There Will Be Headwinds E-Book

Mark Agnew

• Herausgeber: Icon Books
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 429

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Mark Agnew was part of the first team to ever kayak the north-west passage - spending 103 days in the Arctic. The infamous route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans had defeated countless explorers for centuries, and Mark himself had failed two previous expeditions where he attempted to row across the Atlantic. Pushed to the brink, on the verge of turning his back on the adventures that had made him feel alive, he experienced a mental health crisis and almost abandoned the water forever. Charting an inspirational journey from failure to world record breaker, in There Will Be Headwinds Mark reflects on his struggles and reveals the lessons from sports psychology that allowed him to conquer his demons and achieve something truly remarkable. As well as exploring Mark rebuilding himself following his lowest ebb, this is also an astonishing story of ice, suffering and camaraderie. It's a testament to the power of teamwork, determination and ambition - and a celebration of the human spirit of adventure.

Leseprobe

 

 

Published in the UK and USA in 2025 by

Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre,

39–41 North Road, London N7 9DP

email: [email protected]

www.iconbooks.com

ISBN: 978-183773-214-2

ebook: 978-183773-216-6

Text copyright © 2025 Mark Agnew

The author has asserted his moral rights.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Typesetting by SJmagic DESIGN SERVICES, India

Printed and bound in the UK

Appointed GPSR EU Representative: Easy Access System Europe Oü, 16879218

Address: Mustamäe tee 50, 10621, Tallinn, Estonia

Contact Details: [email protected], [phone]

Sophie, Naomi and Logan – the time we spend together, even when we do nothing in particular, is more fulfilling than any adventure I could imagine.

CONTENTS

1Humbled by Ice

2Calamity

3Icebound

4Narratives

5Breaking Free

6Ice Drag

7Slow Adventures

8Into the Inlet

9Crossing Prince Regent Inlet

10Hobnobs

11Bellot Strait

12Cohesion

13King William Island

14A Rude Awakening

15Detained

16False Start to Full Throttle

17Cabin Fever

18Don’t Screw the Pooch

19There Will Be Headwinds

20Holding on by My Fingertips

21Frozen Zombies

22Winter Has Come

23The Weight of Water

24One Final Hurdle

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

HUMBLED BY ICE

1

1 July 2023

Even at the height of summer, the ocean was frozen solid. The static white expanse extended out towards the mountains on the far side of Eclipse Sound. Large patches of turquoise water on the surface of the ice indicated it was slowly melting. In a matter of weeks, this ice would be gone. But we couldn’t wait that long. We needed to start the expedition now.

Three teammates and I were about to attempt to kayak the Northwest Passage. If we achieved it, we would be the first people to kayak the passage and the first to complete it using only human power, no motors or sails, in a single year.

But first, we had to get to the open ocean. We were in the Inuit settlement of Pond Inlet, in Nunavut, on the north coast of Baffin Island, high in the Arctic. The Northwest Passage starts in Baffin Bay, 40 miles east of Pond Inlet. Between us and Baffin Bay was a solid platform of frozen ocean.

Our two local contacts agreed to tow us across the ice to the floe edge. Titus, an Inuit (though he fiercely reminded us he was an Eskimo first and foremost and Inuit second), and Steve, from the US, each had a snowmobile. Behind their Ski-Doos they each dragged a large wooden sledge called a qamutiik. Titus would tow the kayaks and gear. We would sit on Steve’s qamutiik, which had a high front with a small window to protect us from the frigid wind.

We hauled our gear from the shore edge to the qamutiiks and began to pack. We couldn’t forget anything. We would rely on this gear for the next month or two until we reached a village called Cambridge Bay for a resupply. It was nearly a thousand miles away.

We would also rely on each other. I met my three teammates for the first time just five days before. Expedition leader West Hansen and his best friend Jeff Wueste were both in their sixties and from Texas. They’d already attempted to kayak the Northwest Passage the year before with a third paddler named Rebecca. Delays in getting to the start and slower progress than they expected meant they pulled out after a couple of hundred miles.

To solve some of their issues – mainly the need to carry more supplies – they decided to come back in tandem kayaks and therefore needed two more paddlers, as Rebecca elected not to return.

