The Eddystone Challenge:  Measuring Up

Imagine the scene.  It’s a summer Sunday afternoon in St Peter Port.   The awards get-together has brought the Guernsey Regatta to a finish.  The ERC women’s “A” crew quad has just won the Sunday morning event, a 36 minute sprint round the bay, and after a creditable second place in yesterday’s 16K slog spirits are high.  Gathered around the table in the regatta marquee are some of the Exmouth rowers, and Rob Williams is wondering where next to take all this stamina and adrenaline.   Victory has a thousand daughters and one of them – in the sweet aftermath of line honours – is the up-coming Eddystone Challenge.  28 miles there and back?  Six hours of relentless combat with the elements?  No problem.  “We were all quite buzzy after those two races” recalls Allie Giles.  “And it just seemed a great idea.”

Over the following weeks, in that loose, slightly disorganised Exmouth way, plans firmed up.  Originally, in the aftermath of Guernsey, there seemed to be enough volunteers for two quad crews, but injuries and second thoughts took their toll.  By the pre-Challenge entry deadline, five names went down on the ERC form:  Anna Childs, Caroline Huxley,  Rob Williams,  Mike Mulholland and Brian Hitchcock.  None of these guys had ever rowed together as a crew.  And time was moving on.

Allie Giles, meanwhile, had found herself a seat in Hash Anchorettes,  a Plymouth boat with a spare berth.  Alone amongst the Challenge contenders, Allie knew pretty much what lay in store.  Back in 2006, she hitched a lift in a yacht as a reserve rower in case of emergencies but conditions beyond the breakwater led to the Exmouth crew having to turn back.  The seas, she said, were enormous.  Most of her shipmates aboard the yacht were seasick and and the rowers were being tossed around by wave after wave.  But that determination to one day give the Challenge her best shot never left her.

This year’s Challenge was scheduled for Saturday 15^th August, 2009.  Vile weather led to the cancellation of last year’s event, and a succession of frontal troughs seemed to be offering a repeat performance, but Rob Williams rallied the Exmouth crew for a shake-down cruise with just five days left before the Challenge weekend.

Mike Mulholland, a volunteer for last year’s cancelled Challenge, felt the crew bedded in well.  “We put in a decent distance,” he says.  “Out through the deepwater channel, then across to the Parson and Clerk, and back via Dawlish.  We tried to cross the sandbank off the beach but there wasn’t enough water and so we had to backtrack to the Fairway Buoy and return via the channel.  You’ve got to be talking 16K – and it seemed to go well.”

Fine.  Except that the Eddystone, from launch to retrieval,  is exactly three times that distance.

By now, the crew had found their individual positions in the boat.  Anna Childs was to be stroke.  She’d been rowing for barely more than a year or so and her longest expedition to date was a social outing to Teignmouth and back with a couple of hours on the beach in between.  Yet she refused to be intimidated.  “I know I’m stubborn enough never to give up” she says.  “I wasn’t expecting the Eddystone to be easy, but I’d climbed Kilamanjaro before and pushed my body to the absolute limit.  After six hours at high altitude, I had legs like jelly and nothing I’ve done since has ever been that hard.”   Anna was 24 when she climbed Kilamanjaro.  She is now 31.

Rowing three in the boat was Brian Hitchcock.  Brian started his rowing in fine boats at university in Durham but a spell in Hong Kong gave him lots of experience in ocean rowing on the South China Sea.  He’d done a number of four-hour endurance races in kayaks but had never tackled anything like the Eddystone.

Behind Brian was Mike Mulholland.  After years of playing water polo at national level, Mike is no stranger to the pressures that competition can impose on a bunch of athletes.  In the case of the Eddystone, he acknowledges, the battle was between the sheer distance and your own physical and mental resources, yet the chemistry of the crew would still make the difference between success and failure.  “From the start”  he says,  “you need to know how hard you can push a crew without breaking them.  With people you’ve never really rowed with before that can be a difficult call.”

At bow sat Caroline Huxley.  Like Anna,  she’s a relative newcomer to offshore rowing but a season on the water plus line honours at Guernsey have given her a passion for the sport.  Was she daunted by the prospect of rounding a lighthouse she wouldn’t even see for three hours?   “Someone suggests a row like that and you just think yeah, why not?  How many times is a girl going to get that kind of invitation?”

