“I’m guttered, Mum. Jaish can’t do it!”
I gasped, feeling his disappointment and my own as well. Three months before, in the fall of 1995, Daniel’s old school chum Jaishan had asked Danny to team up with him and enter the Great Atlantic Rowing Race and row from Tenerife, Canary Islands, to Port St. Charles, Barbados. He had accepted with great excitement. They paid the entrance fee, and planning began immediately.
I was excited to be able to use my background in public relations to help promote them, get the specially designed rowing boat custom built and raise the needed funds. We had two years.
Both boys were British army cadets and needed permission for the time off. Danny’s request had been accepted. Now we knew Jaish’s request had been turned down. I reassured Daniel that he would easily find another partner.
“It’s not that easy, Mum. I need someone who can commit the next two years to promotion, fund-raising, training and skills acquisition. But mostly it has to be someone I can spend three months alone with on a twenty-three-foot boat!”
I’m not really sure what happened next. I don’t know whether he asked or I offered. All I know is that at the end of the conversation, I had agreed to become his new partner and row across the Atlantic with him—we were a team!
My beloved second husband, Keith, had died of cancer a few years before, and my old life was gone. I was fifty years old and a widow. My life felt empty and had no direction. The prospect of spending the next two years preparing for an adventure was very exciting, and the opportunity to share this unique experience with my son was irresistible. Once I had decided, there was no going back. He was offering me a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I was going to seize it.
The commitment to row the Atlantic had been made. Now came the logistics. Money was a major issue. I had a marketing job, but there was no way it would begin to finance this project. So off I went to the bank.
As the former mayor of my hometown of Chipping Norton, I was fairly well known, so I did have some hopes. But when all was said and done, my presentation still sounded like a fifty-year-old widowed woman asking for a loan so she could row the Atlantic with her son. Right!
So I mortgaged my home, my two-hundred-year-old little stone cottage.
We were officially a team.
When our custom-built, ocean-going rowing boat was completed, we ceremoniously named it Carpe Diem—Seize the Day! We began training sessions, mostly on the Thames. Daniel began to feel quite guilty because of the financial burden he felt he had placed on me. At one point I realized, My God, if this doesn’t work, I could lose my house! But we didn’t have time for thoughts like those. We each brought our own unique skills to the venture. I knew it was my job to get us to the starting line in the Canary Islands, and Captain Daniel would get us to the finish line in Barbados.
When I finally got up the courage to tell my own mum of our plans, to my delight she offered no guilt, fear or negativity. Instead her response was: “The years between fifty and sixty go like that!” and she snapped her fingers. “DO IT! And I’m utterly behind you.”
October 12, 1997, finally arrived. After two years of hard work, we departed Los Gigantes Tenerife along with twenty-nine other teams. At fifty-three, I was the oldest participant, and we were the only mother-and-son team. Our boat was designed with two rowing seats, one behind the other. For the first six hours we rowed together. After that, we began the routine we would maintain for the next one hundred days. Two hours of solo rowing, and then two hours of sleep in the tiny cabin in the bow. For the first week out, Danny was sick with food poisoning, and I had to be captain and in charge. It proved to us both that I could in fact pull my own weight on the water.
Once Daniel was better, we fell into a comfortable routine that bonded us together in a wonderful new partnership. Sometimes he would be sleeping so soundly that I would row for another hour or so. Often Dan would do the same—row for another hour or so and let his mum sleep. Our obvious kindness toward each other was awesome, and I found my son’s kindness toward me to be overwhelming. We were a rowing team, yes, but in the larger picture we were still mother and son, loving and caring for each other unconditionally. If either of us could have given the other a full eight hours’ sleep, we would have done so in a flash.
