Chicken Soup for the Ocean Lover's Soul (24 page)

On the night of January 22, 1998, we were approaching Barbados, thinking we still had twenty miles to go. We were loafing, savoring the last night of our long adventure together. One last time, my son began to make me a cup of hot chocolate and turned on his headlamp for a few moments. Suddenly, the radio began to squawk. It was an escort boat, and they were looking for us. When we identified ourselves as
Carpe Diem,
we heard a lot of screaming and shouting on board: “It’s them, it’s them, they’re safe!” They had seen Daniel’s light for those few moments and were hoping it might be us. Then they told us to our shock and delight that we actually had only six miles left to go! Daniel rowed the first four and allowed me, his aching but ecstatic mum, to row the last two. I would be the one to take us across the line of longitude that was the official finish line.

To our amazement, an entire flotilla of waiting boats carrying family and friends began to cheer. They then set off fireworks, lighting up the night sky, accompanied by the triumphant cannons of the “1812 Overture” to welcome us and celebrate our safe arrival. The thrill of our accomplishment filled me in that moment, and I burst into tears and cried out, “We’ve done it!! Oh Daniel, we’ve done it!”

Because of the heavy headwind and our great fatigue, we chose to board the waiting escort boat, while our own weary little
Carpe Diem,
half filled with water and listing to one side, was towed in behind us. We were almost two months behind the winning KIWI team and thought that everyone would have forgotten about us—after all, we were the last boat in. But we were surprised and truly overwhelmed at the enormous welcome we received upon our arrival! Everyone wanted to meet and congratulate “Jan and Dan,” the British mother-and-son team who had successfully rowed across the Atlantic and completed the race.

Aboard the escort boat we had an emotional reunion with my daughter, Daniel’s sister Becky. And there was one more lovely surprise! Waiting for us on shore with tears and hugs was my own sweet mum, come all the way from her home in France to welcome her jubilant daughter and grandson.

When I try and put into words what we will remember most, my journal entry from day sixty-nine speaks most poignantly of the things only my heart would know. I wrote:

I don’t believe it is the beauty, the dolphins, whales, dawns
and sunsets, although they will be with me forever. The brilliant
night sky, stars, delicate new moons, brilliant full
‘bright as day’ moons. The power and the glory of the ocean.

No. It is finding out how one’s body and mind learn to
cope. Seeing how Daniel bears up. I have found such pride in
his unfailing good temper and optimism—his intrinsic kindness
and thoughtfulness. I have loved the baby, the child, the
boy, I have been proud of them, but now I love and admire the
man, Daniel, with all my heart.

For the rest of our lives, no matter where they may take us,
we will always have the memory of this special time together,
and the pride in the spectacular accomplishment that was
ours, and only ours.

We did it. Together.

Jan Meek with Daniel Byles
As told to Janet Matthews
Previously appeared in
Chicken Soup for the Parent’s Soul

“Margo, I think we should start seeing others.”

Reprinted by permission of Harley Schwadron.

A Miracle Between Sea and Land

Elaine Lackey has no logical explanation for an experience she shared with her son when he was lost at sea, but she cannot doubt it.

Nick Lackey’s fishing boat had been sunk in a storm in the Pacific. The Coast Guard, after three days of fruitless searching, declared him presumed dead. But Elaine “had a feeling” that her son was still alive, though in grave danger.

The Thursday night after the search ended, Elaine was asleep next to her husband of forty-one years when she was awakened when, she says, her bed began to “pitch and roll as if it were being tossed about on huge waves. I literally clung to my mattress to prevent being thrown from the bed.” Through it all, her husband slept undisturbed.

Elaine suddenly felt seasick, and “I knew for some inexplicable reason I was in Nick’s body,” she says. “I could feel his bone-weary exhaustion, his desire to give in to sleep. I knew this would mean death. So I cried out, ‘Hang on, Nick! Please hang on!’”

As she felt the storm increase in intensity, Elaine, terrified, clutched the iron bars of her headboard in order to “stay afloat.” She felt waves crash over the bed. Her husband finally awoke to find her coughing and spitting up water. Her face was drenched, although the bed was completely dry. As her husband held her, Elaine, still feeling buffeted by waves, again cried out, “Hang on, Nick! Hang on!”

Two days after this event, Nick Lackey was rescued by a Greek freighter. Before calling his family, he told his rescuers, “Thursday night was the worst. A new storm blew my raft all over the ocean. I was bone weary and more than once thought how easy it would be to give up and drift off to sleep. But a voice kept calling to me from somewhere: ‘Hang on, Nick. Hang on.’ I somehow took heart from that voice and did hang on.”

Neither Nick nor Elaine can explain the events of that Thursday night. “I do believe it was my voice Nick heard,” says Elaine, “but I can’t imagine how that would be possible. Maybe it’s just true that God works in mysterious ways.”

Alan Ebert

Lunar Celebration

Original painting by Wyland © 2003.

Pedaling over the Atlantic

I
deals are like stars: You will not succeed in
touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring
man on the ocean desert of waters, you
choose them as your guides, and following them,
you reach your destiny.

