Bear Grylls Page 32

The idea of having an inflatable mattress in the ‘sardine tin’, the area at the back of the boat where two, maybe three of us, could lie down and rest, seemed inspired. It wasn’t. The mattress made us feel sick and was easily punctured. OK, so we needed to get some absorbent foam instead.

  We hadn’t planned where we would put our feet when we were helming, so they dangled uncomfortably in mid-air. Right, we would need to weld some kind of footrest into position.

  The boat, in the final stages of building, became a test bed for many maritime companies. Many people approached us with new ideas. Some were bonkers; some were amazing.

  By the end we were trialling seats for the new naval fast-response crafts, testing a small exterior water heater that would take the pounding of all poundings and only worked periodically. We were also experimenting with a marine tracking device that would send back a signal every half-hour with our speed and latitude and longitude, as given by the GPS (Global Positioning System). This data was sent via satellite to the Internet and became a lifeline to those waiting for news back in the UK. But it had its dangers too, and when all our systems went down in a storm, including this device, people understandably jumped to conclusions. They would see our speed gradually falling away and the weather patterns worsening. When we went blank and offline, we were in trouble, but it wasn’t fatal. We were still upright, but they weren’t to know.

  Yet when it worked, it gave people hope; hope that slowly we were coming home, wave by wave.

  By the end of that first night of our sea trial, we were all starting to feel really cold, which was not promising. This was a midsummer’s night off the south coast of England, not the frozen North Atlantic. We weren’t even that wet, but it became obvious we were going to need much more kit if we weren’t to freeze. But already we were looking like Michelin men in all our gear.

  More notes were made.

  The wind always whistled behind us wherever we sat and we lost a lot of heat like this; roll-mats to sit on would shield our backsides.

  We needed better lifelines: the clips were far too small – in a storm at night, in mittens, we’d never get clipped on. They needed to run the whole length of the boat, and be big and strong.

  These were all small details but, in my experience, on any expedition it is the small things that make the biggest difference. Something that seems insignificant and minor on shore can make a life-altering difference at sea, so I was determined that every little glitch and problem should be identified and resolved at this stage. When we finally left, it would be too late for this sort of refinement. This was the time to iron things out, when it was calm and when it was good, before it got nasty.

  The truth is that our first night aboard the boat had not been much fun and, weighed down by fuel and hindered by rough weather, we had not made very good progress towards the Scilly Isles. We were all tired and wet, so at four in the morning it seemed sensible to tie up on a buoy at Salcombe harbour in Devon. Our performance might not have been outstanding, but it was our first time out and there was no point in going completely mad. We waited until dawn, then headed off to find some breakfast on shore.

  I had spoken to Neil Laughton, the leader of our Everest expedition, during the previous week and knew he was planning to be in the Salcombe area over the weekend. We bumped into him in the village and he casually asked if we could take him and a couple of friends out for a spin on the water.

  ‘No problem,’ I replied; it would be fun, just like the old days. We were laughing and joking. The mood was good. Neil was excited to see the boat.

  Somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind, however, a bell was ringing. I remembered that Salcombe was known for a raised strip of sand and rock just beneath the water’s surface, somewhere near the front of the harbour. ‘Salcombe Bar’, as it is called, was reputed to be one of the most treacherous hazards on the British coastline.

  The conditions were wind over tide now. Later – too late – I read the view of a round-the-world yachtsman who said he had seen awkward conditions all around the globe but nothing quite so bad as the Salcombe Bar.

  But this was only a muffled bell at the back of my mind as we headed out into the harbour. Neil was standing right at the bow of the boat, with two of his friends, and all seemed well. I did notice the waves were beginning to build just a bit, but everybody was relaxed and smiling, shooting the breeze.

  Then I looked straight ahead and saw what can only be described as a monster wave approaching. It was probably around 200 yards away, but it was very obviously heading in our direction.