That is where I came in, with just a few months’ notice. The fourth paddler, Eileen Visser, in her fifties and from Alaska, had joined at the same time as me. Eileen had the chance to train with West and Jeff, but I couldn’t afford to fly from London to the US. So, aside from the odd Zoom call, we were strangers.

Months alone with people I’d never met in the harshest environment on earth was a risk, for them and for me. There were many differences. Most notably, I was the youngest by twenty years and from a different country.

After finally loading our gear, Steve’s wife, Heidi, invited us back to their house for one final hot meal before we disappeared into the wilderness. We were incredibly fond of Steve and Heidi. They served chilli con carne with a side of jelly that had fruit floating in it, which my American teammates informed me was a salad – a cultural difference I had never heard before.

With a belly full of delicious homemade chilli and American salad, we walked back down to the frozen ocean and crammed into the tiny qamutiik. Along with us four kayakers was Tom McQuire. He was one of our shore team and would be providing us with weather updates and other critical information throughout the journey. He was joining us to the floe edge to film our departure. Our shore team consisted of just two people, the other being West’s sister, Barbara. Barbara would relay Tom’s information to us each day via a satphone call to West, and also deal with other less technical admin, such as if we needed kit or food delivered to Cambridge Bay.

Even with the small windbreak, the qamutiik promised to be a cold way to travel. I wrapped up warmly. With a rev of the engine, we lurched forward.

I shut my eyes for a second. I took a deep breath. It was finally happening. I had been dreaming of the Northwest Passage since 2016. From 2020 to 2022, I had been part of a team organising another expedition, planning on rowing the Northwest Passage. But at the end of 2022, that expedition had come crashing down around me and I thought I’d never realise my dream. At the last minute I jumped for this new opportunity to join West, Jeff and Eileen – we called ourselves the Arctic Cowboys for our Texan leaders.

The sky was a clear blue. The shining sun made the ice look pristine. The patches of surface water sparkled and looked like large lakes, rather than inch-deep puddles. The mountains on the far side of Eclipse Sound seemed to grow straight out of the water. They were a mix of dazzling white snow and jet-black cliffs.

The scale of the landscape was immense. The size of the challenge began to dawn on me. The end, almost 2,000 miles away, did not cross my mind. I wasn’t sure if that showed a lack of confidence or an absolute focus on the present moment. In my preparation, I’d worked on letting go of the outcome to enjoy the journey. Staring across the solid sea towards the mountains of Bylot Island, I was packed with positive emotions.

Steve and Titus sped towards Bylot’s south-east corner, where we’d find cabins. We planned to spend a night there, pack our kayaks and then start the expedition. It was almost surreal to actually be on our way to the start of the Northwest Passage after so long.

The Northwest Passage is the Arctic route that links the Atlantic to the Pacific. We’d travel through the Canadian archipelago, in the Arctic ocean, from Baffin Bay to the Beaufort Sea, as per the International Hydrographic Organization’s definition of the Northwest Passage. Britain in particular was once focused on finding the passage, as it promised a shortcut to Asia. John Cabot, an Italian explorer, was sent by Henry VII to find an Arctic route to Asia as long ago as 1497, and Martin Frobisher tried to find it in the 1570s. Bit by bit, like a huge deadly jigsaw, the region was mapped at the cost of many lives. In the nineteenth century the focus became a national obsession, and countless expeditions hunted for the fabled route. It wasn’t until the 1850s that the last section of the passage was found.

By then, it was clear that even once the waterway was located, the route was entirely impractical. It was chock-full of ice for most of the year and the ice never retreated for long enough to make it commercially viable. Even when Roald Amundsen finally became the first person to navigate the entire Northwest Passage, it took years, from 1903 to 1906.

Climate change has changed all of this. The passage is open for longer each year. Some commercial ships are already making their way through and more will in the future.

As the ice retreated at a rate of 13 per cent per decade relative to the 1981–2021 average, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, adventurers began to wonder if it would be possible to traverse the entire Northwest Passage without a motor. The adventure community scrambled to be the first to complete the passage by human power in one season. For about a decade, other rowing and kayaking teams had tried it and failed. One rower did the whole thing over three years, going home for winter and returning for summer (though he finished in Pond Inlet, 40 miles short of Baffin Bay, so by the International Hydrographic Organization’s strict definition of the passage, he didn’t complete it; I thought this 40 miles a bit arbitrary, so always said we were trying to be the first do it in a single season in an attempt to acknowledge the rower’s feat).