Rob Williams is a relatively seasoned rower by comparison with the two women, with experience in both fine boats and offshore quads.  He’d been the driving force behind the ERC’s Challenge bid from the start, and the decision to cox the boat on the day seemed a natural extension of the care and committment he’d put into the entry.  A homeopath by training, he has a fascination for the subtle and ever-changing rhythms of the human body, and his personal challenge was to somehow lead four very different characters through an experience that would – in all probability – stay with them for the rest of their lives.

“What the cox has to do over a distance like this is to think himself into the mind of each of those four individuals…to watch them like a hawk, to anticipate their low points, to celebrate their high points, to keep talking, keep urging, keep supporting, keep supplying the framework within which this crazy experience takes place.”   Welfare Officer?  Navigator?  Psychologist?  Wave watcher?  Helm?   “All those…”  he says,  “…plus something else.  Shepherd.”

Ali, meanwhile, famously immune to panic, decided to put in a little light training on her own.  “I went out in a single a couple of days before the event and sculled around for a bit.  It was lovely. I really enjoyed it.”

The eve of the Challenge found Mike Mulholland down at the clubhouse.  The crew had elected to take Pebbles to the Eddystone and back and he was determined – in his phrase – “to scrub the arse off the boat”.  Alone in the compound, he set to with the hose and a brush.  To date, most of the others had done the heavy lifting and he felt this small contribution might help redress the balance.  It was also, he says, a signal of intent.  “I was going to get round that lighthouse,” he says, “come what may.”

Saturday arrived beneath a blanket of heavy cloud, one of those mornings when the palette offers nothing but a limitless choice of greys.  With Mike Drew at the wheel, and Pebbles behind, the crew set off for Plymouth.  Mike and Caroline had slept badly. The wind speed was hovering a shade above Force Four.  Should the wind stiffen further, the Challenge would be cancelled.

At the Mayflower club compound at Mountbatten, participating crews gathered for the 11.00am briefing. The course to the lighthouse had been sectioned into two-mile zones, each patrolled by a safety craft offering directions,  comms, and – if necessary – assistance. The official Risk Assessment rated the risk of capsize and sinking as LOW.  Exposure, hypothermia and dehydration,  on the other hand,  were MEDIUM to HIGH.   The wind was still blowing Force Four but a shift to the south west was predicted for the afternoon, giving the fleet the possibility of an easier ride home.  In view of this, the Challenge organisers had decided to press ahead.

Final checks complete, Mike Drew helped the crew settle the boat in the water.  Rob Williams had pre-packed two dry bags with kit he judged essential to cover every eventuality:  warm clothing, sundry liquids, chocolate bars, wine gums, cereal bars, cooked pasta, plus Anna’s favourite rice pudding.  By mutual agreement there would be no stops en route but each rower would drop out at hourly intervals to take on liquids and hi-energy victuals.  Almost as an afterthought, Rob has also packed a small selection of homeopathic pick-me ups.

The boats made their way down river and massed off Mountbatten Pier.  Mike Mulholland was struck by the sheer variety of craft.  “There was just a swarm of boats: canoes, kayaks, doubles, quads, gigs, Celtic longboats, and something called a whale boat.  Very colourful.  Very carnival.”  Caroline Huxley, too,  was impressed.  “It was a great feeling to be part of that but to be honest my one thought was to get away, to put a bit of space between them and us.”

120 rowers.  46 boats.  28 miles there and back.  Time to get stuck in.

Rob eased to the western end of the swarm and managed a rolling start.  “It was just beautiful” he said, “more luck than judgement but it gave us clear water and a bit of an edge.  28 miles to go?  No problem.”

From the start line to the Breakwater is 1.75 miles.  Pebbles powered across Plymouth Sound as the swarm began to thin out.  Mike Mulholland was pleasurably surprised by the way the crew were going for it.  “It was almost like being in a race.  There was a feeling that we had to get to the Breakwater, that we had to get past it, that we had to see exactly where we were.”  A couple of tuna sandwiches had set him up nicely.  His lack of sleep was a distant memory.  He felt, he said, “brilliant.”

Anna echoes the thought.  “In a way we’d all allowed ourselves to be sucked into this huge thing.  28 miles is a vast distance but once the clock started ticking and you were on the water and the conditions were just about OK then you told yourself there was absolutely no way we wouldn’t make this thing happen.”

