'Everybody has their challenge in life. Mine is the Atlantic,' says 41-year-old Seán McGowan as he prepares to try and row 5,000km of briny sea. Solo. Ian O'Riordantalks to him
SÉAN McGOWAN, to the best of my knowledge, has no history of mental illness. He’s 41-years-old, married, with four children. An engineering graduate, he was a senior manager with Dell Computers for several years and, since their retail operation ceased here, he has worked with business consultants Prodigium.
He recently completed an MBA at the University of Limerick, and presents himself as an intelligent, articulate and perfectly sensible individual.
Next Sunday, just under three weeks before Christmas, he’ll climb into his rowing boat from the small pier at La Gomera in the Canary Islands. What lies ahead are 100 days of solitude, or three months at sea – whichever way you prefer to put it – including, naturally, Christmas.
He’ll have to cook for himself, prepare all his own drinking water and, if he’s lucky, maintain occasional contact with home via satellite phone.
That’s the mental challenge; the physical challenge is to row his boat gently across the Atlantic Ocean, some 5,000km of it.
This will involve a daily energy output of around 12,000 calories, and no more than five hours sleep. Every day he’ll get increasingly tired, hungry and lonely.
If he’s lucky he’ll avoid sharks, storms, mysterious triangles and other Atlantic perils. Estimated date of arrival on Antigua in the Caribbean? Late February, early March.
No other Irishman has ever rowed the Atlantic solo, nor indeed tried it. And at no point during our conversation does McGowan use the word “mad”. Just an ordinary man, taking on an extraordinary challenge, he suggests, and perhaps not entirely unrelated to the sense of apathy and resignation that he feels has crept into the Irish psyche.
Why row across the Atlantic? Why not? Indeed.
McGowan joined Shannon Rowing Club at 14, and loved the sport right through college. Inevitably, his career and his family, took charge. Yet the lure of rowing was never lost to him. Then he read about Eamonn and Peter Kavanagh, brothers from Arklow, who in 1998 became the first Irishmen to complete the Atlantic row as a doubles crew. He became fixated.
He knew he wasn’t dealing with weeks or months of preparation, but rather years. So in 2007, he bought his boat in Britain and christened her “Tess”.
Around the same time he began the physical and mental groundwork, which included adding several stone of muscle to his body weight. Paramount to a challenge like this is proper organisation, and the standard is the Woodvale Atlantic Race, which every two years sets out the itinerary for the small number of rowers sea-hardy enough to submit themselves to this vast expanse of ocean.
McGowan left his home in Limerick on November 12th for final preparations, initially in Brixham, in the south England. That involved a week of courses such as basic sea survival, how to jump into a lifeboat, yacht master theory and resuscitation (although that’s not much use if you’re solo, is it?).
Since last weekend he’s been in La Gomera, prior to the Woodvale departure date of December 6th, and the best thing about that is his wife Lorraine and the children get to come over to say their last goodbyes. Until next February or March, that is.
He’s downloaded a couple of audio books (it’s usually too rough on board to read) and Lorraine has chosen the songs for his iPod.
Come the break of dawn next Sunday, he’s on his own; one man, his rowing boat and 5,000km of ocean.
There is nobility in ambitious failure; there is no glory in foolish ineptitude. In other words, there is nothing he has failed to prepare for, and he’s not prepared to fail.
“Christmas Day,” he says. “That’s the day I’m dreading most. You know you’ll be sitting on a boat, by yourself. I know my mind is going to go drifting straight back to my wife and kids. I know I’m going to break down that day. The kids have put a few things in a little box for me, which I’ll open on the day. But I know that’s still going to be a very hard.
“I’ve talked with a few of the people that have done the Atlantic, solo, and they all say, after 30 days or so, you do start losing your mind. So if you didn’t do all the mental and physical training you would be very silly.
“But once I heard about Eamonn and Peter Kavanagh, that sparked something. I couldn’t get it out of my head. It kept at me, and kept at me.
“My wife, I know, is not happy about it. It’s easier with the kids. They’re aged 14 down to nine, and you can explain it to them. They’re actually excited about the whole venture. It took a bit longer for my wife to be persuaded.
“She accepts it. But she’d much rather I didn’t do it. She just accepts it’s something in my mind, and I wouldn’t be happy if I didn’t do it. So she’s very supportive in that sense.
“The size of the challenge was so big, I just thought, you can either walk away from it, or take it on. I decided to take it on.
“It’s the adventure, yes. But it’s more to take it on and to beat it. It was something innate. It has to be. Everybody has their challenge in life. Mine is the Atlantic.”
Once the Kavanagh brothers took him out on to the Irish Sea for the first time McGowan knew the challenge could become a reality. They spent three hours in the pounding waves under the ocean’s roar and he loved every second of it. Straightaway he broke the challenge into three sections: financial, physical and mental – each one dependent on the other.
Rowing across the Atlantic is not a cheap pursuit, and McGowan found out just how difficult it is to find sponsorship in the current economic climate. Prodigium came on board, which has helped, but so far it’s cost him over €45,000.
Physically, he went from “a little bit of keep fit” to training twice a day, seven days a week. Fergal O’Callaghan, a former colleague at Shannon Rowing Club and now fitness trainer with the Munster rugby team, provided the schedules, which included three hours on the rowing machine in the morning, and another three hours in the evening.
