Authors: Bear Grylls
Things had suddenly got very dangerous very quickly, and it soon became clear that for the second time on the expedition, I would have to call our UK base and alert them to the situation. If
conditions continued to plummet at this rate, we would lose all control. Our lives would then rest in the hands of the rescue services, although this far from land, none of us had any idea what
sort of rescue could be mounted.
I urged everyone to keep focused as we slowed the boat to a crawl so I could make the call to London.
Once again, in the new, unfamiliar quiet, without the roar of the engine, I knelt down and crawled into the cubbyhole. My hand was shaking now, not just because I was cold but because I was
frightened. I patiently waited to get through. It was eight minutes to midnight, their time.
Chloë had just turned out the lights in the hallway of her flat, on her way to bed. She looked at her phone ringing, and her heart sank when she recognized the +88 number identification on
the LCD screen and realized this late-night call was coming from the boat. She knew, having been following our tracker, that at this time we were still a long way from Iceland. She realized almost
immediately that something was wrong.
‘Chloë?’
‘Yes, I’m here. What’s happening?’
‘Get a pen quickly. I need to give you our position.’
I turned to Mick and shouted at him: ‘OK, Mick, give me the lat and longs. Loud and clear!’
He yelled at me: ‘Six-ah, two-ah, two-ah, seven-ah.’
‘Six two, two seven,’ I screamed down the receiver, trying to make myself heard above the engine and the storm. ‘Did you get that?’
‘Yes,’ she replied, writing down the numbers on the only piece of paper she could find – a copy of
Time Out
, the London listings magazine.
‘Read the numbers back to me, Chloë,’ I shouted.
I was cold, wet and exhausted, and I was painfully wedged in this small, dark hole. I needed Chloë to be certain of our precise position so that she could relay this to the rescue services.
One number mispronounced or misheard could prove disastrous, even fatal.
‘Four-ah, one-ah, three-ah,’ Mick shouted in my ear.
‘Four one three,’ I yelled into the phone. ‘So that’s six . . . two . . . two . . . seven . . . four . . . one . . . three . . . North, OK?’
She had the coordinates, and she soon had the latitude reading as well: 31.18.912 West.
‘Chloë,’ I concluded, ‘we’re OK, but we’re struggling. These seas are much, much bigger than they were on the Labrador. Contact the Icelandic coastguard and
give them our position, and keep them posted.’
I turned to Andy, still screaming: ‘What’s the fuel situation?’
Andy paused, then shouted that the fuel was looking OK; we were still around 250 miles from Reykjavik. I relayed this to Chloë.
I remembered how she had left her safe job at Goldman Sachs for a bit of adventure. Well, now she had it – in spades.
‘And please phone Willie as well.’
‘OK.’
‘We’ll phone again in an hour.’
Chloë passed on the message to the rescue services in Reykjavik, as requested, then called Andy Billing, who was awake on our barge in London. She also woke Willie. She would need all the
help she could muster.
Chloë recalls:
The call from Bear was brief and troubled; it had come out of the blue. But I had come to expect this. We had agreed before the start of the expedition, when they left
England, that Bear would call me at 3 p.m. every day. This never really happened because from the start, even in Halifax, the team were busy at different times with boat preparations, last-minute
weather checks and press. It is unfortunately the nature of the beast, and any form of routine was damn near impossible from so far away.
There always seemed so much to do, so many things to sort out, and in the midst of bad weather it seemed impossible to keep track of time. I had promised Chloë I would call again in an
hour, so she was sitting up, coffee in hand, waiting for my call. London was in the midst of an uncomfortable heatwave, but it was her concern for us on the ocean, rather than the humidity, that
was keeping her wide awake in the early hours of the morning.
In the end, we didn’t call until 2.30 a.m., more than an hour and a half late, and Mick spoke to her. I couldn’t face the cubbyhole again, I was feeling so seasick. Mick had
volunteered instead. He told Chloë the conditions were not improving, but that we were stable and hanging on. We would call again at 8.30 in the morning. Chloë duly passed the news on to
Willie. Our base team was all working well, but right now there was nothing they could do to help us. We were going to have to get through this alone.
