Bear Grylls Page 33

  ‘Yes, we can, if I get it sent this morning,’ said the voice of Martin Jackson, their marketing director, on the line.

  ‘Thanks, Martin. You’re a star. I’ve got to go. I’m onstage in five seconds. Bye.’

  I took a deep breath and walked out onstage to another sea of faces. I was sweating already.

  My two lives had almost overlapped, but luckily not quite collided.

  The long-running debate over how we would store the fuel reached a critical stage only two weeks before the boat was due to leave. It slowly dawned on us over the final trials that if we were to get the necessary mileage and range, we would need to install an extra fuel bladder under the front deck of the boat. The area was meant to be our storage for food and supplies, but would have to be sacrificed.

  The problem was that this particular piece of specialist equipment had a list price of £15,000, and we didn’t have that sort of money left in the budget. It was a huge problem to be faced with so late, and it threatened to hold up the entire effort.

  I called one company, explained the situation, gave them the sales patter, and they responded by offering us a £500 discount on the fifteen grand. That was kind – of course, they were not obliged to offer us anything at all – but I needed a better deal. In desperation I called the best company in the UK at designing such bladders, specialist suppliers to the armed forces and much, much more expensive than £15,000. I phoned one of the directors at FPT Industries.

  This time I simply told them what we were trying to do, what had happened and how desperate we were for help.

  ‘OK, we’ll be happy to help,’ said Mark Butler, the CEO.

  He immediately dispatched a couple of his specialists to see the boat at the naval base in Portsmouth, and, over the next few days, in constant contact with Andy, FPT Industries completed an intensely intricate and professional job.

  The fuel bladder they fitted was custom-made from Kevlar, the bullet-proof and flame-resistant material they use to make fuel bladders for fighter planes. Nobody could say they weren’t thorough! It was carefully moulded under the bow by a team of experts, plus Andy, and all for no charge at all. I was so grateful. At the final hurdle they had bust a gut, put other orders on hold and cleared the way for us. They made me promise one thing: that we would ‘come home safe’.

  Such generosity, such professional services so freely given, amazed me time and time again. I was deeply touched by the many companies, and indeed individuals, telling us that if we needed any help at all, we only had to ask.

  Perhaps this spirit originates from the maritime culture that if anyone is ever in trouble on the sea, ships in the vicinity will always offer assistance. It is a great culture and is one of the great strengths of the climbing world as well: when lives are on the line, people drop everything to help.

  As Captain Pennefather told us afterwards, the whole expedition grew to be much more than an attempt to complete a crossing or break a record. It involved hundreds of people in hundreds of ways, all doing their bit and all as important as the next man. In many ways, we were just the front men for an extraordinary group of people behind the scenes who got us to the start line. In return, I hoped our endeavour would continue to bring out that spirit in people and I wanted to do everything to make sure the magic got spread around.

  The final morning before the boat was to leave for Canada was special. I had planned to be alone on board. It was very early on a grey, drizzly Monday morning when I drove down to Portsmouth and went to fetch the boat from the naval base. The sea was glassy calm, disturbed only by the steady rain. I glanced at my watch and saw I had some time to spare before I was due to arrive at Southampton docks, so I decided to make a slight detour, to the south and my childhood, and pointed the boat towards the Isle of Wight.

  Everything was still and quiet when I arrived at Bembridge harbour, not a sound; but it had never been like this when I was a child. In the morning mist, all I could see was memories of jostling boats and dinghies, me and my friends messing around, our fathers frantically shouting from the beach, of fun and happiness, of bumps and bruises and laughter, above all of laughter. Right there I felt Dad standing quietly beside me.

  The engine was scarcely idling as I chugged quietly around the harbour. And, as if from somewhere deep inside, I found tears were now running freely down my cheeks for the first time in ages.