  Standing at the helm, my first instinct was to turn the boat and run away from this thing. Then I decided there was not enough time. We would have to face the wave head-on and try to ride it. Seconds passed like minutes. Nobody was laughing any more. This rogue wave rolled irrepressibly towards us. People grabbed at handholds. We were doing only 10 knots.

  It connected head-on, and our boat literally took off, nose up, out of the water. Then we dropped straight down 15 feet as the wave fell with a crash on to the stern of the boat. She pitched forward wildly. It felt as though we had all been standing in an elevator and the cable had broken, and we had fallen down two storeys and smashed into the bottom.

  Andy gashed his knee. I was shaking like a leaf. Neil was still just clinging on.

  ‘You guys are insane,’ he said, smiling, after we had turned the boat round and run back to shore with the subsequent waves. ‘You wouldn’t catch me 500 miles offshore in this thing, in a big sea. Bloody hell! It’ll be nuts.’

  To be honest, my legs were still shaking a couple of hours later, but in time we would learn to deal with waves like that. It was a matter of confidence and trust. We were learning how to handle her in these conditions, slowly but surely, day by day.

  On our second sea trial, we encountered some similar conditions around Portland Bill, Dorset, when the sea was breaking up and coming at us wildly from every direction. The area was infamous for its rough waters. Although it was only a small taste of what we would find out in the big ocean, we began to feel the boat responding really well to the challenge. It was what she was designed for and she loved it.

  Andy was handling the throttle, I was helming and the boat was alive. We were being thrown around, but we were making progress, finding our way, starting to enjoy the challenge. The adrenalin was up.

  The following day, with everyone back at work, each of the guys – Mick, Nige, Charlie and Andy – called me individually to say they could hardly move because of the physical battering they had taken on the water. I felt it too. We were stiff and sore, and that was after only fifteen hours in no more than tricky conditions.

  Our early trials left us in no doubt about the scale and nature of what lay ahead. Legs of almost 900 miles over several days would leave us battered and bruised, and that worried me. I was wiped out after only a day and a night – in summertime.

  It became increasingly obvious that the real challenge for us was the fact that we were in a completely open boat, with nowhere to hide. I had underestimated this. In a round-the-world yacht you have a cabin where you can shelter from the worst of the weather, a place to get out of the rain and spray, a place to rest and get dry in. We had no such luxury, no respite from the elements. Whatever the weather and sea conditions, whether it was rain, sleet, waves, hail or spray, this was where we would live, eat and sleep. It was to become our most exhausting factor: the relentless wet, cold and exposure. And we all learned to dread it.

  For our final sea trial, we travelled the 90 or so miles from Portsmouth to Jersey and back. We took the time to run through all our safety procedures: deploying the life raft, putting out the parachute sea anchor, rehearsing our ‘man-overboard’ drills. It wasn’t the same as the real thing, but these were necessary disciplines to have learnt by heart. Being able to deploy the sea anchor in under two minutes as waves pounded over the foredeck at night had to be instinctive; and that takes time to learn.

  I threw endless
fenders overboard for the guys to retrieve, all of us learning how to handle the boat delicately in a pitching sea. I did it again at dusk. They were getting it.

  By 3 a.m., Mick was on watch. Everyone was tired. It was time for a live test of the ‘man-overboard’ drill; I had decided to be the dummy, and I wasn’t looking forward to it. I was lying in the sardine tin with Nige, unable to sleep. I looked anxiously at my watch. We were exactly mid-Channel now. It was the worst time on the worst shift. I sat up, gave Nige a nudge just to make sure he was awake, stood on the tubes and jumped into the black.

  As per the drills, everyone leaped into action and Mick brought the boat round into the sea. The spotlight flickered on and they soon had me in the lee of the RIB, Mick carefully balancing the jet controls holding me off by 5 yards.

  ‘What’s it worth, skipper?’ he shouted into the night. I was cold now and my heart was still pounding. I laughed, but only a little.

  ‘England is sixty miles that-a-way,’ he chuckled. ‘See you for breakfast.’ He drove off.