In Hash Anchorettes, Allie Giles was rowing bow behind two other women whom she vaguely knew plus an ex-US marine called Jonno.  She’d arrived at Mountbatten with a pair of ERC oars she’d brought from the clubhouse, two bottles of diluted Ribena and a cereal bar.   Bow, of course, is the bumpiest seat in the house and as the Eddystone fleet left the shelter of Plymouth Sound, she felt the first stirrings of the open sea.  “It’s at that point you realise that the next few hours are going to be really uncomfortable but it’s amazing how quickly your body adapts.  Our cox was a lady called Jane and she was very firm, quite stern really.  She kept us on our toes.  Then we hit this really big wave and I jarred my neck falling back onto the seat, but you just go on…because you have to.”

Caroline Huxley, in Pebbles, was also rowing bow.  The Guernsey 16K race had given her a taste of open water but she was surprised by how suddenly the conditions changed.  “To be honest, it felt really rough.  Rob called the bigger waves, and you brace for the impact,  but it really shakes you.  Don’t get me wrong.  It was still do-able.  Just a bit bumpy.”

Out beyond the Breakwater, most of the boats began to veer towards the west, hunting for favourable currents that might speed their passage to the still-invisible lighthouse.  Rob Williams, on the other hand,  had already decided to stick to the bearing of 209 degrees which offered him the shortest transit to the Eddystone reef.  “It might sound hard-core” he says now, “but I didn’t see much point adding distance when we didn’t have to.”

The crews settled into a steady rhythm, offering Mike Mulholland a chance to savour his crewmates.  “Anna was incredible, absolutely brilliant. She just held the rate for mile after mile. She was like a metronome. Unvarying. Someone you could totally rely on.  And on top of all that she had to look at Rob for six hours.  Imagine that…”   Brian Hitchcock, sitting immediately behind Anna, was no less impressed.  “She certainly kept us together and that’s not easy over a distance like that.  She had real grit, real application.”

Rob, too, was keeping a careful eye on his flock.  Like Mike Mulholland,  he was surprised how quickly they felt alone on the ocean,  losing touch with both time and distance, and he knew that the secret key to unlocking the lighthouse lay in maintaining focus.  “I could see the expression on all those faces and I just knew it was so important to keep their attention. Maybe I was a bit too verbal but it’s better to keep talking, keep encouraging, keep pointing out a bit of a stoop, or a dodgy slide, keep trying to keep boredom at bay.”  And so, from time to time,  he’d call for ten firm,  then ten light. Or toss a change of pressure to the stern pair or the bow pair. Or start rowing pyramids of five strokes,  then ten strokes,  then fifteen. Anything to keep them nailed to the task in hand.

Looking back, Brian Hitchcock acknowledges the importance of Rob’s drills.  “In a way I think that was the main thing that got us round.  Rowing that kind of distance, for that kind of time, it’s all too easy to drift away, to get lost in your own thoughts. Rob was aware of that and never let it happen. We stayed a crew. We stayed together. Hugely important.”

Caroline agrees.  “At one point Rob asked us whether we wanted him to shut up but we all said no.  As far as I’m concerned, he was the guy who got us round.  Without him, it might have been a different story.  Top man.”

By now, two hours out, Allie Giles in Hash Anchorettes had taken to watching the bird life.  “There were kittiwakes and gannets, gulls you don’t normally see on our coastal rows back home, and as the coast became a kind of faint shadow behind us that made you realise just how far you’d come.”  It was shortly after this point that Jane, the cox, reported her first sighting on the lighthouse.  “That was a real moment.  We thought she was winding us up at first but it was true.  We could see it.”

The Exmouth crew were already closer to the Eddystone reef when a message on the VHF reminded them that they had just twenty minutes to round the lighthouse.  Race organisers had stipulated a 15.00 cut-off for approaching crews, after which they’d be instructed to turn back in order to return safely in full daylight.  Mike Mulholland threw a precautionary look over his shoulder.  “I’m crap at measuring distance at sea but it looked to me that we still had a couple of miles to go. There was absolutely no way we weren’t going to get round that thing and so we really piled it on.”

At this point, Rob produced the disposable camera he’d picked up at a supermarket en route from Exmouth.  These pictures, at the half-way point, are a testimony to fourteen hard miles.  Beside the stump of the old lighthouse, the new Eddystone reared up above the mother reef.  It felt, said Allie Giles, as if you were looking at a statue.  It had an overwhelmingly physical presence.  It also represented what already felt like the beginnings of an enormous achievement.

