Authors: Bear Grylls
Mick reflects:
When I returned home from Everest in 1998, I told people I had experienced a wider range of human emotions in three months on the mountain than in the twenty-three years of my
life before that. My first response to this expedition is that I have similar feelings about those weeks on the ocean. It was unbelievably intense.
Whether I was feeling fear or friendship, it was a privilege to be involved and to be part of the team. We were a small, tight-knit group of men fighting through adversity to achieve a goal.
When you are together like that, more than 300 miles from land, battling fierce seas and you’re terrified for your life, that is when you start to understand the real value of life. You
begin to know what it feels like to be truly alive.
I would do it all again tomorrow, but don’t tell Mary or my mother that. I think when you experience something like this, you learn to value life. It wakes you up a bit, and it reminds
you that life can be amazing.
Each of us has a choice: you can either get out there and do something, or you can just sit on your arse and moan about work. I suppose we got out there, and it was brilliant. I wouldn’t
have missed it for the world.
Towards the end of the dinner at Kinloch, Mick stood up and said he wanted to tell me something. The room fell quiet, and I suddenly began to feel a bit embarrassed in front of everyone.
Mick looked at me, much more seriously now, and paused. He continued: ‘I guess being a leader is all about coming through at the really key moments, and that moment in the middle of the
night, in the middle of that storm, was when we really needed you, and you came through for us. On behalf of all your crew, I just want to say thank you for bringing us home safely.’
He reached over and shook my hand.
It was probably the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.
Good character is not given – we have to build it by thought, choice, courage and determination.
Mahatma Gandhi
The following morning,
we waded out to the
Arnold and Son Explorer
and cruised along the coast to John O’Groats. Alex Rayner had all the press in place, and
we approached the harbour waving the white ensign that the navy had lent us for this very moment. We all raised our arms – it was from relief more than triumph.
After an hour or so of interviews, we unpacked the RIB for the last time and took a few photos for ourselves. We then watched our pride and joy being dragged unceremoniously from the water by an
old tractor, ready to be lifted on to the lorry that would carry her south. None of us knew what to think, and I, for one, suddenly felt a bit lost.
The atmosphere was lightened by an old lady who came up to Charlie as we were finishing the last few interviews, and looked him up and down very carefully.
‘You’re mad for sure, but how lucky you have been to have had such perfect weather for your crossing.’ She smiled sweetly. Britain had been basking in a heatwave; she
wasn’t to know that for us, it had been the coldest time of our lives.
Charlie smiled back, shook her hand and signed her John O’Groats certificate graciously. We returned to Sam’s house by road and prepared to catch the flight the following morning,
from Inverness to Gatwick airport, where my wife and son would be waiting.
As I came through the arrivals lounge at Gatwick, I spotted them at once, Jesse held high on Shara’s hip. His eyes were wide open, obsessed with seeing everything going on around him.
Airports are serious fun, I saw him thinking. Shara’s kiss told me I was truly home.
One morning, a few weeks later, I woke early and turned to look at Jesse asleep on the pillow beside me. He had woken early too and Shara had brought him through for a cuddle.
As I looked at his angelic, sleeping face, I realized it had been this little person, so innocent and powerless, who had sustained me through those stormy nights when I faced the very real
prospect of never seeing him again, of not getting back to be his dad.
I thought how strange it was that during those crises he had wielded such power over me, yet he had no idea of what we went through, what had happened, no idea of the strength he helped me
find.
Then I looked over at Shara, asleep as well. Together, side by side: my son and my wife. And right then I understood just how much they mean to me. They mean the world.
Sometimes I look back on all this and reckon I had to go a long way just to understand what I have at home.
Within five minutes of having stepped foot on dry land at John O’Groats, I got asked the inevitable question for the first time. I wasn’t ready for it, and part of me couldn’t
believe someone had just asked it.
‘So . . . what’s next, Bear?’ the journalist inquired.
