stark naked!
Hallucinations, bonding with whales and why the only way to row 3,000 miles is . . .
WHEN four mums left their husbands and children behind to row the Atlantic, they had no idea of what they were letting themselves in for. After surviving a three-day hurricane, here — in the final part of our serialisation of their book about the voyage — they describe how they stripped off as dignity went overboard . . .
SUrvIvING the hurricane was a huge boost to our confidence. It was as if the ocean had thrown all she could at us — and we’d coped.
After three days’ incarceration in our cabins while the wind and waves raged all around us, we had a new respect for the Atlantic. We even fell rather in love with her. She was talking to us, teaching us. All we had to do was listen.
As the days went on, we found our rhythm. The temperature was rising steadily and we’d rowed nearly 1,000 miles — almost halfway to Antigua. Those hazy days were glorious.
By now we had more or less dispensed with clothes completely. Helen had lost her chafe-free pants to a gust of wind quite early on, and the rest of us began to shed items for sheer convenience.
Aside from the constant rubbing and the sores we all had all over our backsides, hands and inner thighs, it was just so much easier to wear nothing, to be naked, than to be constantly trying to dry off wet clothes as yet another rogue wave doused us on the boat.
We’d worked out other survival strategies, too. We moved on from our eat-sleep-row routine and developed little games to keep ourselves entertained and stop our minds from wandering or flatlining completely.
We even found ways of making our dreary food packs a little more entertaining. Janette used to pretend to be running a takeaway restaurant, where she’d bark our orders back at us, asking if we wanted pizza or eggfried rice or a chicken korma.
And then she’d simply hurl the same old boring beef stew that we ate day in, day out, at us. ‘Mmmm, delicious!’ we’d cry. ‘How lovely!’
Another favourite was the Glad Game, inspired by the children’s book Pollyanna, which helped us turn negative situations into positive ones.
We ended up being ‘glad’ we had no lighting at night; ‘ glad’ we had not washed our hair in weeks; ‘glad’ our calf muscles had withered to nothing through lack of use; ‘glad’ those chafe-free pants had flown overboard.
Except that Janette was not happy about the last one. Not one bit.
‘I have never seen so much nudity in my life,’ she says.
‘It was everywhere — in front of me, behind me, in my face, on my head. The worst bit was walking around the boat with your pants off, legs apart, scuttling like a crab.
‘There’d be a wave and suddenly somebody would tumble towards you, private parts in your face.
‘Frankly, I saw enough naked bodies on the Atlantic to last me a lifetime. I still have visions of Helen walking towards me naked except for her socks and her life jacket.’
Our games and little in- jokes entertained us for hours and made us laugh until the tears rolled down our cheeks.
During those strange, unreal days, we felt really close to space — the moon was our friend. We couldn’t wait for it to rise every night, as that meant we had light. That was definitely one of the best things. That and the whales.
WE LOVED the whales. We’d been warned that they were dangerous; one flick of the tail and the whole boat would go under. Yet we never felt worried or at risk. We just felt immensely privileged to see something so beautiful in the wild — particularly when we were visited by a mother and her calf one day.
‘’The baby came over, right next to the boat, and lifted its head and blew,’ says Helen. ‘That was a really special moment because we were all mums, and we felt the whale trusted us with her baby; that she knew we were the same. It was a really important moment.’
‘Sometimes, at night, we could see and hear the fish,’ Janette remembers. ‘When Niki and I were on duty one night, there was an enormous pod of dolphins. We put down our oars to watch. There were loads of them flying through the air, twisting and jumping, all lit by the moon. ‘It was magical.’ ‘It was something none of us will ever forget,’ says Frances. ‘It was as if we were guests in another world.’
Come the beginning of February, the novelty of being on the ocean was wearing thin. We had been at sea since before Christmas, we still had 1,000 miles to go and we had hit a massive low point. Our confidence at getting through the hurricane was starting to wane.
We were finding it very hard going and no amount of singing along to our favourite Mamma Mia! soundtrack could make us feel any better.
‘The problems we had on board,’ says Helen, ‘were when we stopped talking properly to each other, when we withdrew into those tiny cabins with our own thoughts. So we decided to hold meetings to discuss how we were feeling.
‘We would go over conversations, saying: “You hurt me when you said this. I need you to listen when I say that.” It really helped.’
We also started hallucinating a bit. ‘I kept hearing a choir,’ says Helen. ‘And Janette thought she could smell eggs and bacon.’
AFTER one of our many meetings, we decided that we would have one last push to reach Antigua before the end of February. We were desperate to see our families again, and it seemed like a realistic mental target to aim for.
‘I had the number 22 in my head,’ says Helen. ‘I was convinced we were going to get there on February 22. But as we crept up to the date, I had to accept that it was not going to happen.’
So when a support yacht arrived on February 23, it could not have been at a more opportune moment. Our morale was at rock bottom. It wasn’t until then that we realised quite how lonely and isolated we had become.
We had not seen another face, another person, for nine weeks. We had become so wrapped up in our own world that it was almost a revelation that anyone else or anywhere else existed.
The support crew checked we were OK and made us clean the barnacles off the bottom of the boat and — oh my God! ‘We simply didn’t realise the impact it would have,’ says Helen. ‘Who knew a few barnacles could slow you down that much?
‘We went from two to four knots at a stroke. If we’d cleaned under our boat sooner, we would have got there a week earlier.’