We were the latest adventurers to pit ourselves against the challenge. Even as we launched in 2023, two other rowing teams were trying the same human-powered feat. We could still be the first to kayak the route, even if the other rowers finished first, but as far as the overall human-powered feat was concerned, we were in a race.

One team was rowing from the other end – west to east. They were two rowers in two solo boats – Matty and Adam. The other rowing team was starting from the same end as us, though they hadn’t arrived yet. It was unclear if they’d even start. This latter team was an eight-man crew led by Leven Brown.

This was my former team, prior to joining the Arctic Cowboys. When I was still part of Leven’s team, West had added me on Facebook as a friendly acknowledgment of the opposition. As I exited Leven’s team, having bitterly fallen out with him, I messaged West, explaining my predicament and asking for a spot on his team. Another rower from Leven’s team initially joined, too, but he had even less kayaking experience than me, and it soon became clear he didn’t have time to make up the deficit.

Despite the turmoil of changing teams, I was relieved to be here, rid of Leven, and about to embark on the journey. The five of us laughed at ourselves as each bump sent us flying and crashing back down onto the hard surface of the qamutiik. It wasn’t built for this many people. One of my bum cheeks rested on the wooden seat and the other on the top of a gas canister. Jeff and Eileen were crammed up against the windbreak, with their backs to where we were going. West was on the floor between us all and Tom and I sat on the back, with the most space but exposed to the wind as we hurtled forward. Each time Steve turned, our craft swung wildly to the left or right.

We began to drive along next to a crack in the ice about two metres wide. The murky water struck an ominous line through the otherwise white landscape. Steve began to turn and I could see the disaster unfolding in slow motion. As Steve drew further away from the water, we began to swing towards it. I called to him, but he couldn’t hear me over the roar of the engine.

The outcome was inevitable. I leapt from the side of the qamutik, over the crack, and skidded across the ice just as its right ski dropped into the water. The whole thing flipped, catapulting Tom and West into the frigid sea. As the back sank, Eileen and Jeff scrambled over the front and onto the ice on the other side.

I grabbed West’s hand and heaved him out of the water. I then grabbed Tom and began to pull. He bobbed up and down. All his clothes were saturated so he was too heavy for me. He shouted, ‘Pull me! Pull!’, but I couldn’t. West reacted quickly. Back on his feet, he took Tom’s other arm and together we dragged him out of the water.

As Tom only planned to be there for one day and one night, he didn’t have spare clothes. We dug around and managed to give him some dry gear, but he was still in some wet layers. Steve was immediate and sincere in his apology. We all reassured him that it wasn’t his fault. We briefly considered turning back to Pond Inlet before deciding to press on.

The clear skies disappeared behind a thick veil of fog. We skirted along the shoreline of Baffin Island to hold our direction. It was beginning to feel more and more wild.

We’d been travelling for about three hours, and although the novelty of each bump was wearing off, we were all still in high spirits, chatting over the noise. Eileen and I sat at the back, so Tom, still wet, could shelter from the wind. We passed another Ski-Doo coming back from the floe edge. Titus and Steve stopped to talk to them. They were towing another Ski-Doo that had been badly damaged. Apparently, the owner had caught a seal. The smell of its meat had attracted a polar bear, which had torn apart the vehicle looking for remnants of the prey.

The fog closed in on all sides. The Ski-Doo looked like an omen. There could be a polar bear hiding in a cloak of fog, watching us. This mangled mobile could be a prophecy of our demise. So many people had asked us, or warned us, about the polar bears, and their words rang in my ears. I was spooking myself by fixating on the Ski-Doo, like watching a horror movie to enjoy the sensation of fear.

We got back into gear and sped across the frozen ocean. We turned away from shore and began to cross towards Bylot Island. Here, closer to the floe edge and further from land, the ice was melting quickly. The Ski-Doos ploughed through a foot of water. Steve frequently stalled and Titus disappeared into the distance before he realised we weren’t moving. With knee-deep water all around, we looked like a boat floating helplessly on the sea.

