Eat, Sleep, Row…Repeat

The Scotsman, Feb 2022

Night shift is a demanding time in the Talisker Atlantic rowing challenge. Thousands of miles from home on an open boat. Almost impossibly far from family and friends in a sea so black it merges with the sky, robbing you of balance and bearings. Rarely more so for the crew of Scotland’s Five in a Row than an evening roughly two-thirds of the way through the event. January 7th. The night of the daggerboard.

SS2, the 28 feet of fiberglass that had become their home, was then approximately 800 nautical miles from landfall in the West Indies. They had not seen another vessel for three weeks. Clive, Duncan, Ross, Ian, and Fraser were physically and mentally exhausted, struggling to make clear decisions. Smoked almost to the filter by sleep-deprivation, physical and emotional effort, and they are willing to admit, fear.

“The seas were huge; I don’t know how big. It was pitch dark, and you couldn’t see what was coming. It was…I mean it was absolutely terrifying.” says Duncan, back there for a moment, isolated on the churning obsidian swell. What he doesn’t say, but what the GPS records show, is that the boat was also moving horribly fast. Surfing at times. Strong tailwinds pushing the speedometer to max out at nearly13 knots over a 48-hour period. Close to 14mph, and more than triple their normal rate of progress.

“So we’d been drifting badly south for some time, and late that night, Clive and I were on shift, just about done in from lack of sleep and frankly scared. The decision was made to put in the daggerboard (a slim slot-in keel), just to try and hold our position.”

“The seas had been big for days, crashing in from all sides and making it difficult to even get the oars into the water.” adds Clive. “But after that something else was different. We seemed to have to wrestle and fight, just to keep the boat from trying to corkscrew around.”

Four shifts and eight challenging hours later, Ian and Fraser found themselves alone on deck, battling to keep the boat steady in the wrenching seas. The daggerboard was still down.

“You’d find yourself at the top of a vertical wall of water, looking down at 30 ft of nothing and thinking: if this was a cliff...” recalls Ian, with a shake of the head, his mind’s eye still seeing it clearly less than two weeks later. “I’d already been unseated three times by waves at that point and had moved to the bow (front) seat. Then of course a rogue came in on the bow side and knocked me over!”

“I remember I pulled Bairdy back into the boat” continues Fraser, “I was at stroke (rear) and ended up right up in the bow! My shoes were still clamped in the stern rowing position.”

“It was a hellish night” mutters Ian, “and by that stage we were getting so hammered, and so turned around that the auto-helm couldn’t correct, so the alarm was sounding. Then the navigation screens went blank, and we had absolutely no idea where we were, or which direction we were facing. And Fraser just kept shouting: We’re sitting ducks! We’re sitting ducks!”

“It was really reassuring from inside the cabin.” chimes in Duncan. And the five weather-beaten, wild-haired men sitting around the table grimace, sharing a wry smile that few others will ever really understand.

I first met Scotland’s only entrants in this year’s transatlantic race in the summer of 2021, at North Berwick harbour, where four out of the five men compete together as a successful skiff rowing crew. At the time they were well into their training for the event, but because of the pandemic still unable to even sit in the boat together as a team. They seemed fit and enthusiastic though, comfortable in each other’s company, which boded well for the long adventure to come. Even more so some five months later, when I ventured out on the Forth with Fraser, Duncan, and Ross for a final open water session before the boat was packed and shipped to Tenerife. But even the most optimistic probably wouldn’t have guessed that a podium position awaited them in Antigua, 3000 miles and 36 days from an emotionally charged start line, and half a world away from the grey North Sea.

In the end they placed third, by a hair, following a tense six-day battle for second. A gruelling effort that saw them arrive in Nelson’s Dockyard just hours after the Atlantic Flyers, and little more than a day off the winning pace. Posting the second fastest time for a five-man crew in the race’s history. But scarcely able to speak.

Today the spirit of the group still feels warm and clannish. If a little thinner round the middle, hands and bums a good deal more worn. And first I simply have to ask: was it what you expected?

“I mean…yes, in a way” says Clive, shifting a little uneasily in his seat. “Just…a lot more brutal!”

Brutal is an understatement. Rowing two hours on, two off, for close to a thousand hours in the sizzling summer temperatures and deep treacherous waters of the Atlantic. And as the only crew carrying the weight, supplies and bulk of five bodies, doing so on a heavier and significantly more cramped vessel than any other in the fleet.

That they finished well then, is beyond question, but things didn’t start out quite so smoothly. It was, they tell me, a race of two halves.

