Out at Sea #2: Thirty Days at Sea

Today marks 30 days at sea, which sounds quite odd when my ordinary life consists of chasing two children around East London.

I’ve just passed the second thousand-mile marker. That means there’s now less than a thousand miles to Antigua, with an estimated arrival somewhere around the 50-day mark.

So, what does 30 days at sea feel like?

Pretty good, in all honesty.

It’s amazing what the body can adapt to when given enough time and the right conditions.

When I first set out, I was rowing around 12 hours a day.

By day four, I had a bit of a meltdown. I simply couldn’t see how I was going to cope with another 45 days.

Despite three years of training, the start — the seasickness, the inability to eat, the sheer shock to the system — hit me like a train.

Preparation has helped, but nothing has hit me quite as hard as reality.

Now, 30 days in, I’m rowing closer to 16 hours a day and somehow surviving on around six hours of broken sleep.

There’s probably some adrenaline involved, but I also think it’s psychological.

Knowing there’s an end to this makes it manageable. If this were simply “how life is now”, I’m not sure how I’d be coping, but knowing there might only be 20 days left changes everything.

There are moments when I crash and feel utterly spent, but overall, I’m in reasonable shape.

My hands are holding up, and the rest of my body seems to be doing its job.

Recently, I received a message from a stranger that has really brought home what this is all about.

He told me he’d visited his mum’s grave on a Sunday afternoon — she’d passed away from Lewy body dementia — and while standing there, he was thinking of me and what I was going through.

He took the time to write to me, a complete stranger, in the midst of his own loss, simply to say thank you.

Busy maintaining my focus on the effort and routine, this message cut through and was a powerful moment of pause.  

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I miss my wife Jane and our two boys dearly, and I’m counting the days until I see them again in Antigua.

But I’m also aware that this harebrained idea I had 3 years ago is slowly coming to an end. So I’m not wishing the days away; I’m trying to enjoy them.

It is hard — every bit the challenge I hoped and expected it would be.

But I’m also finding myself appreciating each day for what it is: the raw, brutal, unrelenting environment of the open ocean, and the privilege of being here at all.

In the evenings, during my night rows, I listen to an audiobook by Brian Cox as he talks about the universe, and I look up at the very stars he’s describing, scattered across the sky above me.

And in those moments, 30 days at sea feels like exactly where I’m meant to be.