ROWING WORLD TRANSATLANTIC RECORD ATTEMPT: Seán Kennytalks to the five driven Irishmen who are ready to put their bodies and minds to the test in their attempt to help set a transatlantic rowing record
Perhaps I want everything:
The darkness that comes with every infinite fall
And the shivering blaze of every step up
WITH NO little feeling, Ryan Corcoran has just been reciting lines from a Rilke poem. He punctures the brief, uncertainly reverent silence that follows thus: "Actually, can I remove that from the record?"
"No way."
The laughter is general.
A little context: to clarify, Ryan Corcoran does not habitually quote German language poets in public. He was moved to the allusion by a question about the inevitable pain the crew of La Mondiale will experience as they attempt to break the world record for an Atlantic crossing by rowers.
Five Irishmen - Corcoran, Robert Byrne, Ian McKeever, Breffny Morgan and Peter Williams - will be among the 14-strong team, which will depart Gran Canaria bound for Barbados on New Year's Eve. Their goal is to beat the time of 33 days, seven hours and 30 minutes, set in January this year by a largely different crew also rowing La Mondiale. Scotsman Leven Brown skippered last year's team and also leads this year's expedition.
They are near the jumping-off point now, as ready as they can be for the churning grey vastness that awaits. Their big adventure: Five Go Off to Sea. The crew's respective stories converge from here. In a 55-foot boat, they cannot but be intertwined. Ten months ago, they were disparate.
Peter Williams was spending a year in Australia. Breffny Morgan was studying for his finals in Harvard. Ian McKeever was back in Ireland having recently broken the world record for fastest ascent of the planet's seven highest summits. Ryan Corcoran and Robert Byrne were awaiting the resumption of the rowing season in Bray.
They all had an itch.
"We're never going to row in the Olympics or anything like that," says Byrne. "Coastal rowing is myself and Ryan's sport of choice. So this is the ultimate in our sport of choice. If you've a shot at setting a world record in your sport, it's a no-brainer."
Such was Williams' thinking as he cut short his stay in Australia, deciding to divert savings intended for the ex-pat good life into his participation in the expedition.
As his student days in the US ended, Morgan found his collegiate rowing career dissolving into disappointment. The steady pull of the oars had been his life's metronome for a decade. He needed one last shot.
"I graduated this year and came home after four years rowing on the collegiate scene but I still had a bone to pick with rowing because the season didn't go that great. So I had a sense of unfinished business, wanted to end with rowing on a good note."
Then there is Ian McKeever, who has long been a moth to adventure's flame. The improbable is his stock-in-trade, the half-empty glass an affront to his sense of possibility. Here's the thing: McKeever is not a rower. But he wasn't really a climber either. Then he started setting mountaineering records.
"Ray Carroll made a very interesting comment at an awards ceremony we were both at after I'd done the seven summits and he'd beaten the Atlantic rowing record. 'You know it's not over,' he said. It triggered something inside me, you know, when is enough enough?"
In October, the five attended a week-long training camp in Scotland. Under the tender gaze of a couple of ex-SAS men, they hiked and climbed and kayaked and had all manner of physical and mental misery inflicted upon them. The rain, as though on cinematic cue, bucketed dutifully. It may mean nothing, but out of 22 participants, the Irish five were the only crew members to complete every task that was set.
Reflecting either a tragic deficit in sanity or heroic surplus of courage (or both; it's usually both), they all hung in. Training was a small dose of what they can expect. And what can they look forward to out in the ocean? Well, there's bleeding from the contact points (one is the hands; the other is worse), sleep deprivation and the possibility of hallucination arising from same, bodily wasting, dehydration, fights (but no one can storm out), a diet of freeze-dried astronaut food, and the possibility of storms, sharks and other oceanic unpleasantness. And just maybe a gleaming Guinness World Record certificate at the end of it all.
Williams explains the physical toll. "You'll lose up to a pound of fat a day, that's around 15 kilos. I've been trying to get to 95 kilos, whereas I'm normally 82. It'll be great having that in the last 2,000 miles because otherwise you'll just fade away to nothing. It'll eat away at your muscles and you'll just be as weak as water."
Equally, monotony could do for them, as Byrne explains. "If there are high seas, there's drama and the adrenalin will keep you pepped up. But I think routine and monotony can kick in. It's important to keep your mind active and stimulated, and the other lads' around you. Giving people a clap on the back will work for so long but after that you've to think of other things to keep people interested."
Corcoran observes that "the pain might take your mind off things". Dwelling on the hugeness of their task could erode the will just as readily as the physical effort will wear down their bodies. The wrong kind of thoughts could drag you under.