The Exmouth boat rounded the lighthouse comfortably within the three-hour limit.  Mike called to Rob that he should give the reef as wide a berth as he liked.  Rob interpreted this as a selfless disregard for extra distance, but the truth is that – after the sprint – Mike was knackered.  “I just didn’t want us to get into any kind of trouble.  Had Rob called for something extra that might have been a problem.”

For Caroline Huxley, rounding the lighthouse was slightly scary.  “We were all really tired after that sprint to make it in time and I remember looking at the rocks and the waves breaking around the foot of the lighthouse and feeling very small.  You’re really exposed out there.  If you thought too hard about it you could scare yourself silly.”

Allie, some distance behind the Exmouth crew,  had a different experience, finding herself in company with a bunch of kayaks as Hash Anchorettes rounded the lighthouse.  “That was really nice.  Because it wasn’t a proper race, you could afford to have a bit of a conversation, compare notes if you like, and we just sculled round as if it was something we did every day of our lives.”

Shortly afterwards, one of Plymouth girls – Jenny – began to have a problem.  Ali realised she’d stopped rowing.  “I think she must have been quite ill.  She had really bad seasickness and she couldn’t carry on.  A RIB came over, but it took forever to get her across and we started getting cold.”   Fourteen miles from dry land, with Jenny safely transferred,  Hash Anchorettes was reduced to three rowers.

By now, the Exmouth crew were on the way home.  Three hours of a near head-sea on the way out had raised hopes of a downhill ride back but the boat, inexplicably,  was now half-riding waves that – for one tantalising moment – would lift the stern only to roll away.  Brian Hitchcock put it down to the shortness of the seas.  “Rowing out we were heading into a southerly wind with very brief wave intervals.  That means you’re going bang-bang all the time.  Turning round, you’d think it would make all the difference, but it never happened.  Short seas again, with six to eight seconds between waves.”

This was difficult, monotonous rowing and required all the guile and concentration that Rob Williams could muster.  “The worst part was towards the end of that final leg.  We were still miles from the breakwater, but I could sense that the crew was beginning to lose it.  Big blisters, knackered muscles,  bursting bladders, you name it.  The boat felt heavy.  There was little response.  Then we started getting these messages on the VHF.  They were starting to talk about having to tow boats in and I kept saying come on guys, how badly do you want this,  don’t let yourself down,  look at your puddles,  work as a crew,  keep your focus,  keep the energy in the blade,  keep the energy in the water,  keep working together. The currents were all over the place and that didn’t help either.”

It was at this point that Brian Hitchcock began to wonder whether they were making any progress at all.  Beyond four hours, he says, you move into a totally different zone,  somewhere he’d never been before, and every time he stole a glance over his shoulder the coastline seemed no closer.  “It’s really tricky.  You’re physically extremely tired and the fluids don’t seem to be working any more. It was a real low point.”

In Hash Anchorettes, the loss of Jenny had somehow stiffened the resolve of the rest of the crew.  Getting to the Eddystone and back was never going to be easy but now they were having to work even harder.  “I know this must sound odd but our spirits were really high,” says Allie Giles.  “We were tired, of course we were,  but we seemed to find extra energy from somewhere and that kept us going.  The real problem was boredom, but we got round that by playing I-Spy With My Little Eye.”  I-Spy?  After twenty miles hard oaring?   When you’re looking backwards at nothing but sea and sky?  Jesus.

With rumours of the fast-approaching breakwater, Mike Mulholland had his first brief glimpse of the emptiness of his tank. He knew he was beginning to run out of energy yet minutes later, when the eastern end of the breakwater came into view, the effect was electric.  For one thing, you could measure the movement of the boat.  For another, the end was – quite literally – in sight. “It was like someone had flicked a switch.  I suddenly felt as if we’d been in the boat for half an hour.  Early on I’d lost all sense of time and distance, but this was amazing.  The surge of energy was just fantastic.  I remember a fishing boat moored out there by the breakwater.  There were a bunch of guys with their rods casting at the back and it looked like some kind of insect.  Suddenly we had flat water and we all felt this surge.  There was just this big mood change in the boat.  I guess the word is pride.”