I was still in my dry-suit. I stared at him. I could hardly answer him. I hadn’t even seen my family yet.
‘Well, be sure to let us know,’ he continued.
But the truth is, I’m not sure I want to put myself in that sort of danger again, not in that terrifying position where I stand no better than an even chance of coming home. I’m not
sure I’m brave enough any longer.
If I really look inside me, I still find this fire burning, but it burns for my family. I want to be with them, to protect them and to mess about with them. I want to be a good husband, and I
want to be as good a father for Jesse as my dad was for me. I want to teach him to sail and to climb. I want to be there. I don’t want to disappear on some great expedition and not come home.
A dead hero is worth nothing to a young boy.
And yet, isn’t that what I do? Live on the edge? Try to be bold?
Maybe. But I also want to stay alive.
That’s all.
The reality of
the first few days, in fact weeks, after our return, was that so many people needed my time as well – from press to sponsors, to the navy, to the
boat-builders. It seemed unending. I just craved peace and time – already.
Inevitably, a frenetic schedule developed. I had more speaking engagements than ever before and within a week of our return we had done
Blue Peter
,
Good Morning
, BBC News, the
Southampton Boat Show, CBBC and
London Tonight
. It was surreal.
We received so many kind letters from different people. They were all relieved to hear we had survived the crossing intact. One of the most lovely letters was from my great-uncle Edward, who, I
think, captured the feelings of many of those who had followed our progress.
‘Many congratulations on your achievement, to all five of you,’ he wrote.
Don’t think that it has not caused your families and friends unbearable anxiety, particularly when your communication systems failed . . . The sea can be so menacing,
please don’t repeat anything so terrible again, if only to save your family from having sympathetic heart attacks. Which aged as old as I am is never a good thing.
Funny still, at ninety-three: fantastic.
Vice-Admiral Mark Stanhope, Deputy Commander-in-Chief Fleet, also took the trouble to write on behalf of the navy:
With the successful conclusion of your epic voyage, I would like to offer you, on behalf of both myself and the First Sea Lord, my heartiest congratulations on your
achievement. Crossing the Atlantic at any time can be a hairy experience and to have achieved it in a little RIB across the Arctic is a huge feat indeed. I for one was closely monitoring your
progress day by day, and we were all fully aware that you had some pretty appalling weather on some of the legs. But you did it. Well done you all, on getting home.
During one of our first free moments back in London, I grabbed time for a quick game of squash with my friend Ted Heywood. It was so good to be back and see Danny and Nicky and all my mates at
the gym again. Ted began telling me with great relish how, completely by coincidence, his mother had been on a cruise ship, the
Pearl
, sailing around Iceland at the same time as us, in the
same storm.
‘Anyway,’ Ted went on, ‘she said they were caught in this huge squall. Well, at one point a wave hit the liner side-on, broaching the boat and dumping tonnes of icy water
across the decks. Ornaments and cutlery slid across the tables and the captain made the decision to turn back. He decided conditions were so bad they could not continue.’
Danny shook his head at me, smiling. ‘You daft bugger,’ he said.
‘And Bear,’ Ted continued, ‘those sorts of cruise ships don’t just turn around in bad weather, especially when they have several hundred paying passengers on
board.’ The story put into stark perspective the conditions we had survived that night. I proceeded to lose the game of squash.
Other little things began to come out that confirmed just how lucky we had been to complete the expedition. After a series of public appearances, the boat was sent for an overhaul at MIT, the
company that had supplied the jet drive and gear-box. The engineers there reported back that a belt in the engine had been incorrectly aligned and had become so worn that, in their estimation, it
would not have lasted another twenty minutes at sea. They had never seen a belt that was so worn and yet, somehow, was still doing its job.
‘That’s OK,’ I replied. ‘We had two spares in the engine bay.’
‘Yeah, we saw those too,’ the engineer said. ‘You had been supplied with spares that were the wrong size.’