Peter Williams: "The psychological challenge will probably be greater than the physical challenge. We'll be rowing in shifts, two hours on and two off. Even as you go out to do your second shift of the whole thing, you'll be thinking, 'Shit, I've another 178 of these to do.' And that can blow your mind. I have a kind of grit my teeth, grin and bear it mentality."
Morgan sees the brute simplicity of the row-rest-row-rest rhythm as a welcome interlude. "I love rowing because it's very simple. It's going to be a month of very simple living. Hopefully that'll give me some time to think about where to go when I get back. When I was in college I was working so hard I never stopped to think what I was working towards. I need a spell to figure stuff out and I think I'll do that when I'm rowing."
McKeever is all too intimately acquainted with the ferocious strain such challenges can place on the body. Everest relieved him of his eyesight for five days, harvesting too a large chunk of his body fat. So he scans the small print of physiology.
"Whether we break this record or not will come down to the one per cent factor. I've been looking at loads of little things that could give us the edge. So I'll row with a stone in my mouth .
He elucidates. "The gland that will suffer most is the kidney, because the biggest concern is hydration. You're never really going to hydrate properly no matter how much liquid you put in. The most important thing is to regulate the function of the kidneys, ergo a stone in the mouth helps maintain saliva levels, which will help hydration, given the sea salt air."
All five say breaking the record - as opposed to the still significant achievement of merely completing the crossing - is their priority. Whether this attitude still prevails throughout the row is one of many unknowables from the safe distance of dry land.
Morgan: "Some will see the record as a source of inspiration to get their competitive juices flowing. Others will see it as an added task, an additional burden in excess of just crossing the ocean. But this row was publicised as the sub-one-month crossing, so it's right there in everyone's mindset from the start."
Whether the record goes will not be for want of sacrifice on the part of the Irish five. Aside from rigorous group and individual training regimes, there is the money issue. World record attempts do not come cheap.
McKeever has been fortunate enough to gain sponsorship from Bord Iascaigh Mhara. The others have had to raise the €23,000 participation cost themselves, in addition to collecting for their nominated charities. The big quixotic adventure is fuelled by a multitude of small local banalities: the quiz nights, the tin-rattling in shopping centres. Williams is even selling shares to fund his participation, putting his short-term financial future in hock for the sake of the challenge.
Come New Year's Eve they mean to make their mark on the great roiling canvas set out before them.
"Is this where you want to be?" has been one of the skipper's calls during training," says Byrne.
"It's not like we just happen to be here. This is where we've trained to be. Setting off, you might get an initial feeling of, 'Do we want to be here?' But it is where we want to be. It's no accident. We haven't worked our asses off, fundraised, trained in shitty weather and everything else just to chicken out at the last minute."
Corcoran looks ahead to the moment of departure.
"The skipper said that heading off last year was the most wonderful feeling. It remains to be seen whether it'll be the same for us, but he said he just loves the idea that when you push off shore, the next time you reach shore will be across the Atlantic Ocean."
World transatlantic record attempt
Beginning on December 31st, a 14-man crew, including five Irish members, will attempt to break the world record for a transatlantic crossing by rowers. Departing from Mogan in the Canary Islands bound for Port St Charles in Barbados, they aim to complete the journey in under 33 days. This record was set in January 2008 by a different crew rowing the same boat, La Mondiale. The current team also features British, Canadian and Faroese rowers.
Irish crew members of La Mondiale
Peter Williamsis a Cork native and former Irish underage international. The 25-year-old is the only person to have run the full 75-mile periphery of Lough Corrib. He has been training full-time for the challenge for several months and is raising money for the charity, Cancer Care West.
Robert Byrne, 31, is an IT consultant from Bray. He has been ocean rowing for 10 years. A member of Bray Rowing Club, he was on the winning crew in the 2007 and 2008 All Ireland Skiff races. He has also played rugby with Greystones.
Breffny Morgan, 22, is a recent graduate of Harvard University, where he majored in biology. The Corkman represented the college in rowing, winning numerous races on the US collegiate scene. He also rowed for Ireland at underage level.
Ian McKeeverhad no background in rowing prior to joining the crew. However, the 38-year-old established a world record in 2007 for fastest ascent of the world' seven highest summits. He works as a public relations lecturer and motivational management speaker.
Ryan Corcoran, 30, is a native of Dún Laoghaire. A secondary school teacher, he has seven years' experience of ocean rowing and is a crewmate of Byrne's in Bray Rowing Club. Like Byrne, he featured in the club's recent All Ireland Skiff victories and has played for Greystones RFC.
