Suffering a Sea Change (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine May 2002

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The Hard Way
Suffering a Sea Change (Cont.)

DAY 15: At the launch Sir Chay Blyth addressed all the competitors. "As you are rowing across the Atlantic looking down at your little brown toes, ask yourself, 'Am I the happiest I could possibly be?'" Well, I've had a good look at my exceptionally brown toes and my answer at this point is a resounding yes.
—from Debra Veal's e-mail diary

IN 1896, TWO NORWEGIANS, George Harboe and Gabriel Samuelson, rowed from Manhattan to Le Havre, France, in 60 days—the first recorded crossing of an ocean by rowboat.

Seventy years later, in 1966, an Englishman and a Scot, John Ridgway and Chay Blyth, rowed an open 20-foot dory from Cape Cod to Ireland's Aran Islands in 91 days. Like the Norwegians—indeed, like almost all sailors for the previous 500 years—Ridgway and Blyth carried all their own provisions and navigated by sextant.

"The interesting thing about rowing the Atlantic is that people have only two opinions of it. Either they think it's fantastic and would love to do it, or they think it's bloody brainless and stupid and what's the point."

In 1971, John Fairfax and Sylvia Cook of Great Britain rowed 8,041 miles across the Pacific Ocean from San Francisco to Australia in 361 days. The same year, Chay Blyth became the first person to sail single-handed and nonstop around the world against prevailing winds and currents—a pitiless, 292-day voyage. Thereafter, taking on one challenge after another, he racked up victories in the toughest sailing races on the planet, including the Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race.

An intrepid sailor at sea, Blyth was and remains a bombastic self-promoter on land. In 1989, capitalizing on his fame, he created an event-marketing company called the Challenge Business. With British Steel as the sponsor, Blyth's company put on the first against-prevailing-winds-and-currents-round-the-world sailing race, the British Steel Challenge. In 1997, this impresario of endurance founded the Atlantic Rowing Challenge.

"When you talk about extreme sports, people come up with skateboarding," says Sir Chay, who was knighted for his services to sailing. "Ha! Zooming up in the air and doing flips and flops. That's not an extreme sport. That's a technical sport."

We're poolside in Port St. Charles. Blyth flew in to Barbados for Debra Veal's brilliantly hyped finish and right now is finishing off his fifth rum punch.

"An extreme sport is one in which you put your life on the line," he continues. "If you survive, it was great sport. If you don't, then of course you made a mistake.

"The interesting thing about rowing the Atlantic is that people have only two opinions of it. Either they think it's fantastic and would love to do it, or they think it's bloody brainless and stupid and what's the point."

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