Finally, after about eight hours, we arrived at the cabins. We’d all underestimated how tough the qamutik ride would be. I’d even put my Kindle in my pocket, anticipating time to read on the ride. The shared suffering was a great social glue.

The cabins were perched up a small slope on a wide, grassy peninsula. On all sides, it was surrounded by ice. It was night, and although it was 24/7 sunlight, the sun was low, barely peeking over the mountains. The fog was losing its grip on the world, but it still filtered the sun so the light was flat and grey. It felt like a bleak and barren place. Yet the ice was beautiful – pressed against the shore, it had crumpled into bumps and shapes. There were puddles, and the weak sun fought through the fog to reflect off the water.

We quickly helped Tom into the warmth and tried unsuccessfully to start a fire in an old rusted oil stove. Titus and Steve set up tents on the ice. I wandered back down to the tents, and as I rummaged through the kit, their voices floated out of the tent.

‘Hello?’ Steve said.

‘Hi, just me grabbing an extra layer,’ I replied.

‘Good. I was just checking it wasn’t a polar bear,’ Steve said.

I wondered what reply Steve expected had I been a polar bear. I walked back up to the cabin and climbed into my sleeping bag. We all went to sleep.

Although ice is melting for longer in the Northwest Passage, it does not mean the area is ice-free. In fact, even ice-free means an area of ocean with 15 per cent sea-ice concentration or less, so in reality it can still be impassable. From our cabins, we could see two kinds of sea ice – fast ice and pack ice.

Fast ice is what we had just driven across. It is ‘fastened’ to the shore, hence the name. It doesn’t move. It feels like you are walking on solid ground. Pack ice on the other hand is floating around, subject to the wind and tides. At one point, it was fast ice until it broke off and became a jumble of moving blocks.

We were at the floe edge, where the fast ice ends. Floating just a hundred metres away was the pack. We planned to wiggle through the pack until we were on the open ocean side of it, and then to follow the coastline north, with the ice between us and land. When we needed to stop for the night, we would wiggle back through the pack ice and set up on shore. We were incredibly naive.

First, we had to load the kayaks. We’d had one packing rehearsal in the basement of the Pond Inlet hospital. Anything that didn’t fit, we said, ‘Well, we’ll just tie it to the deck when we get out there.’ And so, our decks grew higher and higher with kit. We should have spent the time re-arranging the gear, but Tom, Titus and Steve wanted to wave us off and we were conscious that any delays for us also delayed them.

Finally, at 3pm, it was time to launch. We got into our kayaks on the ice and the others pushed us into the water. First West and Eileen in their tandem, then Jeff and me. Each of us wobbled with uncertainty. The top-heavy kayaks were overloaded and took a second to stabilise. Jeff and Eileen, who were in the back of their respective kayaks and were in charge of steering, couldn’t see past the mound of gear that had been tied down hastily between the paddlers. Their rudders needed fixing, too, so our triumphant departure was stalled as West set about the repair task.

We eventually set off and punched our way through the pack ice. Our paddles scraped off the surface and occasionally found water as we clawed our way to the open water on the other side. Then we turned left and began to paddle.

It was overcast and the world seemed dull and ominous compared to the vibrant colours from the start of our Ski-Doo journey. We didn’t speak a word. On and on we kayaked. To our right, the enormous tail of a bowhead whale lazily curled into the air before diving into the ocean. We marvelled at the sight then paddled on.

We stopped for a pee. The sea was relatively flat, but even the smallest waves made peeing harder, so we headed into the pack where the protection of the ice flattened the waves entirely. The water below the surface was a bright blue from all the submerged ice. Jeff, West and I unhooked our sprayskirts, which covered our cockpits to stop water coming in, and peed into our pee bags, which had funnels to help our aim. It wasn’t possible for Eileen. The pack had shifted so quickly that even the few metres we had travelled required a rerouting to get back to the open water.

We continued to paddle for a few more hours. Our plan to stay parallel to shore was not working. The edge of the pack tracked further and further out to sea.