After days of official meetings, safety checks and briefings on the quay, their journey began as fourth out of a fleet of 36, surrounded by film crews and well-wishers gathered on San Sebastian’s sunny harbour wall on the morning of December 12th. “It was incredible. I had tears in my eyes,” admits Clive, “I think we all did.”

“Not long out of the harbour there was a pod of pilot whales following us” says Ross, “and I thought…so this is how it’s going to be. But pretty soon you realise it’s a very big ocean out there, and there’s a lot of space between things.”

Whales, land, and the fleet’s other boats soon drifted away, and the crew’s days adopted a standard rhythm. “Eat, sleep, row, repeat.” says Fraser, laughing at the memory, before expanding. “Two hours on - as hard as you can - and by the time you finish I mean you couldn’t do another two minutes. You crawl into your roasting cabin, cram in as many calories as you possible, wash as best you can, get as naked as you can, and sleep until about eight minutes before your next shift begins.”

Thanks to some initial teething problems though, wind shadows along the coast and ongoing niggles with the auto-helm, even following this punishing regimen Five in a Row had slipped back to eighth position after two weeks on the water. Mentally, as well as competitively, they were at their lowest ebb. So what changed?

“The GPS speedometer isn’t very accurate,” explains Ian, “but around Christmas time we started setting distance goals for the day, rather than concentrating on speed. We had tangible targets. The clock started at 8am. By 8pm you’d be trying to cover 40 miles or more, and so by 8am the following morning you’d be up over 80 miles. It became more methodical, strategic. We clocked in a few 90-mile days, and for a while we were the highest performing crew out there. Who knows, maybe if we’d figured that out earlier, we’d have done better…or more likely burned out sooner.”

“We were well back at that point” Ross recalls, “with a big, bunched pack catching up on us. But as soon as we started monitoring our progress closely, making incremental improvements, we began to pull away. And day-by-day we moved up steadily from the back.”

The change in tactics then, perhaps finding their groove, and the boat’s heading - working with Skip, their land-based weatherman, in an effort to benefit from tailwinds out of the south - clearly had a major impact on their climbing positions. But Clive has another theory as to the change in their fortunes.

“I’ll not deny setting distances made a difference,” he says, “but I think there’s more to it than that. Christmas, for me, was the lowest point by far. Look it was all tough, relentless, but Christmas eve, that night…I’d never felt so far away from home and the kids, my family. I don’t think any of us had. Because you knew the traditions. You knew exactly what would be going on at home. It was hard. I was very, very homesick.” At this the mood in the room sobers.

“So then…the next day” he says with purpose “Christmas is out of the way. We need to get home to our families. And the only way to do that is to row…quick. That realisation, I think, kicked in the more competitive side of things, for all of us. We stopped trying to just complete the race…and started competing in it.”

On December 26th the team began to receive daily status reports from Clive’s wife, and more detailed weather information from Skip, pinging in every morning at 8am. Days were broken down and broken down again into 15 minute increments, the whole crew obsessively monitoring progress. It worked. Little by little they reeled in the leaders, until they’d pulled their way to second place.

Inevitably, the sustained effort, saltwater and sweat took a toll on their bodies. Hands and muscles became brutalised by the work. Caribbean sun blistered fair Celtic skin. But by far the most problematic issues resulted from the endless hours of sitting. “A week from the finish, for all of us to one degree or another, our backsides were really suffering. I couldn’t even go in the water at that stage,” admits Clive. “I’m not just talking about scabby; your sit bones actually wear through your muscles. There’s literally nothing left. After forty minutes in the seat, if you’re lucky you go completely numb. It’s that…or screaming pain.”

Though they did have some painkillers on board, critically to alleviate this problem they also packed a wide variety of seat pads. “So the other thing you needed to consider when you staggered from your cabin,” says Ian with a grim smile, “was which combination of positions and pad types am I going to try today that’s different from yesterday!”

After five tough weeks at sea, the crew knew they were getting close to the finish. But it’s worth remembering that when you row in an event like this, you’re not just sitting in one place for weeks, you’re also travelling backwards for weeks. To the point where, especially if you’re overtired, you might even miss a few things.

“Ten in the morning on the final day. 6am local time,” recalls Duncan, “Clive and I had just finished a shift. I went to bed, but woke up half an hour into my sleep, which wasn’t like me at all. It was the silence. I just remember thinking; we must be close. But there was no craic on deck. No music, no banter, just total silence. I poked my head out of the door, and behind them there’s all this…land. My throat was hoarse for a week. Standing and shouting like a madman. I tell you it was worth it all, just for that moment.”