Suddenly rose was like a knife through butter. We could almost smell the land; we kept imagining the lights, the noise, the welcome in the harbour, the hugs from our families and friends. It was hard to believe the end was in sight.
We had passed through one of the last pristine wildernesses on Earth. During our journey, we’d seen nothing man-made — no plastic, no pollution, nothing.
We had become totally in tune with nature. Our skin was clear, we had no bags under our eyes, we’d all lost nearly 2st and our lungs had inhaled nothing but fresh air for months. And now it was over.
‘It suddenly hit home,’ says Frances. ‘I was overcome with sadness. After all this time and all this preparation, we were approaching our last few hours of rowing, our last few hours with our boat. I thought: “We’ll never row another ocean. This is the end of our dream.” I felt bereft.’
We finally saw land again on our 68th day at sea, February 25. It had taken us 67 days, five hours and
two minutes. As we neared the finishing line, our on-board radio crackled.‘ Hello, ladies!’ said a voice. ‘Congratulations and welcome to Antigua! You are world record holders! You are the oldest women’s crew ever to have ever rowed the Atlantic!’
We were ecstatic, leaping about in the boat, hugging and kissing each other. We had done it! Against all the odds, against all the doubters, we had broken a world record.
‘And you’ve come 22nd out of 26 in the race!’ said the voice. ‘Twenty-second?’ said Helen. ‘Yes,’ replied the voice on the radio. ‘Well done.’
‘ I knew 22 had to come in somewhere,’ said Helen. ‘It wasn’t the date — it was our position.’
To be honest, it was all a bit of a blur after that.
‘I was so disorientated,’ says Niki. ‘I was so excited to see my husband and the children, but I found it very hard to speak.
‘I had spent the entire journey dreaming of this moment when we were all together again. But with the attention and the crowds, I was completely bewildered. It was a total sensory overload.’
Of all the books we had read, all the people we had spoken to and all the advice we’d sought, we never considered what it would be like to return home.
‘We planned to get to Antigua. That was that,’ says Helen. ‘But we didn’t plan for what happened later. We all felt weird when we got home, and we had some serious communication problems. It is a massive jolt to the system.
‘I would say to any other teams, just plan for when you get off the boat and be really careful, because there were a couple of teams I met who said they’d fallen out with their rowing partners afterwards.
‘I think it is quite easy to do. We worked really hard at being friends across the Atlantic, and it worked. But we didn’t plan for how we’d feel when we got off the boat.’
For the first few weeks our feet did not touch the ground. It was an extraordinary whirlwind — one which we enjoyed, but which also taught us a very painful lesson.
It happened during a press conference back in London when Frances cracked a joke — a silly joke about Helen’s night- time steering. The next day her comments appeared in print without any of the gentle humour attached.
‘I felt Frances had embarrassed me,’ says Helen. ‘ She’d said something about me nearly killing them at sea due to my bad steering. Frances and I were sharing a hotel room when I read it. I just felt like I’d had enough.’
‘I was mortified,’ says Frances. ‘ The last thing I would ever intentionally do is hurt the feelings of any of my friends. Helen refused to speak to me until later that night. It was a long evening.
‘This was the low point of the entire experience. Ironic that it didn’t happen on the boat but after we were back in the UK.’
Helen adds: ‘We were all in tears over the breakfast table after that. We had mainly kept it together on the boat. I don’t think we realised how tough it had been.
BUT
we were much stronger for that argument. We’re more like sisters now. I don’t think I would have had that huge row with them all if I hadn’t felt so close to them. We’ve been through all the emotions we could possibly go through and we are very close. We’ll always have that special bond. Always.’
‘They are like family now,’ agrees Niki. ‘And part of it is because it’s not superficial.
‘We’ve been through such a lot. We have bickered and got through it. That’s when you get into a really deep relationship, when you can get through all that and still want to be with each other.
‘I’d had enough of everybody initially when we got back. But after three or four weeks, slowly but surely I wanted to see them again. And now, if something happens, I pick up the phone and share it with them straight away.
‘It’s nice now we’ve started to put more things in the diary. We’ve started doing yoga together and other bits and pieces, and that’s nice, because I feel like it’s gone back to how it was.’
So a year on from our momentous arrival in Antigua, what have we learned?
‘That if you want to change your life, you can,’ says F rances. ‘ Just because you are a parent and a wife and you work, you can still have an adventure. Life is risky, but it’s worth taking risks.’
‘For me, I realised what it was to be patient,’ says Niki. ‘Since coming back, I’ve started to put in place some of the things I decided I would change while I was out there, like simplifying my life, my house and everything in it.’
‘The Atlantic made me realise that I could do a whole lot more with my life, and that I, in fact, need a whole lot less,’ says Helen. ‘I don’t need half the stuff I have — it all seems very immaterial now.
‘I definitely want to do more things and have more adventures. That journey taught me how to be brave; that I can push my limits.’
‘The feeling of accomplishment is huge,’ says Janette. ‘ When we rowed into that harbour, the feeling was incredible. I think we all underestimate middle-aged women. I do.
‘It’s been an amazing journey for us in every way, and learning how to accept the peaks and troughs will help us prepare for our next adventure. Whatever that might be . . .’
Four Mums In A Boat by Janette Benaddi, Frances Davies, Niki Doeg and Helen Butters is published by HQ (Harper Collins) on March 9 at £16.99. To order a copy for £12.74, a 25 per cent discount, (offer valid to February 27) visit mailbookshop.co.uk or call 0844 571 0640. p&p is free on orders over £15.