  I passed slowly by the pontoon at the Sailing Club. The members of this club had so much wanted to support this expedition; they were awash with friendship but not with funds. None the less, they organized a whip-round in the bar for the Prince’s Trust, and I placed their sticker on the boat. That was the only logo placed on the boat for free. It was different. It was part of me.

  As I left Bembridge harbour, I found myself waving nostalgically, not at anyone or anything in particular, just waving goodbye.

  When I eventually reached Southampton, I tied up near an enormous container ship alongside massive grey fenders that dwarfed our tiny boat. Everything suddenly felt very small. A huge crane swung over and plucked the boat out and on to a trailer. The tubes were deflated, and everything was neatly packed away before our precious cargo was steered through the vast gates in the bow, right into the guts of the ship.

  Between us, we had designed and built what must have been one of the most advanced RIBs in the world. But beside this cavernous container ship it looked like a Dinky toy. As she disappeared from view, I felt that sense of sadness you experience when you reach the end of a long road.

  There had been many days when the expedition seemed unlikely to get off the ground, but now we were here on the docks. The next time I would see her would be in a very different harbour, thousands of miles away and further north, on the remote Nova Scotia coastline. I was meant to be doing a BBC TV interview on the quayside but found it hard to make much sense. The container ship’s gates closed. I glanced over my shoulder and our RIB was gone.

  There wasn’t much more we could now do. For the first time in months, the kit was ready and packed, the boat had gone, the logistics were in place as far as they could be, and the team’s mood was high. The final countdown had started, and this stage can be frightening. Everything goes quiet and, maybe for the first time in ages, you have the opportunity to think about what really lies ahead.

  I was beginning to understand a bit more now about what we were undertaking. It was no longer happening ‘next year’. It was almost upon us; and suddenly it felt so soon.

  Shara had given birth to our son Jesse only four weeks earlier. It had been the most intense and intimate day of my life. He was perfect, and Shara, in those moments, had looked so alive. But in those first few weeks afterwards, I began to feel real doubts about everything ahead. I wasn’t even sure why I was leaving at all, and when I sat and thought about it, I felt utterly torn.

  It had been different with the Everest expedition. Then I was younger and maybe more rash, but Everest had changed me. When friends die in the mountains, you reconsider what those odds really mean. They are not just statistics any longer. They are real, and if you play them often enough you don’t always come out on top.

  Now my life was different. I was a husband and a father. I had much more to lose. I was no longer prepared to die up a mountain. Shara and Jesse had given me life after Dad passed on. I had everything to live for, and I wanted to stay alive. The idea of taking that level of risk again terrified me.

  I didn’t even know what the risks were here. No one did. So few people had tried to cross the North Atlantic in an open RIB that there were no stark statistics like the one in eight fatalities on Everest. There was nothing: no quantifiable ratio, no survival odds, just the unknown.

  I tried to look for the positives. I tried to tell myself that my new family would make me more cautious, more determined to get home safely. But I wasn’t sure that I believed it.

  Only a matter of days before we were due to leave, I woke up in the middle of the night and knew I should a write a le
tter to Shara, just in case. I’d hand this letter to my best buddy, Charlie Mackesy, and ask him to give it to her only in one event – if I didn’t come home. It was the hardest letter I have ever written. As I wrote, my palms clammy with sweat, the night seemed to stand still. I was confronting the worst option and trying to deal with the consequences. All the time I was praying – praying my wife would never have to read these words.

  The last two years had been hard for Shara. And I owe her so much. It’s obviously not ideal for any new mother that her husband should have to be away when their child is so small; and it’s definitely not ideal that ‘away’ should mean setting off across a dangerous ocean in a small, open boat. Yet as the days neared we somehow never spoke of saying goodbye. It was our unwritten rule.

  Charlie, Shaun White, the boat-builder, and I were due to fly from Heathrow to Nova Scotia on the Monday evening. Andy had already been there for three days, preparing the boat, while Mick and Nige were going to fly a day later. On the Friday evening, Shara gave me a little photograph album she had made, full of pictures of her and Jesse. It was beautiful.