Five in a Row’s efforts though, were never just about adventure; pushing themselves to see how far they could go. The wider aim, and indeed the heart of the challenge, was always to raise awareness and funds for Reverse Rett, a medical research charity important to all of them. And in doing so incredibly well - finding their way onto so many radars - they also exceeded expectations in fundraising. “People have dug deep, and they are still digging deeper!” enthuses Fraser. He’s not wrong. To date they have raised close to £50,000 for the charity, not to mention inspiring a great many people to step out of their comfort zones. And at a time when most of us have never felt more trapped inside them, they perhaps deserve our thanks for that, almost as much as our respect for doing so well.

Time and Tide

The Scotsman, Nov 2021

Time and tide wait for no man. Chaucer said that, more than half a millennium ago, and it’s still true today. Particularly if you’re the one towing the boat, and you get a flat tyre on the way to the harbour. It’s eleven AM now. Had all gone to plan, Five in a Row would be skimming east across the Forth, gathering up some final training hours on a last cold-water run before being carefully packed and shipped to La Gomera, and the start line of the 2021 Talisker Atlantic Challenge. But it didn’t, and she’s not. Instead, boat and crew are poised on Port Edgar’s weedy slipway, where they have been waiting, for four hours.

Perennially cheerful skipper Duncan Hughes pokes his head out of the cabin, where he and Fraser Potter are making some last-minute adjustments, explaining away the delay with characteristic humour. From inside, there’s a loud banging and a piece of something crucial looking is tossed out onto the deck. “Weight-saving,” says Fraser, as he ducks back inside. Ross grins, Duncan giggles, and I am struck once again by the warm spirit of camaraderie that fortifies this close-knit team.

It’s been nearly four months since I last visited Ross McKinny, Fraser Potter, Clive Rooney, Ian Baird, and Duncan Hughes: Scotland’s only crew in this year’s trans-Atlantic race. Back in June, thanks to social distancing, they had yet even to sit in the boat together, let alone to scull her out on the water. But thankfully things have changed, and from the looks of their shoulders they’ve been taking the training seriously. All look formidably sturdy–and they’ll need to be. In December, they’ll be joining teams ranging from soloists to quintets, competing to pull themselves, unsupported, through three-thousand treacherous miles of open ocean, from the Canaries to the West Indies, against the clock and the forces of nature, for charity, pride, and the sheer bloody love of adventure–in what is dubbed by the organisers, the world’s toughest row.

By noon, the water’s high enough to launch safely. A fat 4x4 reverses into the murky flood tide, straps are released, and the craft shimmies free of her cradling trailer, floating gracefully out into the harbour. Fraser and Ross are already aboard, but with Clive and Ian unavailable today, I’m making up the numbers with another Cal; a svelte and steely-eyed rower whose crew have designs on buying the boat for the 2022 event. He looks powerfully familiar (later we’ll discover he is renowned actor Cal MacAninch) and as we walk together down the pontoon, I simply have to ask him why. Why would you want to put yourself through this? For the adventure, the challenge?

“The challenge, yes, and the charity” he says, in a precise Glaswegian burr. “And for my kids…to show them that anything is possible if you put your mind to it.”

With the boat alongside we leap on deck, rocking and lurching as everyone finds their positions, clipping into safety harnesses and perching as best we can as gear is stowed and oars are thrust out. What little space not given over to sliding rowers’ seats is awkward and utilitarian. Scant comfort can be found by leaning against the cabins. The sort of comfort generally associated with snuggling up to the luggage racks on cramped commuter trains. It’s rather like crouching in a very compact, very narrow minibus, with the wheels and seats removed and the bodywork cut away entirely a foot above floor level, bobbing around in the sea. (And if you’re trying to imagine it, can I suggest you don’t let your mind run to the five pitiless miles of ocean beneath you, or the thousand miles of it in front of you, or that you’ll be here for another month without a wash.)