Someone had been watching over us.
But there was more.
Subsequently, the RIB was based in the Solent, and one late afternoon, at the end of a sponsors’ day out on the boat, we got a bit of rope caught in the jet intake. We had to be towed
unceremoniously back into harbour, where we freed the rope and left the boat for the night, ready, we thought, for our next corporate day on her.
The phone rang at dawn next day. It was the boatman at Bembridge Sailing Club where she was moored. He was in a state. Water was pouring into the RIB. The jet housing was leaking. The aft tubes
were under water, the engine had been flooded and the gear-box and electrics were being ruined. There was panic. We managed to recover her, but it took a month to repair her and a bill on our loyal
Navigators and General Insurance tab of nearly £25,000.
If we had caught that bit of rope in the jet intake while arriving among one of the many small fishing communities that we visited – and it would have been the easiest thing in the world
to do, especially since we so often arrived in the dark – the expedition would have been over.
We had been very fortunate; it seemed that God’s Grace had followed us all the way home.
We had planned a party at St Katharine Docks in the City of London a week after our arrival back in the UK. This was partly to celebrate our safe return but mainly to thank our sponsors and
formally to present a cheque to the Prince’s Trust.
It was the most lovely of days. The sun shone, the five of us were wearing our expedition fleeces, and we were surrounded by all the people who had made the expedition possible: from our closest
friends and families to Captain Pennefather; from our base team to all the lead sponsors – including Mattel Toys and the Computer Sciences Corporation.
As we neared the end of the day, Eric and Jean-Marie from Arnold and Son caught us by surprise when they presented us with an original letter, written by a famous old French explorer on Royal
Geographical Society-headed paper. The letter was from one of the earliest polar challenges around the start of the last century. It was a lovely touch.
Will Young had agreed to accept the cheque on behalf of the Prince’s Trust. As a fellow ambassador of the Trust, he had offered to come and support us. He was fantastic with everyone,
including all the kids, and even tolerated two of my elderly relatives running up the walkway with their dicky legs and hips in an effort to get his autograph. I must admit I was cringing a little
at that point. But above all, he was just fun to have around.
‘You must be so relieved,’ Will said to me. He was right, but it seemed as if people had been saying exactly those words right from the start, and it had never been true before.
‘You must be so relieved to have a sponsor’ . . . ‘You must be so relieved that the boat has arrived in Nova Scotia’ . . . ‘You must be so relieved that you had
enough fuel to reach Greenland.’
And over and over again, I would smile and say, ‘Well, sort of.’
The truth was, I never really felt relieved until after that final party at St Katharine Docks. Somehow I could never let it all go before then. There always seemed to be something else. But
there wasn’t now. At last.
That day in London, the sun had shone on us all afternoon but, just as the last guests left, it started to drizzle. Shara told me I was the ‘jammiest man around’.
It was the perfect ending.
The five of
us soon said our goodbyes and went our separate ways, back to our normal lives.
Now, as I reflect, my enduring image of the entire expedition is of five men who came together and made one fantastic team. Working as one, we had beaten the odds and survived.
Our strength was that we made decisions on instinct, pursued them with heart and soul and looked after one another when this was needed. We were a peculiar mix: a naval officer, a surveyor, an
Internet businessman, a cameraman. They were just ordinary guys, but when it mattered, they came up with an extraordinary bravery and spirit.
Above everything, we were good friends.
Yes, I am proud of what we achieved, but I am much more proud of how we did it. The little things, like hearing Charlie tell his dad he couldn’t believe there had not been any kind of
cross word between us; listening to Mick thank me over dinner at Kinloch; the feeling of being hugged by Andy and Nige on the headland at John O’Groats. Those are the moments that really
last.
Andy went straight back to work with the navy after stealing two days away with Lorraine and switching off his mobile phone. As far as everyone at work was concerned, he was
‘defrosting’. He has been on board HMS
Newcastle
almost continually ever since.