedition a reality would be to ask the banks for a loan.

By this time, Cathy was growing increasingly uninterested. Then, in mid-spring
2005
, seven months before our departure date, she told me the disappointing, but not entirely surprising, news. She would not be rowing across the Atlantic with me. Cathy was concerned about the financial and health risks. She did not want to borrow huge sums of money for such an uncertain venture, and she was worried that an old shoulder injury would be further damaged by many months of constant rowing. I was devastated by such a significant step backwards, but grateful that she had truthfully assessed her commitment now instead of later. Things would have been much worse if she had given me this news just weeks or days before the journey began.

Crossing the ocean solo had some appeal, and I pondered this new reality. Other potential partners also came to mind. While Cathy and I had been training and planning, several people had expressed interest in rowing across an ocean. In particular, the father of one of my best friends, a sixty-five-year-old Scot with a passion for rowing, seemed an excellent candidate. Liz, his daughter, proudly lobbied on her father’s behalf: “My dad could do it. He used to be the top rower in his class and he’s still got it.” Then she added, “As long as you bring enough rum, he’ll be fine.” I could imagine ocean parties with her father singing sea shanties as we rowed and drank our way across the Atlantic.

Really, though, things weren’t looking good for my proposed adventure. I had raised absolutely no money, I might have to partner with a senior citizen, and I hadn’t even bought a boat yet.

As it turned out, I was not the only one with expedition problems. A few weeks earlier, Colin had called me from the chilled depths of Siberia on an Iridium satellite telephone to deliver some unsettling news.

“Hi, baby, it’s me,” he said. His voice was clear but fractionally delayed because of the thousands of kilometres between us.

“Honey, how are you? Is everything all right?” I asked.

“Yeah, I guess so. The only thing is I’m on my own now. Tim and I are taking some time apart and are going to cycle independently to Irkutsk.”

I worried about Colin travelling alone through Siberia. The city of Irkutsk was several thousand kilometres away. Temperatures were still twenty to thirty degrees below zero, and he was cycling on extremely remote roads. I imagined him alone, struggling through a frozen region vaster than all of Canada, and shivered.

“Do you really think that’s a good idea?” I asked.

“Don’t worry,” Colin assured me, “the people around here are friendly and the temperatures are starting to warm up. Things just aren’t working out with Tim and me. I need a break. Hopefully we’ll be able to continue together from Irkutsk.”

After we finished chatting, I couldn’t stop thinking about my boyfriend struggling all alone through Siberia. What if he was mugged or got hit by a truck? Who would contact me? Would it just be a long, endless silence lacking punctuation? I thought back to when Colin had slipped a ring on my finger several weeks before the expedition, asking me if I would marry him. A tear dropped onto the handset that I was still absent-mindedly hanging onto.

Colin had been on several expeditions before this, including rafting both the Amazon and Yenisey rivers from source to sea, as well as extensive offshore sailing adventures. And for as long as I had known him, he had spent every moment preparing for this journey. For more than a decade, it had been his dream to circumnavigate the world entirely by human power—a
42
,
000
-kilometre journey through seventeen countries that would take an estimated two years. For the last three years, he’d been working full-time on making it a reality. I had helped him prepare and when he began the expedition I continued assisting him with website updates, equipment needs, and route research. Being so closely involved in his expedition had helped me hone many of the skills needed to prepare for my own journey across the Atlantic, and undoubtedly further fuelled my own longing for adventure.

Colin had also had problems finding a suitable partner and, in the end, chose someone he did not know well. He and Tim had completed
8
,
000
kilometres of their
42
,
000
-kilometre journey together, but they still had a long way to go. Almost a year before, I had left Vancouver with them, cycling to Hyder, Alaska, before returning to my Vancouver job, while they continued by bike to Whitehorse, Yukon. They then followed the Yukon River by canoe to Fairbanks, Alaska. In Fairbanks, they continued down the rest of the river to the Bering Sea in a specially designed rowboat, and then rowed across the North Pacific to Siberia. Bicycles, skis, and their feet had taken them across Siberia, first together and, now that the conditions were slightly less formidable, separately.

Up to this point, Colin and Tim had focussed all their time, resources, and research on the first half of their expedition—the journey from Vancouver to Moscow. The second, and more difficult, leg of their expedition was still in the infancy stages of planning. The scant sponsorship dollars they had raised had long been spent and Colin had gone through tens of thousands of dollars in personal savings—his bank account was near zero. He didn’t have enough money to buy a rowboat for himself and Tim or time to look for sponsors. Now there was the very real possibility that Tim and Colin would not be able to reconcile, and that Colin would be travelling solo unless he found another travel partner. It was another wrench thrown into a very difficult expedition.

When Cathy told me her decision, I wondered if perhaps this was a fateful sign. I decided to refrain from recruiting any rum-toting Scotsmen for the time being. If Colin and Tim didn’t patch things up, Colin might need to partner with someone else to cross the Atlantic Ocean. I knew this could place undo strain on our relationship, but at the same time, deep inside I couldn’t imagine anyone I would rather share this unique adventure with.

A month later I received an e-mail from Colin, who was now in the southern Siberian city of Irkutsk. He and Tim hadn’t reunited, and their relations had become increasingly acrimonious via cyber-communication. Colin finally told Tim that they simply couldn’t continue together and proposed that they carry on travelling independently and reunite just before Vancouver. It was in no one’s interest for this expedition to turn into a competition.

While Colin was in Irkutsk, we communicated almost exclusively by e-mail because of the expense and complications of using local telephones. Messages flew back and forth as we discussed the possibility of attempting an Atlantic row together. Our big concern was what it could do to our relationship. In civilization we got along wonderfully, but what would happen when we were cooped together for months in a rowboat? The deterioration of Colin and Tim’s friendship in the field was an example that could not be overlooked. We didn’t want to jeopardize our strong relationship at any cost. Ultimately, after much back-and-forth, we decided our relationship would withstand the added stresses of an extended ocean row.

I would join Colin in Moscow and we would cycle
5
,
000
kilometres through Europe to Lisbon, Portugal. From here we would row across the Atlantic Ocean to North America—most likely Miami—before cycling back to Vancouver. It was an abrupt change from my initial plan of rowing from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean, a
5
,
000
-kilometre journey. Now I would attempt a
10
,
000
-kilometre row from mainland to mainland, and be the first woman to do so. Just a few casual e-mails had more than quadrupled the overall length of my journey to a
23
,
000
-kilometre odyssey.

I felt a little uneasy. It had been hard enough wrapping my mind around a
5
,
000
-kilometre voyage to the tropics. Now, not only was the row itself twice the distance, but I would be travelling more than halfway around the planet using just a bicycle and a rowboat.

By late May, one month before my departure for Moscow, many daunting tasks remained undone. Since Colin was on the road, I was taking care of pretty much all the logistics for the Atlantic row. Financially things still looked dismal. Colin had exhausted all his savings, and I was still unable to get any financial sponsorship. I had only one month to raise tens of thousands of dollars, purchase a rowboat, and tend to the litany of chores required to row across an ocean. The task of preparing for the ocean row was so great that I didn’t expect to have more than a weekend to plan for our bike ride across Europe. And that was only if I worked full-time on expedition planning, but I also had a day job.