  Early the following morning I woke early and spoke for the first time into the Dictaphone that would be my companion for so much of the time ahead.

  It’s 5 a.m., and I can’t sleep. Shara is lying beside me, and Jesse is asleep on my pillow. I am trying to get packed up quietly, but I am so scared now. I am used to leaving for expeditions, but this is different – I feel strangely alone. Just looking at Shara and Jesse asleep is so hard. It breaks my heart.

  I am so excited to be seeing those cold waters, but I am under no illusions that it’s going to be anything but many weeks of being wet and frightened. But I still firmly believe it is possible. I just have to remind myself of that, and always remember that each wave is a wave closer back to my home.

  As a team we had agreed to take $10,000 in cash, just in case we found ourselves in situations where perhaps a fisherman or a helicopter pilot, or anyone, needed some persuading. I wandered down to the bank and collected the money. It was a beautiful summer’s day, and I was wearing just an old pair of shorts. I collected the money, and also bought a crate of Bell’s whisky from the off-licence next door. With dollars and whisky, we now had international currency.

  I played a last game of squash with Danny, the secondhand car dealer who plays a wily game with me several times a week. Afterwards he said, very gently, ‘You know, Bear, I really don’t want you to go.’

  I just smiled back.

  ‘Can’t I just puncture the boat or something?’ he asked.

  In the afternoon we gathered everything Shara and Jesse needed to take to her mother’s house and packed it into our car. We laughed. They were going down to the country with all seventeen suitcases. I was going across the North Atlantic, and I had two small bags.

  Sunday drifted by. The sun shone, Charlie Mackesy came down, and we all lay on the grass and drank tea. I went for a walk with Shara and held her hand as I love to do. And then it was time to leave for the airport.

  British Airways had generously provided our one-way tickets to Canada and they had kindly offered to show us around the weather centre at their headquarters at Heathrow before we left. As we approached their corporate headquarters, I saw a welcoming party of BA staff, dressed in hats and uniforms. It was a lovely gesture on their part, but my mind was elsewhere. They were all watching.

  I gave Jesse a little kiss, then turned to face Shara. She was crying already.

  ‘Trust me, my love, all will be fine.’

  I held her tight to try to stop the tears.

  ‘We’ll be safe and back together in no time. I promise.’

  It was a promise I knew wasn’t mine to make.

  As we toured round BA’s Compass House, I was in a daze. I couldn’t take anything in. All I could think about was them both driving home, and Shara being so afraid. But I didn’t know what else I could do. It was time to be a leader now, time to make sure we did this job properly, time to make sure I was right when I promised her we’d be OK. It was time to look ahead.

  When we eventually reached the check-in area, I received a text message from my sister Lara saying she hoped everything would go ‘swimmingly’. It was quite funny.

  My great-uncle Edward, aged ninety-three, called soon afterwards to wish me well. ‘God bless you,’ he said very slowly, and then he added in the softest and most tender of voices, ‘We do so love you.’

  What a gorgeous man he is.

  I was feeling pretty drained, physically and emotionally, by the time Charlie and I settled into our seats. BA had put us in business class and we were soon being spoiled with champagne and food. Charlie was really buzzing, chatting to the crew about the expedition and generally enjoying every minute. He was in heaven. He eventually fell asleep snoring.

  I just sat quietly, alone with my thoughts, staring out of the window. Now and then I could see the ocean, briefly visible between the clouds, and watch the white horses far below. I eventually closed my eyes as well, warm and snug, knowing that the way home would be a very different story.

  5. NORTH FROM NOVA SCOTIA

  A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.

  Ronald Reagan

  Even if all five of us had been born and bred in Halifax, Nova Scotia, it is hard to imagine how the people of this open-hearted Canadian city could have been more hospitable and supportive. The fact was that we were five British men who happened to have chosen their city as the starting point of our transatlantic expedition, and we had certainly not expected, nor did we deserve, the warm generosity shown to us by so many people.