This night was the time I needed to lead. This was no longer the time to stand back. It was the moment for me to step forward.
Throughout my life, from my army days to the Everest expedition and since, I have never regarded myself as a natural athlete. There have always been people, in all these different fields, who
were stronger and fitter than me. But when it comes down to the crunch times, I have always somehow managed to find a little bit extra when it matters most. I’ve never understood where it
comes from.
On Everest, for many weeks early on, I really struggled on the lower sections of the mountain, and there were times when I felt weak and slow, as a climber. But as the months passed and just two
of us were finally approaching the summit, I somehow felt my strength return. It shouldn’t have been returning then: we hadn’t eaten for days, or even peed for over thirty-six hours,
our bodies were not functioning and our reserves were gone – we were in the Death Zone and our bodies were physiologically dying, above 26,000 feet. But something was keeping me moving. This
strength is not athleticism, it’s not fitness; I think it is heart.
And as I clung on in the boat, I felt this was another of those critical moments. It was 1 a.m. and the sea was winning. We were in a crisis, and this was my time to find that heart again.
I didn’t want to be impulsive and I didn’t want to be cavalier. I was aware that I had to be calm and responsible, and concentrate; I also knew that right now I had to lead. I had
been helming for an hour, getting a feel of the conditions, coping, every cell in my body focused, and I knew I shouldn’t let go.
‘We’re stopping the rota,’ I shouted. ‘I’m going to keep the wheel with Mick for the rest of this night.’ The RIB was then hit side-on by a wave that had
appeared from nowhere. We all braced against the impact, and then I continued: ‘I want you three to get in the sardine tin together and get some rest. I’m going to need your strength
for the morning.’
That was my decision. This time, there was no discussion.
I had been as terrified as anyone else as the storm had built up. It was now in full force. We were being pummelled by waves that came at us out of the dark, drenching us, battering us and
hitting from all angles. But now, in the heart of this Force Eight gale, hundreds of miles from any land, I felt this strange determination return.
So I kept the helm. I felt emotional and raw, but I was also clear about what Mick and I were doing. Together, the two of us would bring the boat through the storm and through the night. We
would keep the boat upright; we would bring it into port. I would need the others to rest and be ready to take over when it was light, but I needed Mick, my oldest friend, to be with me now, beside
me.
I didn’t want any loose helming during the night as our margin for error had been reduced from maybe 10 per cent to 2 per cent. One mistake, one slip, and the boat could be taken and
rolled. You make the right call a thousand times, but just one error of judgement can so often prove fatal. The mountains had shown me that. There was no longer the margin for someone to misjudge a
wave or react nervously to a breaking wall of water in front of the bows. The only way I was going to make certain we survived the darkness and the night was by doing the helming myself.
I had pushed everyone to leave Greenland. I had got us all into this hellhole. I would get us through it as well. These were my best friends’ lives, and I wouldn’t tire now.
Every time we had
reached the safety of port before, we had felt as though we had been pardoned. When you walk down a street, it’s solid and it doesn’t move.
There are no surprises. But the ocean is different. It rolls and heaves. It is unpredictable. When you put out to sea – far out to sea, in a small boat – it’s like being put out
for sacrifice, and ultimately it is the monster of the sea that decides your fate.
That’s how I felt. We were being put out for sacrifice, like the heroes in the children’s books my mum used to read me when I was young. Waiting to be consumed, devoured, forgotten,
never even missed. But I wanted, with every bone in my body, to be home, to hold my wife and son again, and to be safe.
Mick and I would do this together, this one last time.
Mick recalls:
It was the right decision. We were really struggling in the twenty-five-foot waves, and they seemed to be increasing in height and ferocity as the night closed in. Bear and I
were just finishing our watch, but Bear had learned how to handle these conditions; he had got the feel of the boat and the sea, and it was just more sensible for the two of us to soldier on
through the night than for each guy to come in and start all over again from scratch.