Eileen was the first to raise it: ‘We should turn around.’ West asked the rest of us what we thought. We all agreed. We were heading into the unknown. Who knows how far we could go out to sea before we turned back to shore again, and the pack might push us miles away from safety if it began to shift and move towards the open sea. The ice was so densely packed that paddling through the pack was not an option. And this wasn’t like the fast ice; we couldn’t get out and stand on the ice, as it was too unstable. West made the difficult but sensible decision.

We turned around for the cabins and planned to wait until the conditions changed. But to our horror, the pack had already shifted. Our route back to shore, even by the way we came, was gone. We headed south, paddling and paddling, hoping to reach the end of the pack, so we could turn right, back to shore and safety. That right turn never appeared.

We could be paddling for another hour, or another twenty hours. We had no way of telling. But I wasn’t worried. I’d done more than just train physically. I’d made sure my mind was unflappable.

In the years building up to the Northwest Passage, I became obsessed with the idea that resilience can be trained.

‘It’s broadly about exposure,’ said Brock Bastion, a professor at Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, who focuses on pain and happiness. I’d called him asking for help to build a solid mindset. ‘You can’t build resilience if you’re not exposing yourself to things that can enable you to build the skills, capabilities, qualities that you need. It’s like immunisation, you have to expose yourself to some pathogens to build a resilience to a greater amount of it. You do need to have these sorts of challenges in life in order to build resilience.’

Resilience is a kind of mental strength, and all strength can be trained. If you want stronger muscles, you put them under stress by lifting incrementally heavier weights. If you want a stronger mind, you put it under stress with incrementally more stressful situations until you are comfortable in chaos.

Hong Kong, where I was living for much of my Northwest Passage preparation, is home to one of the largest trail- and ultra-running communities in the world. I started running ultramarathons as a way to expose myself to stress. In particular, when I was running 100 kilometres over the mountains, my knee gave out after just 6 kilometres but I hobbled on for about 23 hours to finally finish.

It was resilience in the bank. I thought about that ultramarathon as we skirted along the edge of the ice pack in the Arctic, knowing if I could move for 23 hours on a knee that felt like sand was grinding inside the joint, I could kayak indefinitely.

‘It’s about feeling that we’ve got those resources so we can lean into situations and deal with those challenges we are facing. But in order to build those resources, we need to have experience and exposure to challenges in life. Otherwise, you don’t know what you’re capable of,’ Bastion had told me.

Resilience isn’t just about enduring physical limits. It’s mental, too. The physical element of kayaking indefinitely was only half the issue. The other part was our potentially petrifying predicament – alone in the Arctic, trapped offshore.

‘[It’s about] emotion regulation. Regulate your thoughts,’ Bastian had said. ‘Finding yourself in an emergency, did you run away and start screaming or did you start thinking rationally, and realise you can actually front into that and respond well.

‘What determines the difference? It’s that self-regulation, the ability to manage the fear in front of something that’s potentially threatening. Knowing you can maintain your composure.’

In training, I’d also built another kind of resilience – the ability to emotionally regulate. I kayaked through a lightning storm with a friend, unable to see oncoming ships through the sideways rain. I sometimes went out alone so I had nothing but my own wits to figure out situations. I rowed around Hong Kong’s remote islands by myself. I rowed for twelve hours alone in the dark, from sunset to sunrise.

Some of the risks I took were reckless – but I was determined to mould an iron mind. I was determined to practise regulating my emotions in danger and uncertainty.

In the Arctic, through that grey and hectic night, my training meant that not only did I manage my emotions, I barely noticed them in the first place. The process was second nature to me. In fact, I enjoyed myself.

‘It’s called sitting with our discomfort,’ Bastian said.

Sitting with discomfort is an extreme act of validating your own emotions. It’s not about repressing your emotions; it’s about acknowledging that stress is the appropriate response to a stressful situation.

Once you accept your emotions as being normal, you can focus your energy on the situation instead of spending energy in a futile effort to repress what you’re feeling. You can sit with the discomfort and do the task anyway.

‘You have to be able to say, “That’s OK, I don’t mind sitting with these emotions or these thoughts. It’s not comfortable but I’m also not scared of it. I don’t feel threatened by these emotions. I know I’m feeling it, but I’m not going to feel this is a sign I’m not going to cope or that it’s not OK. I expect to feel this way,”’ Bastian said.

