By now Seb had commissioned a leading marine technology unit, the Wolfson Unit at Southampton University, to undertake stability calculations for the Alexandra Shackleton. There were two goals: we needed to know how to best position our ballast to safeguard against capsize and to understand what the chances of rerighting the boat would be if she did go over. The summary of their report spoke volumes:
The calculations demonstrate that the boat is not inherently self-righting. The James Caird capsized but did not remain inverted because of dynamics of the event. These calculations indicate a strong likelihood that, if the [Alexandra Shackleton] suffers a capsize and remains inverted, some action by the crew contained within the boat will enable them to right it. The scope for movement of the crew will depend on the arrangement of stowed gear and stores, and their ability to lift themselves upwards within the inverted boat. It may be desirable to conduct some trials with the boat loaded as for the proposed voyage, to quantify the level of ease or difficulty of righting the boat in this way. The consumption of water and stores will reduce the stability, and it may be desirable to counter this by filling empty containers with sea water as the voyage proceeds.
In other words, without extensive trialing we wouldn’t know. What we did know was that any serious attempt to reright ourselves would require us to get ourselves as high off the ceiling as possible and hope the next wave pushed us back over. We had no sensible way of re-creating waves big enough to roll and reright the Alexandra Shackleton and the test sling being used to tip the boat wouldn’t accurately re-create waves anyway. All of our energy would instead have to be put toward trying to ensure we didn’t capsize.
In early August 2012 the team consisted of Ed Wardle, Seb, Baz, Paul Swain, and me. What were worryingly and noticeably absent to even the most casual of observers were Southern Ocean sailors. I’d lined up a series of top-notch candidates and spoken to them from Australia. Now I had to interview them in person and conduct a week of sea trials off the south coast of England to determine how well they gelled with the rest of the team. Our August sea trials therefore became as much about fine-tuning the six-man crew as about assessing the boat’s seaworthiness.
With the completion of the last few jobs of fitting the compass rack in the cockpit and stowing the handmade wooden boxes containing provisions, charts, and books, we were ready to go to sea. Initial trialing began in early September in Portland’s sheltered harbor, then the plan was to take to the open sea, heading east from Portland to Southampton, a distance of 100 kilometers. Seb had arranged for me and a BBC cameraman to ride in a Fleet Air Arm Lynx helicopter from Yeovilton to Portland to film her in action. As we thundered overhead I found myself looking straight down on the Alexandra Shackleton as we banked steeply, the wide open space beckoning through the open doors. The pilot’s voice came over my headphones. “Want to go closer in?“ he asked. “Yes,” I replied, suggesting that we give the crew below a friendly blast of down-force from the rotors to re-create Southern Ocean conditions. He obliged with glee. Forty or so meters below us, the Alexandra Shackleton shook uncontrollably as she was buffeted from side to side. “You’re going where in this?” asked the copilot incredulously as we moved away from the boat. “Antarctica,” I replied. He and the pilot glanced at each other but said nothing.
The following evening, we were ready to begin trialing the Alexandra Shackleton in open water. It had taken most of the day to load her with provisions and water and go through final equipment checks. The plan was to meet and trial different potential skippers and navigators as we went east, stopping along the way to take on and drop off people. The first rendezvous point was picturesque Lulworth Cove, twenty-five kilometers to the east. Far from being an easy place to trial a boat, England’s south coast has very strong tidal currents that run along it in either direction. We knew that at certain points, such as the Needles, we might even get a feel for how stable she was in big waves.
In order to meet our first potential skipper at Lulworth, we had to avoid going too far east the first evening. But a strong tide was working with us and, sure enough, even with sails trimmed and trying to tack back toward Portland as best we could, we moved eastward at several knots an hour until, in rapidly fading light, a telltale piece of flotsam passed us heading back to the west. With that, we realized the powerful tidal conveyor had turned and was beginning to push us back toward Portland. To prevent too much westerly drift all the sails now went back up, working fine initially as we trod water, the wind and current canceling each other out until the wind dropped completely about 1 A.M. Inexorably invisible forces pulled us back toward the dark, unlit band that signified Portland’s rocks. It was as if we were caught in a whirlpool that wouldn’t release us from its grasp until dawn, which was still four hours away. Eight miles off Portland’s breakwater, the city’s lights twinkling in the darkness, we realized we’d done too good a job of slowing our easterly drift—we would be on the rocks in less than three hours. It was time to take to the oars as a last resort to row east and buy some time. Baz and I leaned into them, he at the bow, me at the stern. Then, after less than five minutes of rowing, a loud crack signaled that Baz had broken his oar. Initially we laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation, but when my oar followed suit ten minutes later, we became slightly nervous. We had just one functioning oar left to keep us off the rocks (the other had a crack in the blade and a makeshift repair because we thought we’d have no need for it).
Only a long three hours of work on the oars kept us from the rocks that night as Baz and I, with some relief from the others, worked hard to balance the conflicting needs of applying power while safeguarding our last oar. At the first light of dawn, a slowing of our movement westward signaled the tide was finally going slack. Our distance from Portland’s rocks was less than a mile. This wasn’t even the Southern Ocean. It was Southern England and already we’d been put through our paces.
A proud patron: the Hon. Alexandra Shackleton and her namesake.
Courtesy of Chris Mumby
The team.
Courtesy of Paul Larsen
“Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”
Helen Keller
Testing our mettle: South Georgia’s challenges lay ahead of us.
Courtesy of Tim Jarvis
On the face of it, we were two teams attempting the same journey ninety-seven years apart. On closer inspection, there were many differences over and above the passage of time. I needed to recruit just five people willing to undertake a dangerous journey in a small boat across the world’s roughest ocean, followed by a climb across a mountainous island. Shackleton, on the other hand, sought twenty-seven men to fill a range of positions—everything from meteorologist, biologist, and physicist through to cook—for a journey of geographical and scientific discovery crossing the mighty continent by land, not sea. He had no idea when recruiting his team that he, together with five of his most able men, would be subjected to the ordeal of crossing the Southern Ocean in the James Caird. That he managed to pursue the goal of crossing the ocean in his small boat