Throughout the previous hour, out of desperation, I had been experimenting with the jet bucket at the stern of the boat. This is a large hood that lowers hydraulically over the jet to give you,
effectively, a reverse gear. But we knew that if we lowered it partially over the jet, it would begin to dig the nose of the boat down into the sea slightly. Lowered even further though, it made
all the difference, providing stability and grip in the waves. Instead of taking off wildly and slamming off the wave crests, the boat could edge her way over the face of the waves; when the bucket
was dipped as she punched through the crest, it pulled the bows sharply down the other side of the wave. Our speed would drop dramatically but it held us more tightly on to the waves’
surface.
This all took control though: to feel the different pitch of the bucket and to know at which point to apply it. We were ploughing through the swell at around 10 knots, and by trial and error we
learned how the bucket could have a positive effect.
As a wave approached, I would bring the bucket right down, forcing the bow into the sea as the wave tried to pick us up. It was working – the slamming was being reduced.
Up until now we had been nearing a point where we knew something would give way soon. The boat would not be able to take this sort of punishment for ever. Something would go. The engine was
labouring under the pounding the hull was taking from these waves. And each whine we heard made us hold our breath until it regained its momentum. But the bucket helped: we were regaining some
control over the ferocity of the sea.
This strengthened my resolve to keep helming until dawn. I seemed to have caught the rhythm and the feel of the waves. The boat was still upright and I wasn’t going to let her go now.
My decision to helm was not about wanting to be a hero. I just didn’t want to die.
I had only one goal in my head, and that was to pull the boat through the night and eventually into port. It wasn’t even about being the best helmsman. I wasn’t – Andy and Nige
were probably better. But right there and then I had this thing under some semblance of control and my instinct said hold on.
So I did.
By 3 a.m., Mick and I were still firing on adrenalin in our determination to keep the RIB level. Every sinew in our exhausted bodies was reacting to the sea beneath us.
Suddenly, though, the boat was struck by two waves simultaneously. Two converging walls of water collided over us. The
Arnold and Son Explorer
lurched violently to starboard and began to
corkscrew. I clearly remember thinking she was going over. But she rose up again. The three bodies in the sardine tin were lifted at least 4 inches off the soaking wet thin foam covering, then
landed in a heap as the boat crashed back into the water.
Mick was literally washed off his seat, and the force of the water threw him on top of me. We both clutched at anything solid around us. In the dark, and in blind panic, I grabbed hold of the
wheel again and frantically tried to guess where the next freak wave was coming from. We were like blind men in a boxing ring, alone and afraid, taking punches from every direction.
Over and over again we were picked up like a feather on the swell and then dropped back to the water surface, with an impact equivalent to 7 tonnes of aluminium and fuel being dropped from the
second storey of a house.
We had no idea how long our electrical equipment could withstand the combined effects of the relentless physical battering and the regular drenching by water pouring over the boat.
I was more frightened than I have ever been in my life, yet I have never wanted so desperately to live.
Our forward speed was almost zero, and we still had such a long way to go. The weather was getting worse, not better, and I wondered how much longer we could stay upright.
And what if we capsized?
I recalled how in diver training we had been told we would be able to survive for about fifteen minutes in the waters of the North Sea. We would have much less time up here in these icy seas
just south of the Arctic Circle. We knew the drill: to try to clamber to the stern of the boat, which would then be upside down. Then keep together. But if you were separated in the capsize, the
bottom line was that you would be lost to the waves. You would die.
I remember looking back at Charlie and seeing a look of terror on his face. He was ashen-white. His eyes looked a million miles away. They stared at me blankly. Empty. He didn’t even
bother to spit the water away from his mouth as the spray hit him in the face. He just lay there, beyond caring.
Nige was in the deckchair. He was holding his knife in one hand and his flares in the other. He looked deadly serious and truly scared. I looked back to the helm. I had seen all I needed to in
those three brief seconds.