Once you accept your reaction as normal, ironically those negative emotions lose their power, too.

Our Northwest Passage expedition was just a few hours old. I was in chaos and having the time of my life. I didn’t just survive, I thrived.

As we continued to kayak past the ice, to make matters worse a fog engulfed us. The world became monotoned. The sea was grey. The ice was grey. The fog was grey. Perspective became absolutely impossible to gauge. We came round the corner of an iceberg and saw cliffs ahead of us, a mile or so away. It was land! We had made it. And then, my eyes focused and I realised it wasn’t a cliff. It wasn’t even a mile away. It was just a tall bit of ice, maybe three metres high, about thirty metres away.

A large flat piece of ice appeared out of the gloom. On it stood ten polar bears. I’d never seen a polar bear and I didn’t know they moved in groups. I was just about to call to the others when my eyes focused again. It wasn’t polar bears at all. It was ten seagulls about fifty metres away. I could not compute how my eyes had got it so absolutely wrong. This fog had placed us in an alien world of optical illusions. It was utterly bamboozling.

On and on we paddled. We checked our GPS. We were well south of Bylot Island. Even if we could turn right it would only take us back to the fast ice and not to land. Still, that was better than nothing.

Baffin Island was twenty miles to our south. It would be a disaster if we kept going south until we hit it. It would take hours. Between bouts of terror, I thought this was fun.

But there was another issue. Eileen and West’s kayak was significantly faster than mine and Jeff’s. The three of them were champion ultra kayakers. They each had a CV of kayak victories as long as my arm. My background was in ocean rowing, and my switch to kayaking had been last minute. At that moment, I felt very stupid to think that I could keep up with these experienced paddlers, and now I was causing them strife. Eileen and West were getting cold going at my pace.

My feet were numb. I’d read so many books about polar exploration, I imagined removing my boots to find black stubs where my toes were meant to be. The world was so bland and uniform, I didn’t even realise we were back at the fast ice edge until I spotted a tent.

‘PEOPLE!’ I shouted in relief. ‘PEOPLE!’

Jeff thought I was imagining it. We’d all fallen for so many mirages in the fog. Eileen thought I was calling to them like, ‘Come on people, pull it together’. But seconds later, they spotted the tent, too.

The surprised Inuit ran over. We nuzzled through some chunks of ice and I threw them a line. They hauled us onto the ice. The sudden adrenaline of the encounter caused us all to spill over our words.

‘Can you get us to the cabins? Can you tow us on the Ski-Doos?’ They didn’t seem keen. They asked us for CA$250, with the caveat that it wouldn’t be possible to tow us the whole way. We tried to explain about Titus and Steve having already towed us. Proof that it was possible. ‘Please can you help us?’

The men paused. They turned to the elder in the group. He was sitting watching our desperate haggling. He hadn’t said anything and now we all focused on him. It was clear to us that he was in charge. What he said next would determine our fate.

He took a long draw on a cigarette.

‘The floe edge is a dangerous place,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t be here if you don’t know what you’re doing.’

And with that, the men turned back to us and shrugged. They wouldn’t help us.

Jeff began to unload the kayak.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

‘I need to get changed into warm clothes and I’m not changing out here,’ he said. He wanted to erect the tent.

We were all cooling down fast, but this didn’t seem like the solution. Eileen and I looked at West.

West and Jeff were best friends and had been for 30 years. West could see his friend needed to get warm, but a gentle word changed his course. We couldn’t waste time putting up and down the tent. We needed to get moving.

We decided to haul the kayaks across the ice and back to the cabins. Just as we started to pull, one of the Inuit men came over to me and said, ‘Remember, white or blue ice is solid. Black ice is not.’

Jeff and I pulled ours and the others pulled theirs. I tied a line around my waist and hauled the kayak like the old explorers dragged their sledges to the South Pole. I may have been the slowest kayaker, but I was the youngest, strongest and fittest. With my waist strap taut, I began to steam ahead of the others. So, we changed tack. We dragged one kayak as a four, then went back for the other.

In a few minutes, the Inuit camp disappeared into the fog and we were on our own again. For most of our time on the water we had been silent, but now we began to chat easily, sharing stories as we slowly crept across the flat, grey fast ice.

