Former England rugby sevens captain Ollie Phillips is contemplating his New Year\u2019s resolution. Nothing unusual in that, except he is in a rowing boat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re closer to space than we are to land,\u201d he says. \u201cLiterally in the middle of nowhere. It\u2019s mind-blowing, absolutely nuts.\u201d<\/p>\n
For 17 days, he and three friends have been at sea. They have covered 1,174 nautical miles and have not yet reached the halfway point. The sun by day is blisteringly hot, and the seasickness has been brutal.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou want to know my New Year\u2019s resolution? I\u2019ll tell you,\u201d he adds. \u201cNever to get in another f***ing rowing boat. What was it Steve Redgrave said: \u2018Shoot me if you see me in one.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
World\u2019s Toughest Row race across the Atlantic<\/p>\n
Phillips is taking part in the World\u2019s Toughest Row race across the Atlantic to raise funds for charities, including the My Name\u20195 Doddie and Matt Hampson foundations which are so well known to the rugby community.<\/p>\n
He took to the sea despite the misgivings of his wife, Lucy. \u201cShe\u2019s worried we\u2019re going to die, to be blunt,\u201d he told Planet Rugby before leaving the Canary Islands for Antigua before Christmas. \u201cShe wants her husband and the dad of our three young kids to come home.\u201d<\/p>\n
The start was postponed because the organisers of this most extreme of challenges thought conditions were too dangerous. Then, when it did get underway, seasickness struck.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For three days, as team Seas Life rode three-metre waves, the chundering continued. \u201cI felt awful, absolutely disgusting,\u201d says Phillips. \u201cEvery 20 minutes, one of the lads would be over the side of the boat.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey still got on the oars, still did their shift, but what made it worse was we had a waning moon, basically a brand new moon. There was no light, no horizon. No nothing. Just cloud, everywhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re totally disoriented and discombobulated. Yet you\u2019ve got to keep eating because of the workload. Two hours on the oars, two hours off. You have to get food inside you, but you\u2019ve no appetite, you\u2019re just not hungry. You just want to rest.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne lady on another boat had to be medevacked off because she stopped eating, then stopped passing urine and found herself in all sorts of trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ordeal has been made more taxing by an injury suffered by one of the four-man team, Julian Evans, which, for a week, has left him unable to row.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m getting nowhere near enough food down me, I haven\u2019t from day one,\u201d Phillips adds. \u201cI\u2019m meant to be eating four of these freeze-dried meals a day, I\u2019m just about up to three, but all you think about when you get off the oars is hydration, because you\u2019re baking in 35-degree heat.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou need to eat because otherwise you\u2019re f***ed. You feel it in the evenings. That\u2019s when it comes and hits you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Physically and Emotionally Draining<\/p>\n
Phillips, 43, has sailed around the world, swum the channel and cycled across America. None of which, he says, compares with the physically and emotionally draining relentlessness of rowing 3,000 miles in a 28-foot by five-foot, seven-inch boat.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou get in the rhythm of it, like everything, right?\u201d he says. \u201cYou learn to suffer and adapt to the pain. But there\u2019s no respite. Every two hours, bosh, up again, right, bosh up again.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you stop the boat doesn\u2019t move, or you go backwards. You\u2019re just prolonging the agony. Your mind starts playing games with you. It takes you to weird places. We\u2019ve all been hallucinating.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have on multiple occasions woken up convinced there\u2019s been a conversation about something and we need to go in a certain direction or do a certain something. The boys have looked at me like, \u2018What the hell are you on about?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of them genuinely believed there was a goblin out there. Another, that there was a cafe on the horizon. It\u2019s all very weird.\u201d<\/p>\n
Phillips is speaking via the Starlink satellite communication system, his voice so clear he could be next door. \u00a0He is anything but. For the next 1,500 miles, his only company will be crewmates: Evans, Tom Clowes and Stu Kershaw\u2026 and the dolphins which regularly surface alongside them.<\/p>\n
The fear is an attack from the deep. In last year\u2019s race, a 12-foot marlin pierced a hole in one of the boats, its spike penetrating the fibreglass hull and causing panic as the vessel took in water.<\/p>\n
To that end, the quartet dived beneath the hull the day before this interview to clean it and ensure there is nothing for tuna and other fish to congregate around, which, in turn, might attract bigger predators.<\/p>\n
So far, the biggest dramas involving the fleet have been a whale brushing up alongside one boat and another crew stopping to save a giant sea turtle trussed up in an old piece of fishing net.<\/p>\n
With no one to speak to but each other for an estimated 40 days, Phillips says he expects to find normal life overwhelming when they finally make landfall.<\/p>\n
Top 14 club reportedly seal \u2018priority deal\u2019 to sign Scottish star<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cSublime uneventfulness\u201d<\/p>\n His testimony brings to mind the novel Moby Dick, in which the author, Herman Melville, describes the isolation at sea as a \u201csublime uneventfulness\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThere you stand,\u201d he wrote, \u201clost in the infinite series of the sea, with nothing ruffled but the waves.. Everything resolves you into languor.<\/p>\n \u201cYou hear no news\u2026 are never troubled with the thought of what you shall have for dinner; for all your meals for three years and more are singly stowed in casks, and your bill of fare is immutable.\u201d<\/p>\n Phillips sincerely hopes dry land is closer than that. His next shift on the oars is fast approaching, his time in the relative shade of the one metre by one metre cabin coming to an end.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe sun has been beating down since 7am, there\u2019s no ventilation and with the hatch closed, I\u2019m sweating my a**e off,\u201d he says. \u201cOpening it now, I see just this huge, vast abyss of blue, both top and bottom, with the odd cloud in the sky.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a magical side to it. After dark, the temperature drops, and the view of the sky is like nothing you could possibly imagine. With no light pollution, you see everything. Thousands of stars, the Milky Way. Just incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n It is at night that Phillips reminds himself why he is out there, at the mercy of the sea, unaware which of the five time zones the race passes through their boat is in now.<\/p>\n \u201cI think of those with motor neurone disease, friends like Lewis (Moody) and Ed (Slater),\u201d he says. \u201cI think of Hambo [Matt Hampson, the England U21 prop left paralysed when a scrum collapsed]. Genuinely, that is the motivation.<\/p>\n \u201cEd and Hambo can\u2019t do this, through no choice of their own. So whilst it is brutal, whilst it is painful, exhausting, disgusting, feral and all those things, we\u2019re actually the fortunate ones.\u201d<\/p>\n If you would like to support Ollie Phillips and his Seas Life crew, you can donate here.<\/a><\/p>\n