Carl Schurz

The whole crazy idea got planted in Dwight Collins’s head when he was ten years old. He read (apparently missing the “KIDS: DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME” disclaimer) about two guys—Chay Blythe and John Ridgeway—who in 1966 rowed from Cape Cod to Ireland in a dory. Oars and muscles took them across the sea.

That was something Dwight could see himself doing— and not necessarily with another person.

Dwight had always liked sailing, but he started practicing with a purpose now—building and sailing rafts on the Goodwives River that ran behind his house in Noroton, Connecticut. In high school, when Dwight’s friends were dreaming about fast cars or fast dates, Dwight kept a folder on solo transatlantic crossings. He stuffed it with charts, clippings and scribbled notes. He sailed and rowed and planned: He’d be the first to make a solo, self-powered trip across the Atlantic.

Later, while Dwight was a student at the University of Pennsylvania, he was flipping through an issue of
Human
Power,
a publication devoted to people who think like Dwight. What if, he thought, he could bicycle across the Atlantic? With a pedal apparatus driving a propeller, his boat could have a keel, and it would be self-righting. It would be safer than rowing and far more efficient.

Rowing is an ergonomic compromise. Every pull requires a push—a motion that does nothing to propel the rower forward. Using the more powerful leg muscles, he could power the boat for hours without tiring. And— bonus!—with a pedal-powered boat, he could cover his craft. There’d be no need to have his arms sticking out into the ocean, into all those elements.

The folder grew thicker while Dwight finished college, then went on to the U.S. Navy and elite SEALS training. But when he entered the corporate world of Manhattan real estate, the dream receded in the bustle of making a living. Then, in 1987, an Englishman named Tom Mclean rowed himself across the Atlantic alone in fifty-four days. Dwight would not be the first to go solo. He put the folder away.

Real life hummed along. Dwight met Corinne Ham and got engaged. In the weeks before their wedding, Corinne was helping him move out of his apartment. “What’s this, Dwight?” Corinne said one day, holding up a folder labeled “Pedal-Power Boat.”

This could be dicey,
he thought. She wasn’t married to him yet. “I had this idea,” he started. “I’ve had it for a long time, that, um, I could propel myself across the Atlantic Ocean in a pedal-powered boat.”

No reaction. She was flipping through the folder.

“I could cycle to England,” he added, watching her carefully.

She looked at pie charts, with their arrows and calculations, at the clippings about Tom Mclean.

“Dwight!” she said. “You’ve got to do this!”

“I knew then,” says Dwight, “that I was engaged to the
right person.”

They were married June 16, 1990. Right after the wedding, they started planning the trip. Dwight hired a designer—Bruce Kirby, from Rowayton, Connecticut, the man who created the Laser design—and then a builder— Eric Goetz, of Bristol, Rhode Island, who had built America’s Cup yachts. And he began to pedal.

Dwight would come home after work and get on the stationary recumbent bike they had squeezed into their tiny apartment. On her way home from work, Corinne would rent a video. While Corinne cooked dinner, Dwight pedaled. Corinne served him dinner while he pedaled. After eating, she’d pop in the movie, with the sound turned way up so he could hear it over the whirring. He stopped only to sleep. On weekends he pedaled for at least six hours a day.

There were no breaks in training. She’d say, “Hey, let’s take a ride,” or something, and he’d say, “Can’t. Sorry, just can’t.” Dwight was becoming his bicycle. His thighs grew
four inches.

Two years and 4,000 hours of pedaling later, Dwight was ready. His twenty-four-foot boat was equipped with solar panels to charge radio batteries, a reverse-osmosis water desalinator, his pedal station, a bunk and a camcorder he could use as a video diary. He filled the craft with dried food, books on tape (biographies of Ulysses S. Grant and J. P. Morgan), a Walkman and two dozen boxes of Fig Newtons. Next to an American flag, he hung a windsock with a shamrock on it, a gift from his father. He named the boat
Tango
after the first dance he and Corinne danced at their wedding.

On June 14, 1992, Dwight was in St. John’s, Newfoundland, where a billboard boasted, “Welcome to Newfoundland. Only six motorists killed by moose this year!” Dwight decided to take it as a good omen. The weather was ready, and with his whole family and most of the puzzled local population watching, he kissed Corinne good-bye, stepped into his little kazoo-shaped boat and pedaled away.

Corinne rode behind for a while on a launch. Today, she points at the image of herself on a video taken that day. “I was trying not to cry there. You can hear it in my voice.”

“I’m going to miss you,” the woman in the video says. “I love you.”

“Going to miss you, too,” his voice came back.

For the first two weeks, Dwight pedaled an average of nineteen hours a day. He pedaled and ate; he pedaled and thought; he pedaled and listened to tapes and tried not to look at his watch; he pedaled and talked to his camcorder. Headwinds bullied him. If he stopped pedaling, he’d go backward. So he pedaled all day and went nowhere. It was like being back in the apartment. He slept an hour here, two hours there.

But the weather changed. On the radio Corinne told Dwight to expect twenty-foot seas and fifty-mile-per-hour tailwinds. One very bad storm. On the one hand, Dwight was relieved—finally, he’d have the wind on his side, pushing him forward. On the other hand, the camcorder caught him tying everything down with tiny bungee cords. “If anything happens in this water, boy,” he said to the camera with a nervous laugh, “I don’t know how long I’d last.”