The constant rolling and heaving of the boat, the constant dampness and humidity, the lack of sleep and comfort and, of course, the heavy rowing all began to take a toll on my body that deeply worried us both. My hands were red and raw and stiff like claws. I had boils on my bottom, and I began to suffer from sciatica. There was swelling in my hip from a muscle I had torn prior to departure, and my shoulder was injured from being thrown across the boat in high seas. Danny was worried that his drive to achieve his goal was going to permanently damage his mum, and I was worried that the frailty of my fifty-three-year-old body was going to destroy my son’s dream. I suddenly felt old and a burden on the venture. But then Daniel began to experience many of the same pains, and I knew it wasn’t just me, but the extraordinary conditions we were living under.
Throughout the trip, there were many things that made us think about giving up. There were the hard days when we blamed each other. “How could you do this to your poor mum?” I would shout. “This is all YOUR fault!” And Daniel would yell back, “I didn’t expect you to say ‘Yes!’” But in truth, we decided that the only thing that would have really made us give up was if a whale had smashed our boat. Daniel laughs now and says, “And, oh my God, how many times we prayed for that!”
We were astonished as to how something as small as a rainbow or a fish leaping out of the water could instantly cheer us up when we were low. In addition, before we left, we had all our friends and relatives write poems and letters to us, and seal and date them. That way, we had mail to open on each day of our journey. The humor and love in these letters picked us up and carried us when times got really rough.
We also had on board a radar beacon that allowed us to be tracked exactly. Each night the positions of all the boats were posted on the Internet, and our friends and family were able to track us. My own sweet mum rowed the Atlantic with me every night in her dreams. My stepfather drew a map to scale on the wall, and each night friends would call and report our position to my mum. They would then plot our course on that map. In a way, it was three generations rowing the Atlantic.
Both Daniel and I took a careful selection of books and taped music along. If you think rowing the Atlantic is boring, you should try not rowing! After a while, for variety, we began to trade books and listen to each other’s music. Daniel began to appreciate my classical choices, and I began to enjoy listening to his reggae and UB40!
Every team in this race had its own reasons for participating. Some were committed to winning. We, however, were doing it for the challenge and the opportunity to spend this unique time together. Knowing we would not win, we took two hours off each night, sat and enjoyed dinner, and talked. We told each other the stories and anecdotes of our lives, things that might not otherwise have been shared over a lifetime. One night over dinner I said, “This is a little bit like Scheherazade, you know, the story of A Thousand and One Arabian Nights!” Daniel replied, “Yes, Mum! Perhaps we should call our book A Hundred and One Atlantic Nights!” By complete coincidence (or was it?), that’s exactly how many nights it took to cross—101!
On the night of January 22, 1998, we were approaching Barbados, thinking we still had twenty miles to go. We were loafing, savoring the last night of our long adventure together. One last time, my son began to make me a cup of hot chocolate and turned on his headlamp for a few moments. Suddenly, the radio began to squawk. It was an escort boat, and they were looking for us. When we identified ourselves as Carpe Diem, we heard a lot of screaming and shouting on board: “It’s them, it’s them, they’re safe!” They had seen Daniel’s light for those few moments and were hoping it might be us. Then they told us to our shock and delight that we actually had only six miles left to go! Da
niel rowed the first four and allowed me, his aching but ecstatic mum, to row the last two. I would be the one to take us across the line of longitude that was the official finish line.
To our amazement, an entire flotilla of waiting boats carrying family and friends began to cheer. They then set off fireworks, lighting up the night sky, accompanied by the triumphant cannons of the “1812 Overture” to welcome us and celebrate our safe arrival. The thrill of our accomplishment filled me in that moment, and I burst into tears and cried out, “We’ve done it!! Oh Daniel, we’ve done it!”
Because of the heavy headwind and our great fatigue, we chose to board the waiting escort boat, while our own weary little Carpe Diem, half filled with water and listing to one side, was towed in behind us. We were almost two months behind the winning KIWI team and thought that everyone would have forgotten about us—after all, we were the last boat in. But we were surprised and truly overwhelmed at the enormous welcome we received upon our arrival! Everyone wanted to meet and congratulate “Jan and Dan,” the British mother-and-son team who had successfully rowed across the Atlantic and completed the race.
