James Adair - Rowing After the White Whale: A Crossing of the Indian Ocean by Hand

This edition first published in Great Britain in 2013 by

Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd

West Newington House

10 Newington Road

Edinburgh

EH9 1QS

www.polygonbooks.co.uk

ISBN: 978 1 84697 250 8

eBook ISBN: 978 0 85790 599 4

Copyright James Adair, 2013

Endpaper map is adapted from an original depicting the New Island by Lee Mothes.

Section illustrations Tory Adair, 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

The moral right of James Adair to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

Typeset in Great Britain by Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Falkirk, Stirlingshire

Printed and bound by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

For Ben, thank you for sharing the adventure

And for Tory, thank you for believing me

Now were going to die, I thought as the wall of white water came thundering towards us. My heart thumped as my body started furiously pumping adrenaline in anticipation of the impact.

For a moment the sea in front of the wave looked still and pure, so peaceful and blue in contrast with the white rolling mass that was now seconds away. But already the flat in front of the wave was being disturbed and soiled by spitting shards of tumbling white water. The noise grew suddenly louder, from a rumbling hiss to a raging thunder as the turmoil of water reached us.

Now we really are, actually, definitely, after all of this, after everything, going to die, I thought. Typical. As for words, the only one I could manage in time, the only one that seemed appropriate, was: Shit!

I took a deep breath.

The wave hit us with a violent, sickening crash and everything went black.

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul... and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking peoples hats off then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.

Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Its no surprise that Ben and I decided to row an ocean when you consider our dissolute characters and unremarkable circumstances during the dark November of 2004. We had graduated from the University of St Andrews six months before and were struggling to readjust to city life. After four years of fun and games we had given up the freedom and fresh air of Scotland for the trudging London commute and a flat in which we, and the mice we lived with, were regularly plunged into darkness as the pay-as-you-go electricity ran out yet again. I had been talked into doing a law course, which I wasnt enjoying, but Ben had suffered a worse fate. He was selling fully integrated accounting software in Lewisham. Its not hard to see why we started dreaming of a big adventure and, as complete ocean novices, we settled on rowing the Pacific, which is of course the biggest of all the oceans.

The Pacific the very word seemed to summon up the wide expanse of ocean, the equatorial sun beating down on the two of us hauling in another massive tuna for lunch. Yes, the daydreams were unrealistic but they were alluring and they had us hooked. Every time I rode the 59 bus or the tube, crammed in, standing again, wedged between ashen-faced salary man and morbidly obese tourist, accompanied by the sound of an aggressive track-suited mother chiding her toddler or the ramblings of some unwashed nutter; every time my mind would drift off to sea, to a place where you couldnt see another human being in any direction. Space, solitude and silence, these were the things I craved and, of course, a massive skive off work. Back in our flat wed discuss the mad scheme over shepherds pie and red wine.

We really have to do the rowing, no matter what.

Yeah, definitely.

Im not kidding Ben, we have to get out there as soon as we can.

Im ready now.

No but really, we should really do it.

Stop worrying Adair, we both know when we get out there Ill end up doing all the rowing.

Will you be bringing those mustard coloured corduroys of yours?

Absolutely, will you be bringing your riding boots?

Theres really nothing funny about my riding boots, they have a specific purpose, whats the purpose of your mustard coloured corduroys?

Primarily to keep me warm but their secondary purpose is to make me look good, very good.

Every weekend you look sillier than the last, also youre beginning to look quite, how do I put this delicately, fat.

I have no time to eat properly, you cant imagine what sort of demands selling fully integrated accounting software packages can put on a mans body, they say most people burn out by the time they hit twenty five.

Well, if we run out of food when were in the middle of the ocean I think its quite clear wholl be eating who.

Yes, in that scenario I will be over-powering and eating you.

In which case youll just have eaten one of your two friends.

Lets face it, if we go missing at sea very few people are going to notice were gone.

Thats true.

Soon our nightly chats became more serious, we would row the Pacific, it wasnt just empty chat, we had to row the Pacific, or it would become another dream that slowly slips away. We knew that a lot of people had rowed the Atlantic, on the well-travelled route from the Canaries to the Caribbean, but we wanted to do something different, something bigger, newer, more dangerous. And so we plumped for the Pacific. Our casual research showed that one man had rowed the South Pacific solo without stopping and two pairs had done it in legs. Fine, we would be the first pair to row the South Pacific without stopping.

Always do sober what you said youd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.

Ernest Hemingway

In 2005 we left London and went our separate ways. Ben made the logical step from fully integrated accounting software salesman in Lewisham to logistics and freight forwarding manager in Uganda (having grown up in Kenya, he was basically going home). I eventually got a job in journalism as editor of the Alderney Journal, probably the smallest paid-for newspaper in the world, serving a mere two thousand souls on the island of Alderney in the English Channel. The first thing I did on receiving my first pay cheque in Alderney was to set up a joint bank account so that we could start saving towards the row. It was the first step in making the dream a reality and it felt great. We were actually going to do it. Something was happening! The years went by. Ben moved to the Sudan and lived in a container while I moved back to London and became a shipbroker. More years went by. At this stage we were in what could be called the comedy planning phase; for example, we would exchange emails wondering if it was practical to take Bens Ugandan houseboy, Mr Ben, to sea. A sample email from Ben at this time goes: Whatever happens... death, embarrassment, insanity... we must never sink to such lows as wearing Lycra.