  Our boat, the Arnold and Son Explorer, was moored at the central quay in the middle of a waterfront development, and as soon as one of us stepped past the spectators to go aboard, we were asked for autographs and quizzed about the boat.

  We were given free use of two nearby apartments for as long as we needed, and local officers of the Canadian navy gave us 3,000 litres of fuel, for which they refused to let us pay. Ordinary citizens of Halifax seemed drawn to the boat, coming to wish us well, offering us some piece of advice about the waters ahead. We were showered with kindness and all felt looked after and special.

  Andy had already spent three days out here before us and seemed to have become something of a local celebrity through his press and television interviews. It was great to see. He was clearly enjoying himself and, just as I had hoped, he had really started to take ownership of his part of the expedition.

  Amid the high spirits, though, there was plenty of work to be done to get the boat ready, and it soon became clear Andy had done a superb job in this respect as well. He had fitted a new alternator the day before we arrived, and it seemed to have solved a last-minute issue we had had with a faulty power supply. The boat was neatly stowed with most of the kit, apart from our personal stuff, and she looked fantastic. I felt so proud and very protective.

  She had started out as a rough idea in our minds, advanced to the drawing board, been to the Boat Show, on to the sea trials, across the Atlantic in the huge container ship, and now here she stood in pride of place on the Halifax waterfront.

  The food packages had been carefully sorted out into days, and Andy had been meticulous in making sure that everything was neat and tidy on board. That was important to me. Even before the building process was complete, I had gone out and bought more than 100 bungee elastic cords, and roll after roll of Gaffa sticky tape. Andy had laughed incessantly about this.

  ‘I hope that crane is strong enough when she is lifted over the docks,’ I said, as our pride and joy first went into the water in Portsmouth.

  ‘Well, we could always bungee or Gaffa tape her together if it isn’t,’ Andy instantly replied.

  Whatever we were doing on the boat, there was always a bungee near at hand. It became a running joke. In my experience, the army would grind to a halt if it wasn’t for bungees and Gaffa tape. They are the meat and drink of a
ny unit.

  ‘We’ll use ’em all,’ I would always reply.

  And I was right. By the end of the expedition, when we were finally packing up in Scotland, I took immense satisfaction from seeing Andy rummaging around in the hold of the boat, looking for a bungee to keep his holdall together, and then hearing him say, ‘I don’t believe it. We’re out of bungees.’

  Come Halifax, the stores were all lashed neatly down in place. Nothing could budge. The bungees were all working.

  We knew we were going to be thrown around violently on the ocean, so everything needed to be really well secured. The flares, the food, the spares, everything – even down to the box of ear defenders that were never used. (This was because they made us sick, as they took away our instinctive balance.) The sea anchor was neatly folded and stowed ready for deployment and, all in all, our little yellow boat looked ready for anything. It was a fantastic sight.

  I had brought with me around forty laminated stickers, featuring little motivational slogans, which I placed in strategic positions around the boat. All of the guys teased me incessantly about these. They told me they were quite unBritish, but I thought these sayings would help us get through when times were tough.

  They served their purpose well, although I did concede that the sticker reading, ‘Make sure you watch the sunset once a year – it will give you a whole new perspective on life’ was starting to wear a little thin by the end. As Charlie wryly pointed out at the end of the 3,000 miles: ‘Well, that’s my sunsets done for the next twenty years.’

  Our entire experience in Halifax was facilitated by the enthusiastic support of one of our lead sponsors, General Motors (Canada). I had made a speech at a GM conference in Italy some time before, and they had agreed to take one of the £15,000 sponsorship packages. They also effectively adopted this stage of the expedition, helping to generate publicity, raising money for a local charity – the Nova Scotia Sailing School, which teaches local kids how to build a boat and take trips into the wilderness (not round the Arctic if they’ve got any sense!) – and also hosting a farewell banquet for 500 people the night before we were to leave.