“Backing, to starboard” shouts Ross, pushing away from the pontoon. And as we’re leaving the shelter of the harbour, it seems an opportune moment to enquire about navigation. “So is the plan just to row in as direct a line as possible, or do you all take different routes?” Ross, who is propped next to me, working the rudder with two long strings, answers in a gentle voice, “Pretty much. But it’s very weather dependent. We’ve an experienced weather-router on land, Stewart Robertson, who’ll be keeping track of us and helping to plot our course as we go, so it’s hard to predict accurately ahead of time. Some crews may head further out, to avoid bad weather, or find favourable winds. Wind can be a big help, but it can also be the enemy–the difference between a fast year and a slow, for everyone. We’ve a parachute anchor on board in case it gets really bad. Throw it out, should slow our backward drift a bit. At least that’s the theory.” As Fraser and Cal haul us bodily eastwards towards the sprawling red arcs of the Forth Bridge, I dwell for a moment on the heartbreak of watching your progress slip away, and shiver.

Just off Inverkeithing there is a change of personnel. Cal switches out with Duncan and hops up onto the cabin roof. The boat rolls heavily as they shift, and though it’s calm and we’ve no daggerboard out, it strikes me again just how keenly every movement will be felt out there by the whole crew. And that as tiredness creeps in and patience inevitably frays, the emotional, social demands of the race may become every bit as challenging as the physical.

“We’ve been lucky to work with an amazing performance psychologist” Duncan shouts across, to allay my concerns. “Katie Warriner. She works with Olympians, world champions,” he shakes his head, “different level. She’s built personal plans for us. Resilience, focus, communication. It’s really helped.”

I hope so.

We’ve been going a while, at what feels a decent clip, so I ask the obvious question: how long? “Well, the record is thirty-five days” says Duncan, sliding and pulling, sliding and pulling, “and if you’d asked me back in June, I’d have said thirty-five days. But now…look, I’ll be happy if I feel we’ve all pulled our hardest, done our best, even if it’s forty.”

“And Clive?” I ask, remembering that of all the crew, he is famously the most competitive. 

“Thirty-four” the three of them reply in unison. And as if to punctuate their thought, Ross’s phone pings. It’s Clive, having somehow remotely tapped into the GPS and availed himself of our speed. Message reads: “Only three knots?! Dig in boys, come on!”

After lunch–fruit tea and a surprisingly tasty sachet of freeze-dried reindeer stew–it is, at last, my turn. “Follow the man in front” they tell me. “Just ignore all this water and keep your eyes on Ross’s back.” So I pull and slide, pull and slide, feeling the propulsion, but quickly feeling the effect in my lower back, too. A thousand hours of this? “Heels down, nipples up!” comes a shout from the boys. “Watch that form!”

I want to ask more about expectations, hopes. To dig further into their feelings as the starting line looms after so long in preparation. How they think they will react, what they may learn about themselves, and what fate might have in store. “So…” I begin, losing my rhythm, and clattering my oars into Ross’s. This time there is a different cry: “High Five!”

And perhaps they are better left unasked. After all, finding the answers to those questions is precisely what make this adventure so enticing to these brave men. That, and the promise of showing their children–and themselves–what’s possible if you really put your mind to it.

Five men. Six oars. 3000 miles

The Scotsman, July 2021

It speaks volumes about the British obsession with a particular brand of humour that, despite the vast stretches of open sea, muscular thirty-foot Atlantic swells, sunburn, sores, sleep-deprivation, seasickness and suffering (lots and lots of suffering) that awaits the strapping lads showing us around their shiny new boat, what most people seem really, forensically interested in is not the buttock-clenchingly gruelling thought of propelling a fiberglass capsule no larger than a transit van one-and-a-half million oar strokes across an inhospitable ocean. It is the facilities. Or rather, the distinct lack thereof. So let’s get this out of the way early shall we.

It’s yellow and it’s plastic and it has, for my money, the easiest gig on the boat.

The Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge is billed as the world’s toughest row. In early December, crew members from around thirty global teams will cast off from San Sebastián de La Gomera on the coast of Spain’s Canary Islands, sculling for two hours then sleeping for two, on constant twenty-four-hour rotation, for between forty and one hundred days, until they reach Nelson’s Dockyard English Harbour in Antigua some three thousand miles West. Hopefully, in first place. They will carry (or desalinate) everything they need to sustain them on their journey, sleep and wait out bad weather folded into one of the boat’s two cramped cabins (cabins that, for buoyancy reasons, must be sealed shut whenever they are in use) and will, on occasion, be bobbing around atop a body of water that is over five miles deep. And I know that sounds like a lot of fun, but as I discovered when I visited the only Scottish crew in this year’s race (Five in a Row) at North Berwick harbour this bright morning, for them there is a deeper and far more personal reason behind this particularly flagellant pleasure cruise.

