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 65: The loneliness I have felt in the past ten days has been almost unbearable. Try as I might, I don't seem to be able to fill this empty hole which has developed within me. I haven't had any physical contact with another human being since Andrew left the boat. A number of people have asked what I would like for Christmas. A hug would certainly be high on the list.

ROB HAMILL, the cowinner of the 1997 Atlantic Rowing Challenge, wrote a book. It's called The Naked Rower, and there is no better explanation of the Sisyphean task of ocean rowing, from the almost insurmountable task of raising sponsorship money to finding the right partner.

Hamill had rowed scull for New Zealand's Olympic team and recognized that the Atlantic race would require a "masochistic tolerance to pain." (This is the kind of thing rowers revel in.) Unlike many competitors who simply hoped to survive the crossing, Hamill entered the race to win.

"I wanted to test myself," Hamill, 38, told me from his home in New Zealand. "I had a vision that there would come a moment when I had to save my own life or save someone else's life. A shark attack or a boat capsizing. I wondered how I would cope in those circumstances. We all like to think that we'd react in the right way, but probably only 5, maybe 10 percent of us actually would."

Since the Blyth-Ridgway crossing in 1966, 35 years of high-tech innovation have transformed rowing the Atlantic from a life-or-death adventure into a relatively safe endeavor. And yet the ocean still kills. Although no one has died in the two Challenge races, at least seven people have perished trying to row across the Atlantic. The most recent fatality was Nenad Belic, a 62-year-old Chicago cardiologist who rowed out from Cape Cod last May; 151 days later, in a storm 230 miles off the coast of Ireland, Belic's emergency beacon was activated. After a search by the English and Irish coast guards, Belic's beacon and boat were recovered, but his body was never found.

Hamill and Stubbs trained like rowers—that is, fanatically. They hired a shipwright to engineer their stock boat for maximum speed, and zealously trimmed each piece of gear and food-pack down to the ounce. It paid off with a win and a world record that still stands.

Hamill returned in 2001 to defend his title but, in classic Kiwi style, managed to break a bone in his fist stopping a man who was beating a woman on a street in Los Gigantes. "He hit her with a Mike Tyson hook to the jaw," he said. "I did what any decent bloke would do."

Hamill was replaced by Matt Goodman, who with partner Steve Westlake missed setting a new record by only 23 hours and 39 minutes. The pair brought the title home again to New Zealand.

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