  A short dogleg, and he was back alongside me.

  ‘Mick, you’ve got ten seconds to bring me in or I will kill you.’ Strong hands dragged me in, floundering. Andy threw me one of his diesel rags to dry myself, laughing. But it had been a good drill to do.

  The night was perfect, the sea was still and the stars and sky were bright. It was as easy as pie. We all sat quietly afterwards and could only imagine what it would be like in a wind-whipped gale with icebergs all around. It would be a different game altogether. The truth is that getting back to a man overboard would be near impossible, and we all knew it. We turned and headed for home.

  In many ways, the expedition was beginning to assume its own momentum. The funds were in the bank; the boatbuilding process was finally complete. We were talking to shipping agents, managing relationships with sponsors, discussing finer details of the route and working out possible dates of departure bearing in mind the state of the ice-packs in the Arctic and the weather patterns coming in. We were busier than ever.

  There had been times, especially in the early days, when it had sometimes felt as though the entire expedition was resting on my shoulders. It was my dream and I was struggling to make it happen. Those days had gone now, and most of the time I was able to stand back and oversee all the activity. I loved that.

  Everything was happening all around me.

  We had arranged two major crew meetings before the expedition, one six months before our scheduled departure and one just a week before. Every aspect of the expedition was discussed and checked. Nige had all his maps laid out and carefully went over the routes and the contingency plans once again; Andy talked about the engine and the refuelling requirements; Mick went over the emergency coastguard procedures and weather plans, and Chloë distributed her logistics folders.

  Chloë Boyes was working for Goldman Sachs in London when we met. I told her one evening, as we chatted after a talk I had given, about the administrative challenges – to put it mildly – that existed in my life. Shara was pregnant, everything was hectic and I was struggling to stay afloat.

  She saw the problem as clearly as I did. I needed some help. More than this, she proposed a solution; she wanted some excitement and I wanted an efficient number two. I should employ her as a PA to handle all the admin. I felt a burden lift off me.

  It was always going to be hard for me to trust somebody enough to allow them to liaise with the people who provided my living: the CEOs of the companies who use me as a speaker, or the sponsors and contacts surrounding the expedition. But it didn’t take long for me to feel comfortable with Chloë in this role.

  She was easygoing and efficient and her impact was immediate. It meant the world to me to be able to have the occasional relaxed evening at home with Shara, rather than working late into the night catching up on an inbox full of emails.

  Chloë’s role within the expedition soon became a vital one. She was going to operate our base from London and the expedition HQ was moved to the offices of Liaison Media, our PR guys, only 100 yards away from our barge. It worked perfectly and was always a hub of banter and fun, the rooms piled high with radios, maps and logos.

  I wanted to keep the barge clear for Shara. The London base was going to be our first point of contact with the outside world. Day or night, when we needed help out there, Chloë and that office were to be our lifeline. It was a big responsibility for her.

  Most of the crew didn’t know much about her to start with, but as soon as she handed out her neatly prepared folders, packed with logistics and contact numbers, at our meeting, they started to recognize the importance of her role.

  Perhaps the best measure of her enormous contribution was the fact that as soon as we finally reached Scotland, Mick, Nige, Charlie and Andy all told me they wanted to get her something special to say thank you; thank you for those times she was there for us, coordinating and crisis-managing situations in real time. They all chipped in to buy her a glass and silver bowl, engraved with the words ‘for always being there’.

  Chloë had teamed up with our PR company, Liaison Media, which was headed up by a real live-wire of a guy called Alex Rayner. When Alex had first heard about our expedition he had suggested he become involved, and had been immensely excited from day one. And it showed. ‘Ha,’ he would announce, having arranged another interview for one of us, ‘I just love this.’ And off he would go.