We began to follow polar bear footprints. I figured, a polar bear would know what was safe to walk on and what was not. I hoped we would not accidently catch up with the bear.

At one point, the bear’s tracks took a small detour. The footprints arced for about ten metres to the left before coming back to its normal straight line. Just as I wondered what had distracted the bear – SPLASH! The ice gave way under my weight. There was no warning. It didn’t make a cracking sound. I just began to fall like a trap door had opened. I plunged into the Arctic Ocean below.

I stuck my elbows out and arrested my fall so my head was above the water. West leapt towards me to pull me out but I told him to back off so he didn’t fall in, too. I reassured them I was OK. I then calmly called for the others to push the kayak towards me. I held onto the bow and they pulled me out as I kicked.

I stood up panting and looked down at the ice I’d just fallen through – it was black. ‘What was it the Inuit had warned us about? White and blue ice firm. What did he say about black ice?’ I joked. We all began to laugh. I tied the kayak back around my waist and we continued to drag towards the cabin.

I was wearing a drysuit, so the plunge hadn’t left me wet or cold. I’ve never contemplated the consequences had I fallen all the way through. We just jovially got on with the task at hand, still enjoying ourselves and viewing the fall as a comic mishap.

We encountered a new issue. The floe edge had moved. A large chunk of the fast ice must have broken off since we departed. There was no going on. This was what the Inuit had meant when he said they couldn’t tow us all the way to the cabins. From what we could see, the sea ice had shifted and there was open water between us and our destination, though the fog still hung tightly around us.

West and Eileen got into their kayak and I pushed them into the water. Then, Jeff got into our kayak and I launched our boat, too, planning to leap into it once it was floating.

But the top heavy kit had come loose since we started dragging the kayaks. So, as soon as Jeff was in the water, the whole thing tipped. He desperately flattened his paddle blade across the surface of the water in the hope of pushing the boat back upright. He fought for a few seconds and gave up. He dived out of the cockpit into the water.

At the other end, I was still clinging to the bow, preventing it from capsizing entirely. With Jeff out of the boat, I dragged it back on the ice. Jeff flailed at the ice edge, unable to get a grip and drag himself out of the water.

I was worried that the very edge of the ice wouldn’t take my weight and that we’d both end up in the water if I went forward. But Jeff needed my help. I sprinted towards him, grabbed the shoulder straps on his life jacket and began to backtrack as quickly as I could, dragging him onto the ice and away from the edge like I was a soldier pulling my fallen comrade back to the trench.

Unlike my one-piece drysuit that had saved me when I fell through the ice, Jeff was wearing a two-piece suit, so water filled his trouser legs. He was getting cold fast. West made another quick decision – get Jeff back in the boat and paddle back to the cabins as fast as possible. It was our only hope.

I resecured the kit on the deck of our boat to stop a repeat. Jeff got into the kayak and I launched it again. I hopped onto a small bit of ice floating next to our kayak then scrambled into my cockpit. We paddled on. There was no sea ice and we quickly made it back to the cabins. It was 5am.

The ice where Steve and Titus had camped, where we’d packed the kayaks and launched fourteen hours ago, was gone. The sun was once again low, skirting the top of the mountains. We pulled the kayaks onto the shore below the cabins and walked up to get warm and dry.

As soon as we entered the cabins, Eileen turned to us all and shouted with joy: ‘We are explorers!’

We all dived into a big group hug, bonded by our shared misadventure. I barely knew these people and yet I loved this group. This reaction was amazing. We could have slumped into the cabin defeated and embarrassed. We could have felt sad and overwhelmed to have made all that effort and to be back where we started. Instead, we embraced with joy. We’d come for an adventure and we’d got one.

I was very self-conscious about my kayaking speed. I wondered if the others regretted inviting me. But as we got changed, West turned to me and said, ‘Man, you are seriously resilient.’ I was proud of myself. In dire circumstances, I’d kept my cool. I’d been strong when we towed the kayaks, I didn’t have a problem with the cold (except for my feet), I’d laughed off falling through sea ice and I’d rescued Jeff. I’d had a lot of fun.

