LOVE-HATE RELATIONSHIP
OCEAN ADVENTURERS JOHN AND MARIE CHRISTINE RIDGWAY EACH DESCRIBE HOW RELATIONSHIPS AND EMOTIONS ARE INFLUENCED BY WEATHER AND PROGRESS AT SEA
How often do you get the chance to study a story from several points of view? Then we sailed away by John, Marie Christine and Rebecca Ridgway offers a notable opportunity. It tells of the Ridgway family leaving their home in the far fastnesses of Scotland to sail to the South Seas, Antarctica and back again aboard English Rose, the 57ft ketch John and Marie Christine raced in the fully crewed 1977-78 Whitbread Round the World Race. This time would be different. With their daughter Bec, her adopted sister Isso from Peru, and chosen friends, there would be more space and less pressure.
The voyage was a success and the book is well worth reading for that alone, but what sets it apart is the narrative variety. By having members of a crew write frankly about their ‘take’ on what is going on, we are generously offered a multifaceted perspective. English Rose’s luck was out when she set off, running into a hooligan of a storm almost immediately. In this extract, Marie Christine shares her feelings, followed by John.
Marie Christine writesé
I think it was that icy spurt of Atlantic forcing itself through our tiny cabin window and drenching John that jerked me out of my swamp of misery.
Clad only in his undersuit, he wailed: “I’m drenched. I’ll freeze. I’ve nothing dry to wear.” We rummaged through the bunks in our lurching cabin, half the size of one on the Euston – Inverness night sleeper.
“My bedding’s soaked. My kit is ruined.”
“Serves you right,” I muttered – he had appropriated the bigger of the two bunks – but I handed over my new long johns and top. The storm had hit us on day two. I felt I had set off in a complete muddle, having been cooking for 40 people at our adventure school almost until the last minute. If I’d died suddenly I couldn’t have left everything in more disorder.
And in a sense this was like dying: leaving the green land and grey mountains for the desert waste of a slate-grey ocean. A kind of uprooting. I loved my home, which clung to the hillside above the sea loch, and the view of the mountains from my window; the abandoned plants which balance on every windowsill, my precious patch of garden, nurtured over many years; the leggy pink roses which I hadn’t the heart to cut down, the purple Michaelmas daisies just coming into late flower.
But now it was time to be positive, and as we set off I resolved to make a great effort, and particularly to cope with every aspect of sailing. But once we were underway the memories of when John and I, together with a crew of ten, had raced round the world in the
1977-78 Whitbread Race had come rushing back. I’d been Britishly stoic, but frankly, most of that nine-month voyage had been an ordeal. I’d sworn never to step on a yacht again, and – with only one exception – I never had. What, then, was I doing here, retching over the side? I could feel myself being sucked into that familiar vortex of self-pity. “Poor Mama,” Isso crooned. She was coping really well, only occasionally complaining of feeling ‘a little pale’.
I’d done practically no sailing since, yet here I was again on the same boat, with the same skipper. And this time it would be for twice the duration. I kept telling myself this was going to be different: instead of ten scratchy men, there was my family and Andy and Will. But we were still all squeezed into the same 57ft plastic tube. I loved adventure, travel and challenge, but sailing made me feel sick, trapped and sometimes very frightened.
I hoped I might change. And, knowing how contrary my nature is prone to be, I probably would change. I might even become the keenest yachtsperson ever. But the sneaky man had dreamed up a trip of such allure that even I, reluctant and seasick as I was, could not resist. A trip for all of us, with nobody left behind to worry about; a trip to the Caribbee, the lost Atlantis, then on to the Pacific Islands. Of course I was going, but oh! the seasickness, oh! the discomfort, the squalor, the lack of privacy. I knew that after six weeks I would feel all right and hoped that in a couple of months, when we had fewer people on board, I would adjust and it would creep over me that it was the best thing in the world to be sailing along