  The final member of our base team was Andy Billing. He had agreed to build a website for the expedition, at minimal cost, and to keep it constantly updated, streaming information as we went along. In the early days we were getting four hits a day, and that was probably me checking to see if anyone was visiting the site. However, during the expedition, as the dramas unfolded, we were registering more than 30,000 hits every day. Andy was in his element. He was so enthusiastic, always obliging and above all professional. And everyone loved it whenever he appeared with his customary greeting: ‘Good morning, fine sirs!’

  Shara had decided she didn’t want to be alone in London while I was away. I agreed with her. She and Jesse would be much happier with her mother out of London. It would be quieter. Andy agreed to live on our barge for the entire duration of the expedition: manning the phones by night. Just knowing he was always there to help Chloë and answer the telephone gave me the reassurance we all felt we needed. This was the final piece of the jigsaw.

  In 2001 I was invited to become an ambassador for the Prince’s Trust. It was a huge honour and in return I promised that our next expedition would be in aid of the charity. Ever since then, through various events I have been involved with, I have seen at first hand how effectively and genuinely the Trust provides thousands of young people in Britain with both the incentive and the opportunity to build their dreams. It gives them a chance to get out there and do the very best they can, to start businesses, to find work. It offers a break to people who would never normally get the chance. It is a brilliant idea and it changes lives.

  I wrote to HRH The Prince of Wales, the founder of the charity, to explain that we would like his Trust to become our official beneficiary; I also asked if he might ever consider becoming the patron of our expedition. He not only agreed to take on this role but also expressed the desire to meet the entire team before our departure. I couldn’t believe it.

  On the appointed day, at the appointed time, smartly dressed in our expedition fleeces, we gathered at the barge and hailed a couple of taxis to take us to St James’s Palace. I had also invited the two top execs from Arnold and Son, our title sponsors, Eric and Jean-Marie, as a small additional gesture of thanks to them for their support. They looked immaculate, dressed in their suits.

  The Prince had obviously been well briefed, and as he entered the room he walked towards me and started to mime the act of spraying deodorant under his arms. He was taking the mickey out of me already, as I had recently featured in the Sure for Men deodorant TV commercials.

  ‘How is the deodorant?�
�� he asked playfully.

  ‘It’s fine, thank you, sir,’ I replied awkwardly.

  Then, after a moment of silence, I added, ‘Well . . .’ I paused, ‘at least I wasn’t asked to do an advert for Anusol.’

  My impromptu reference to a remedy for haemorrhoids prompted a rapid shuffling of feet behind me from the guys, but the Prince laughed and the ice was broken. He then told us how during his naval career he had served on a frigate in the North Atlantic. He had encountered a storm so ferocious and powerful that the force of the waves had literally bent a reinforced steel ladder. He looked at me intently.

  ‘And you’re going up there in a small rubber-tubed boat. What will you do in that kind of sea?’ he asked.

  I paused awkwardly.

  ‘We’ll call you for some advice when that happens, sir, rest assured,’ I replied. There was more shuffling behind me.

  He asked Nige how his astral navigation was coming along, and Nige admitted it was something of a grey area. The Prince laughed out loud. The atmosphere was light and fun, and we had some photographs of us all taken outside afterwards.

  ‘Well, I think you’re all insane,’ the Prince concluded as he turned to leave, ‘but I’ll be thinking of you.’

  As the final day of departure drew nearer, inevitably there were several last-minute crises that needed to be solved in a hurry. At one point Andy Leivers called to say he needed a particular seal for the jet housing. If we couldn’t get this specific part quickly, plus a spare, the boat would not be able to leave for Canada, and we would suffer the consequences of that delay. The ice was fragmenting now in the Arctic. The timing was perfect; we had no room for such a delay.

  I was making a speech for Fujitsu on that particular morning, and I recall being backstage, all dressed up in my Everest climbing kit, waiting to go on. But I had to make the call to make sure we got this seal, and I had to make it now. I was literally phoning the jet manufacturers when the master of ceremonies stood up to introduce me.

  ‘Can you get the part to the naval yard for tomorrow?’ I asked in hushed tones.