Rett Syndrome is a rare post-natal neurological disorder that affects brain development in children, resulting in severe and destructive mental and physical disabilities. Speaking, walking, eating, even breathing is impacted, whilst the parts of the brain that control consciousness and awareness remain largely undamaged, often locking young minds into young bodies they cannot control. In a particularly ugly twist, Rett is disproportionately fond of little girls. It is, and I choose this word carefully: heartbreaking. There is no known cure, at least not yet, but what can be managed is the health and wellbeing of the children and the families who suffer, as treatments, therapies, and hopefully a cure are developed. Ross McKinney, one of the five crew members putting the juniors of the North Berwick rowing club through their paces on the rowing machine, has a young daughter, Eliza, who suffers from Rett. Reverse Rett is the charity for whom the team are raising both money and awareness.

‘If it looks like a mid-life crisis and sounds like a mid-life crisis…’ Duncan Hughes is a head and shoulder taller than the rest of the crew; tanned, team-spirited, and terminally optimistic (and half a lifetime ago we went to school together). He doesn’t get a chance to finish his thought though, as one of his three young boys bounds up, tugging impatiently at his shorts. ‘We know you have money for ice cream!’

His ‘nope’ is accompanied by warm laughter and punctuated with a kick to the rear that sends the boy skittering and giggling away onto the beach. (They will try again three times in the next thirty minutes, using a variety of tactics, and eventually, sorry Hannah, they will wear him down.)

When the two of us were boys ourselves, some twenty-five years ago, Duncan was a vegetarian, as he still is today. This was a rare thing for a thirteen-year-old rugby player in East Lothian, and something he decided for himself was important — a fact I did not know until this moment.

‘Imagine a rugby club dinner where you are the only vegetarian. A lukewarm Linda McCartney lasagne being slow clapped in on a silver platter in front of the entire bar, and then a bill for forty quid!’ And yet it is a feature of the man that this, for him, is a fond and entertaining memory. I suspect this stands him, and his associates, in good stead for dealing philosophically with two months of his cacophonous dehydrated mung bean emissions. Which brings us smoothly to food. How, on earth, to feed five calorifically deficient rowers for ten ravenous weeks, with no fridge, cooker, sink, utensils, or support?

‘Freeze dried…it’s pretty good actually’ says Ian Baird, another of the crew, as he throws me a crinkled foil brick. A good thing too, as they’re going to have to eat a hell of a lot of it. Each man will need to consume approximately ten thousand calories, and around ten litres of water per day (which, if the solar powered desalinator fails, will need to be hand pumped; an agonising and laborious process). The hold will be packed — literally, to the gunwales — with vacuum sealed silver sachets of the stuff: protein, carbohydrate, sugar…and noisome arguments in waiting.

‘You eat the first thing you grab, and to begin with it’ll be jammed into the cabins too. We’ll have to squeeze in there with it until we’ve chomped our way through it!’ Adds Ian, gleefully.

The trip itself does not weigh anchor for some two hundred days, but already the crew are pushing themselves with punishing, and of course often socially distanced training, including brutal sets of two hours on - one hour off - two hours on (and if you’ve ever used a rowing machine I defy you not to wince at the very idea of that) as well as regular sponsorship rallying; glad-handing with everyone from sea scouts to venture capitalists. And no wonder, because it’s an expensive business. The boat itself costs in the mid five-figures, and that doesn’t begin to account for the entry fees, food, equipment, or the logistics of actually transporting crew and craft to the Canaries.

In an effort to broach the sensitive subject of finance, I ask Duncan how they found the boat. Surely, I thought, there must be no shortage of jaded, tattered-bottomed adventurers just desperate to get shot of the bloody things? But apparently not.

‘Hen’s teeth. We hunted and hunted, then one day I recognised three guys on the beach eating fish suppers. The Maclean brothers: Scottish ocean rowers, record-breakers. I ran over, got to talking with them and offered to buy their boat…they said yes, and we’ve had three offers for it already.’

So, the boat is expensive, and the accommodations cramped (and stifling, and windowless). The physical challenge is unrelentingly arduous, and the food is a little samey. You make the water yourself, puke yourself blind (did I mention that?) torture your bottom and relieve the monotony by jamming it into a bucket. Nonetheless, the lot of them look energised, elated, primed…near giddy with the thought of testing themselves, of doing something outside of the normal sphere of existence. But perhaps that is because there is more at stake here than just adventure, machismo, and a near palpable competitive spirit.

Perhaps that is because of Eliza.

Follow thier progress or support the team here: https://www.fiveinarow.co.uk/personal