For rower, Antarctica was enough
Oakland principal on record expedition prefers machine
Rowing a boat that goes nowhere is a lot easier than rowing one to Antarctica.
John Petersen has rowed both kinds. For the time being, he’s sticking to the one that goes nowhere. It’s a rowing machine in a gym on 41st Street in downtown Oakland. You can’t get seasick on a rowing machine, Petersen said, and you can’t drown, either.
The other afternoon, Petersen climbed aboard the rowing machine, tugged on the oars and reminisced about the other thing he rowed, a 29foot boat named the Ohana that crossed the deadly Drake Passage from Cape Horn to Antarctica in December. He’s not ever doing that again, he said, thank you very much.
“It’s called the most dangerous ocean in the world,” Petersen said. “We found out why.”
Some days, he said, the waves were 30 feet
“It’s called the most dangerous ocean in the world. We found out why.”
John Petersen, rower on first team to cross the Drake Passage and the Southern Ocean to Antarctica
high and the water temperature was 40 degrees. Other days, the waves were 40 feet and the water temperature 30 degrees.
Petersen, 35, was part of a sixmember team that completed the 600mile crossing in 13 days. He isn’t sure exactly why he did it, other than it had never been done before. To a certain kind of athlete, that’s a reason for doing something normal people don’t do.
“I wouldn’t say it was fun,” Petersen said. “It was satisfying. It was exciting. But it wasn’t fun. if I said I wasn’t scared, I would be lying. I was scared.”
Petersen, an elementary school principal in West Oakland, said he got used to living his life 90 minutes at a time.
For 90 minutes, row the boat with two teammates.
For the next 90 minutes, eat freezedried glop, dry things off and sleep curled up in a tiny cabin while the other three teammates take their turn rowing the boat.
Then wake up and do it again. Then do it again, and again. Row, eat, sleep. Row, eat, sleep.
“You never felt fully rested,” he said. “Never.”
When nature called, a bucket came into play. Typically the rowers took care of that chore while rowing, so as not to waste precious sleeping time.
“If you’ve never done that on 30foot seas,” he said, “I would call it a onceinalifetime experience.”
Petersen wore an antinausea patch behind his ear. He threw up anyway. Overwhelmed by the swell and squalls, he spent an entire day repeating the name of his 19monthold daughter, Mari, with each oar stroke. It kept him focused, he said.
Other days he joined his teammates in singalongs, particularly the Bob Marley classic “Redemption Song.” That one got sung dozens of times. “Emancipate yourself,” the rowers sang, as the waves crashed over the bow.
The expedition, led by U.S. endurance athlete Colin O’Brady, was sponsored by companies that sell outdoor clothing, energy bars and survival gear to people who do such things, along with a TV channel that billed the journey as: “Six Athletes — One Boat — No Motor — No Turning Back.” A motorized support vessel accompanied the rowboat, in case of emergency.
The Guinness World
Records people, who keep track of such things, said it was the first row across the Drake Passage, the first row on the Southern Ocean, the first row to Antarctica, the southernmost start of a rowing expedition and the southernmost latitude reached by a rowing vessel.
Petersen, a champion rower in high school and at Yale University, said he heard of O’Brady’s rowboat plan two years ago, after reading an article, and asked to sign on. O’Brady asked whether he could maintain a certain pace on a rowing machine, a Herculean feat when it comes to rowboats. Petersen said yes and sent him proof, and all of a sudden he was on the team, there not exactly being an oversupply of qualified applicants.
For a year Petersen came to the same gym on 41st Street and rowed the same rowing machine, to make ready. Within a few minutes of shoving off from the southern tip of Chile on Dec. 13, he realized that the Ohana was nothing like a row, row, rowing gently down the stream type of boat and that a pace inside a gym didn’t have much in common with what he had signed on for.
“It was definitely a physical challenge,” he said, “but it turned out to be more mental that physical.”
One day the sea calmed and three orcas swam by for a visit. The rowers snapped a few pictures. The orcas, unable to figure out what the humans were up to, swam off.
“If we wanted to see orcas,” Petersen said, “it probably would have been a lot easier to go to Sea World.”
He lost 20 pounds and acquired some frostbite. A few black spots on his fingers and toes remain.
These days, the only challenges Petersen wants to take on are the rowing machine and his 300 students at Bridge Academy elementary school, both located on dry land. An elementary school, he said, turns out to be not unlike an Antarctic rowboat.
“Teamwork. Patience. Compassion,” he said. “You rely on the same principles.”
As for returning to Antarctica some day, Petersen said he wouldn’t mind going. In an airplane.
“I’m not planning on ever going back there the way I just did,” he said.