Aboard the escort boat we had an emotional reunion with my daughter, Daniel’s sister Becky. And there was one more lovely surprise! Waiting for us on shore with tears and hugs was my own sweet mum, come all the way from her home in France to welcome her jubilant daughter and grandson.
When I try and put into words what we will remember most, my journal entry from day sixty-nine speaks most poignantly of the things only my heart would know. I wrote:
I don’t believe it is the beauty, the dolphins, whales, dawns and sunsets, although they will be with me forever. The brilliant night sky, stars, delicate new moons, brilliant full ‘bright as day’ moons. The power and the glory of the ocean.
No. It is finding out how one’s body and mind learn to cope. Seeing how Daniel bears up. I have found such pride in his unfailing good temper and optimism—his intrinsic kindness and thoughtfulness. I have loved the baby, the child, the boy, I have been proud of them, but now I love and admire the man, Daniel, with all my heart.
For the rest of our lives, no matter where they may take us, we will always have the memory of this special time together, and the pride in the spectacular accomplishment that was ours, and only ours.
We did it. Together.
Jan Meek with Daniel Byles
As told to Janet Matthews
Previously appeared in Chicken Soup for the Parent’s Soul
“Margo, I think we should start seeing others.”
Reprinted by permission of Harley Schwadron.
A Miracle Between Sea and Land
Elaine Lackey has no logical explanation for an experience she shared with her son when he was lost at sea, but she cannot doubt it.
Nick Lackey’s fishing boat had been sunk in a storm in the Pacific. The Coast Guard, after three days of fruitless searching, declared him presumed dead. But Elaine “had a feeling” that her son was still alive, though in grave danger.
The Thursday night after the search ended, Elaine was asleep next to her husband of forty-one years when she was awakened when, she says, her bed began to “pitch and roll as if it were being tossed about on huge waves. I literally clung to my mattress to prevent being thrown from the bed.” Through it all, her husband slept undisturbed.
Elaine suddenly felt seasick, and “I knew for some inexplicable reason I was in Nick’s body,” she says. “I could feel his bone-weary exhaustion, his desire to give in to sleep. I knew this would mean death. So I cried out, ‘Hang on, Nick! Please hang on!’”
As she felt the storm increase in intensity, Elaine, terrified, clutched the iron bars of her headboard in order to “stay afloat.” She felt waves crash over the bed. Her husband finally awoke to find her coughing and spitting up water. Her face was drenched, although the bed was completely dry. As her husband held her, Elaine, still feeling buffeted by waves, again cried out, “Hang on, Nick! Hang on!”
Two days after this event, Nick Lackey was rescued by a Greek freighter. Before calling his family, he told his rescuers, “Thursday night was the worst. A new storm blew my raft all over the ocean. I was bone weary and more than once thought how easy it would be to give up and drift off to sleep. But a voice kept calling to me from somewhere: ‘Hang on, Nick. Hang on.’ I somehow took heart from that voice and did hang on.”
Neither Nick nor Elaine can explain the events of that Thursday night. “I do believe it was my voice Nick heard,” says Elaine, “but I can’t imagine how that would be possible. Maybe it’s just true that God works in mysterious ways.”
Alan Ebert
Lunar Celebration
Original painting by Wyland © 2003.
Pedaling over the Atlantic
Ideals are like stars: You will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the ocean desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them, you reach your destiny.
Carl Schurz
The whole crazy idea got planted in Dwight Collins’s head when he was ten years old. He read (apparently missing the “KIDS: DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME” disclaimer) about two guys—Chay Blythe and John Ridgeway—who in 1966 rowed from Cape Cod to Ireland in a dory. Oars and muscles took them across the sea.
That was something Dwight could see himself doing— and not necessarily with another person.
