Rowing After the White Whale by James Adair

Author:James Adair
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780857905994
Publisher: Birlinn
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

44 Splendid Isolation

‘This most excellent canopy,

the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament,

this majestical roof fretted with golden fire.’

William Shakespeare, Hamlet

No matter how dark or difficult the nights, the sun would always rise, heralded at first by the morning stars. The sunrise nearly always appeared like an upbeat, motivational poster, with thick beams of light dappling the ocean, and night would be forgotten as we began to warm up and dry out.

However clichéd, the sun’s beauty and warmth were always a relief after those tough nights in which we made little progress and during which we were becoming more tired as we lost weight and became nutritionally deprived.

On the evening of Day 67 the red sun sank below the horizon as the sky was already filling with stars. We had slowed down again and decided to enjoy the night instead of battling away into yet another countercurrent. Watching the GPS for a while, we worked out that if we didn’t row for two hours we’d go back only half a mile. It wasn’t even a debate. As it was calm and dry we had the iPod on deck and chose a piece of Renaissance choral music called Spem in alium. We each leant back onto the bulkhead, one on either side of the deck, passing the whisky and smoking our last few cigarettes.

‘We’re all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars,’ I quoted.

‘Oscar Wilde; he had some good ones, didn’t he?’

‘Yeah, he also had one of the top ten deathbed quotes: “Either that wallpaper goes or I do,” which is up there with Spike Milligan’s: “I told you I was ill.”.’

‘Who said, “Punctuality is the virtue of the bored”?’

‘Not sure, but if we take an embarrassingly long time getting to Mauritius we can just say we had better things to do than row.’

‘Good plan; this is much more fun than rowing.’

We stared up at the flashing satellites as they tracked silently across the immense, star-clouded sky. Of all the amazing nights we had on the ocean this was the best.

But did we talk each other into taking breaks too easily? Even with the relentless rounds of countercurrents should we not have been pushing all the time? Despite our mutual belief that records were relatively meaningless, our morale tended to be higher when we were going fast. So, on Day 72, when we spent the first four hours of the day hurtling along at four knots we were on a high and when later that day we slowed, so did our spirits. Perhaps it was the feeling of rowing hard and going nowhere, of working and achieving nothing, that grated. When it was tough, it was hard to remember that in adverse conditions it was a victory simply to stay stationary.

Having a great experience and getting to Mauritius, these were our common goals, but as the trip wore on it seemed like we weren’t having that great experience unless we were making decent progress towards Mauritius.

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