Something very similar happened to Allie Giles.  “We got inside the Sound and Jane just said, “Pick it up and take it home” and that’s exactly what we did.  It was like we suddenly had lots of energy left.  It was quite surreal.  I kept saying to myself “I’ve got this, I can do this”…then I heard someone shouting my name and it was Mike Drew trying to take a photograph.  It’s hard to describe that feeling.  It was wonderful.”

The Exmouth quad crossed the line in 14^th place after a voyage of 5 hours and 49 minutes.  Include the row to and from the start line, that’s 30 miles.  Or 48 kilometres.  Or – at Anna’s relentless rate – 6,980 strokes.  Cut it any way you like, you can’t avoid the word “achievement”.

Standing on dry land again, Ali had time to reflect.  In Hash Anchorettes, she’d rowed for 6 hours 14 minutes with a brief stop in the middle.  Yet the physical impact was largely limited to blisters.  “I felt OK. I really did. The distance wasn’t a problem.  It’s what the conditions – the wind, the water – throw at you that you have to cope with. But that’s personal.  And I suppose that’s why you do it.”

The Exmouth crew were also taking stock.  Mike Mulholland felt totally exhausted but was swamped by the sheer scale of what they’d all done.  “Before the race started, you know nothing about anyone in that boat.  Will they cope?  Or will the event find them out?  Six hours later, you know the answer.  It’s a personal thing.  It’s a challenge you set yourself.  But every single person in that boat did brilliantly and you’ll never forget that.”

That sense of being swamped was shared by Brian Hitchcock.  “I was completely stunned that we’d done it.  In a way it didn’t really sink in…and that feeling of slight unreality, of slight disbelief, lasted a couple of days.  It wasn’t simply elation.  It was something much deeper and more complex than that.”

For Caroline Huxley, on the other hand, the reaction was simple relief.  After nearly six hours of getting soaked in the bow seat, her lower back was, in her phrase, “really bad”.  Wet and cold had put the muscles into spasm, and huge blisters on both hands didn’t help.  “If I ever do it again” she says, “I’m going to take a pair of gloves.”  Pain apart, though, she felt – in a word – “fantastic”.   From a field of 46, Pebbles was one of only 18 boats to round the lighthouse and make it back.

For Rob Williams, the sense of collective achievement spoke for itself.  The Eddystone had tossed his crew a challenge and they’d siezed their opportunity with grit and committment.  “Those guys deserve to hold their heads up high. They were fantastic. No one’s spirits dropped.  We were always together, always a crew.  That bond will last forever because we all know we’ve done something really special.  The Eddystone gave us a snapshot of what’s possible.  However big the challenge, you know you can measure up.”

An hour or so later, Anna collapsed.  She’d fallen in while helping recover the boat and the combination of cold and exhaustion had finally taken its toll.  “We were hanging around with everyone else for the prize-giving and I just felt myself getting weaker and weaker.  I just knew I had to sit down then everything went fuzzy and I found myself flat on my back looking at a paramedic dripping isotonics into my mouth.  It was the strangest feeling.  Very odd.”

Jenny, the casualty from Hash Anchorettes, likewise took a while to recover.  Even on Sunday she felt wiped out.   Allie Giles, after phoning to check on her progress, reflected again on what the Challenge had meant to her.  “What I’m sure about is that we all experienced something quite special. We were in a good place.  We shared a good time, a good moment.  Would it have been better rowing with people that I know?  Would we have pushed ourselves harder?  I’m not sure about that.”

The prize-giving over, with Anna on her feet again,  Mike Drew drove Pebbles home.  For some of the Exmouth crew there was a tiny shadow of anti-climax after the end of the race.  No friends or supporters to greet them on the ramp.  No warm words, no arm round the shoulders.  But nothing could diminish the overwhelming fact that they’d done it.

Allie, on reflection, felt something similar.  “There are no medals for this thing.  You get no T-shirt, no certificate, but that doesn’t matter.  What you’re left with – probably forever – is something much more private:  the knowledge that you made it round the Eddystone.  And that’s enough.  Believe me.”

On Monday morning, Mike Mulholland returned to work.  “We were sitting around comparing notes about the weekend and someone asked me what I’d been up to.  I told them about the Eddystone and how we’d rowed there and back but most of the guys aren’t much impressed by thirty miles because they’re car people.  The only bloke who really got it is a sea angler.  He couldn’t believe it.  He’d been fishing off the reef only a couple of weeks back.  ‘Christ’ he said.  ‘You rowed all the way there and all the way back?  That takes us three hours with a bloody engine.”