Dwight had always liked sailing, but he started practicing with a purpose now—building and sailing rafts on the Goodwives River that ran behind his house in Noroton, Connecticut. In high school, when Dwight’s friends were dreaming about fast cars or fast dates, Dwight kept a folder on solo transatlantic crossings. He stuffed it with charts, clippings and scribbled notes. He sailed and rowed and planned: He’d be the first to make a solo, self-powered trip across the Atlantic.
Later, while Dwight was a student at the University of Pennsylvania, he was flipping through an issue of Human Power, a publication devoted to people who think like Dwight. What if, he thought, he could bicycle across the Atlantic? With a pedal apparatus driving a propeller, his boat could have a keel, and it would be self-righting. It would be safer than rowing and far more efficient.
Rowing is an ergonomic compromise. Every pull requires a push—a motion that does nothing to propel the rower forward. Using the more powerful leg muscles, he could power the boat for hours without tiring. And— bonus!—with a pedal-powered boat, he could cover his craft. There’d be no need to have his arms sticking out into the ocean, into all those elements.
The folder grew thicker while Dwight finished college, then went on to the U.S. Navy and elite SEALS training. But when he entered the corporate world of Manhattan real estate, the dream receded in the bustle of making a living. Then, in 1987, an Englishman named Tom Mclean rowed himself across the Atlantic alone in fifty-four days. Dwight would not be the first to go solo. He put the folder away.
Real life hummed along. Dwight met Corinne Ham and got engaged. In the weeks before their wedding, Corinne was helping him move out of his apartment. “What’s this, Dwight?” Corinne said one day, holding up a folder labeled “Pedal-Power Boat.”
This could be dicey, he thought. She wasn’t married to him yet. “I had this idea,” he started. “I’ve had it for a long time, that, um, I could propel myself across the Atlantic Ocean in a pedal-powered boat.”
No reaction. She was flipping through the folder.
“I could cycle to England,” he added, watching her carefully.
She looked at pie charts, with their arrows and calculations, at the clippings about Tom Mclean.
“Dwight!” she said. “You’ve got to do this!”
“I knew then,” says Dwight, “that I was engaged to the right person.”
They were married June 16, 1990. Right after the wedding, they started planning the trip. Dwight hired a designer—Bruce Kirby, from Rowayton, Connecticut, the man who created the Laser design—and then a builder— Eric Goetz, of Br
istol, Rhode Island, who had built America’s Cup yachts. And he began to pedal.
Dwight would come home after work and get on the stationary recumbent bike they had squeezed into their tiny apartment. On her way home from work, Corinne would rent a video. While Corinne cooked dinner, Dwight pedaled. Corinne served him dinner while he pedaled. After eating, she’d pop in the movie, with the sound turned way up so he could hear it over the whirring. He stopped only to sleep. On weekends he pedaled for at least six hours a day.
There were no breaks in training. She’d say, “Hey, let’s take a ride,” or something, and he’d say, “Can’t. Sorry, just can’t.” Dwight was becoming his bicycle. His thighs grew four inches.
Two years and 4,000 hours of pedaling later, Dwight was ready. His twenty-four-foot boat was equipped with solar panels to charge radio batteries, a reverse-osmosis water desalinator, his pedal station, a bunk and a camcorder he could use as a video diary. He filled the craft with dried food, books on tape (biographies of Ulysses S. Grant and J. P. Morgan), a Walkman and two dozen boxes of Fig Newtons. Next to an American flag, he hung a windsock with a shamrock on it, a gift from his father. He named the boat Tango after the first dance he and Corinne danced at their wedding.
On June 14, 1992, Dwight was in St. John’s, Newfoundland, where a billboard boasted, “Welcome to Newfoundland. Only six motorists killed by moose this year!” Dwight decided to take it as a good omen. The weather was ready, and with his whole family and most of the puzzled local population watching, he kissed Corinne good-bye, stepped into his little kazoo-shaped boat and pedaled away.
Corinne rode behind for a while on a launch. Today, she points at the image of herself on a video taken that day. “I was trying not to cry there. You can hear it in my voice.”
“I’m going to miss you,” the woman in the video says. “I love you.”