Mentally, he’s been working just as hard. “It’s about understanding how sore and how difficult it will be,” he says. “I spent some time with Aíne McNamara, the sports psychologist in Limerick, and worked on living the event before it happens. Mainly visualisation. But it’s like writing a book. You start with a word, a sentence, then a paragraph. And you prepare for everything. You can’t replicate everything, you can only prepare for it. And even then you can’t pick up the phone and say ‘get me out it here’.
“Diet is important too, and I’ve worked hard on getting that right. I’ve bulked up to 14 and a half stone, knowing I’m going to lose two or three stone on the row. It’s funny, but you don’t want to go in fighting fit, at your peak. You want to start out with some extra fat. I’m going to be burning 12,000 calories a day. The average person burns 2,500. But the most I can consume, in reality, will be 7,000, maybe 8,000 calories. So I will be calorie deficient.”
The first deliberate Atlantic row began on June 6th, 1896, from Battery Park Pier in Manhattan and finished 55 days later in Le Havre, France. Two Norwegians, Frank Samuelson and George Harbo, had immigrated to America but didn’t like what they saw – and decided the best way home was the self-propelled method.
It was 1969 before British rower John Fairfax became the first man to row the Atlantic solo, and it took him a weary 180 days.
Several other Irish crews have attempted the Atlantic row since the Kavanagh brothers, some more successful than others. In January 2006, Gearóid Towey and Ciarán Lewis had a lucky escape off the southeast of Bermuda when a storm forced them to abandon their boat. In the same race, Paul Gleeson and his Canadian partner Tori Holmes did make it, after an epic 86 days, as described in Liam Gorman’s book Little Lady, One man, Big Ocean.
The advantage in rowing the Atlantic as part of the Woodvale Race is the extensive orientation, but after that you’re on your own.
It’s not a race, per se: “Essentially, they provide preparation courses, port clearance, a list of basic requirements,” explains McGowan. “And you have to be in La Gomera from November 20th so that the boat is fully assessed, along with the oarsman.
“You will probably see a couple of other boats on the first day, maybe a few lights the first night. But the next day, everyone is scattered to the four winds, effectively. It’s like putting a few people in the middle of France, and telling them to walk around Europe. Chances are you’re never going to meet them again. So you’re really on your own. That’s the way you have to plan for it.
“I’ve put 100 days’ of food on the boat. My own goal is to finish before that runs out. I know as well I won’t be rowing in a straight line. I’ve seen logs where some boats went 50km one day, and next day went back 65km. There’s quite a bit of that, unfortunately. You just stick it out. You can’t blame anyone else. You have to be stoic about it. I started counting down the days with 457 days to go. Now, I’m nervous, I’m anxious, but it’s a positive energy. I just need to make sure I keep it that way.”
Like most people who take on such a challenge, McGowan introduced a charity to his cause; his is the Soweto Connection, having witnessed first hand the high levels of poverty in the township. “I was always going to do this row, but I wanted to make sure it could benefit someone as well. We’ve started a Shout for Seán programme, in every primary school in Ireland. Every penny the kids raise goes to the charity, but there’s also an educational element, which is just as important.”
There is no guarantee he’s going to make it. There is no guarantee how long he’ll even last. One thing is for sure; if more ordinary people like Seán McGowan took on such extraordinary challenges then the country could only be better off.
“Maybe one of the things I’m trying to get across,” he says, “is that if people see a challenge, take it on. Give it a shot. I know this might be an extreme challenge, but we’re all hearing about the country being in a bit of bother. I think people need to be a bit more positive. Get up and take on the challenge.
“Maybe the worst case scenario here is death. But it’s the same as walking across the street if you don’t look left and right. With this, you do everything you can to minimise the risk.
“Then you’ve got to have a huge amount of self-discipline. I’ve got that. Now I want to make sure I get home to my wife and kids. As quickly as possible.”
The boat
“Tess”, purchased two years ago, is 24-feet long and, at its widest point, six-feet across. She has two small cabins, to the bow and stern, and two solar panels, which will charge up the boat’s battery supply and also the desalination unit, which removes the salt from seawater.
The boat is designed to self-right if overturned by a wave and McGowan will be constantly attached to the boat with an ankle strap.
Equipment includes a VHF radio, two emergency beacons and a life raft. He will have two hand-held GPS units and one GPS marine plotter.
Each night, he will discharge a parachute anchor, as the sea bed is too deep for a traditional anchor. This keeps the boat pointed into the waves and limits drift, but it won’t stop it. If there is a strong current or wind he will sometimes drift backwards.
The schedule
McGowan intends sleeping between midnight and five in the morning. The rest of the time he will row an hour on, half an hour off. If it gets too hot around noon he will vary it; half an hour on, an hour off. But then make up for it with a two-hour row in the evening.
He will eat at every half-hour break. The boat must be entirely self-sufficient, and he’s packed 100 days’ worth of rations, mostly dehydrated food mix. This is mixed with boiling water and, he says, tastes “absolutely awful”. He’ll finish rowing at 11pm and take an hour to clean the boat, wash himself, tend to any wounds, blisters, etc.
He’ll get a weather report every couple of days: “Not that I do much about it. It’s not like you can row out of the way of a storm. You grin and bear it.”