West didn’t know it, but with one small comment he had just validated me in a way that meant so much.

CALAMITY

2

December 2016

Mountains of ocean rolled up behind us. In one moment, we were deep in a watery valley between two swells. The surface of the sea was a dark velvet and appeared to suck the light out of the air. In the next moment, we would ride up on the mountain. From its summit, we could see more swells silently charging towards us without end. The full moon cast a shadow behind each of us, and then we slid back down into the trough.

This was eight years before I went to the Northwest Passage. We were just 40 hours into our attempt to set the world record for rowing across the Atlantic and I could see it was already unravelling. It was obvious, we would have to be rescued. We waited for the sun to rise to make the call.

A crew of ten, including myself, had excitedly set off from the Canary Islands in December 2016, hellbent on rowing unsupported to Barbados. A few months earlier, each of us had seen an advert online. The captain had declared his intention to set the world record and he needed a crew. I was always outdoorsy. I enjoyed hiking, and as a kid I’d tried all sorts of watersports. For a while, I’d sailed a lot. But I’d never done anything like this. In fact, I had to learn to row. I had no idea that people tried to set world records in the adventure world, but now I was hooked and determined to set the record for rowing across the Atlantic. It set a ball rolling – I wanted to become an adventurer, I wanted to give talks and write books. The dream of rowing the Atlantic was accompanied by a growing realisation of how much I hated office life. Just a couple of years out of university, and the thought of working for the next 40 years with nothing interesting to show for it filled me with anxiety.

In the build up, when a series of red flags made us worry, I googled the captain and found articles going back to the nineties calling him Captain Calamity. The momentum I’d acquired to complete an adventure of a lifetime, to fill my life with interesting stories and to potentially make a career out of it, was hard to stop. By this stage, I was so financially and emotionally invested in the idea of setting the record, I managed to rationalise anything that didn’t confirm what I wanted to hear.

As the sea raged around us, none of us could really say we were shocked to see this heap of junk coming apart. We didn’t have waterproof hatches, proper safety lines or enough food. The day before we left, one of the other crew members, Ted, and I had gone to the shop and bought as much as we could that would be rich in energy, but would not perish – salami, nuts, olive oil. We were going to row the Atlantic fuelled by middle-class antipasti.

None of us wanted to admit what was staring us in the face. ‘The night before we left, I remember being convinced we were going to die,’ Ted later told me. ‘I was calling friends and family and was very teary. But I stuck my head in the sand. I wanted to do it.’

It was a sentiment I shared.

One of the other guys, Howard, even patched up some holes with a pool noodle and sealant before departure. In this condition, brimming with optimism but filled with denial, we pulled away from shore.

By the second night, the wind and the swells built. We were on the high seas. When you are only a foot off the water, swells look like behemoths. In the darkness, my contentment grew. It was tough, but I was happy. The towering swells, the spray from the waves, the moon and the feeling of remoteness all added to my happy mood. In a way, this was what I’d signed up for.

But the boat was utterly unseaworthy. It was undeniable. Waves were breaking over us and flooding the cabins. The guys in the back cabins were trying to sleep in two or three inches of water and then returning to the oars. By 2am, they were close to hypothermic. Howard was tending to his cabin mate, George: soaked and sleeping in water, he was deteriorating fast. We were paddling in a boat as seaworthy as a papier-mâché bath.

My shift mate, Tony, was terrified that the back of his cabin would be ripped off and he would disappear into the sea. George was having similar thoughts on the other side. I was lucky to be in one of the drier cabins.

As the sun rose, the captain announced that he was calling for a rescue. The official reason for calling a helicopter was George. He needed medical attention. George was not to blame. In fact, had he not insisted on being rescued we may have all gone on and died. The poorly prepared boat was to blame.

Within a day of being plucked by helicopter, the British tabloids had a field day at our expense. I found myself in a Captain Calamity story.

I was undeterred. I spent the next two years planning another ocean row and finally I set off once again, this time in a pair. Me and my female rowing partner were going to set the mixed-pair world record, coming in around 50 days.

We were part of a race. There was a large crowd at the harbour in La Gomera, in the Canary Islands, cheering us on. My mind ran with the journey I’d been on just to get to that point and I had a lump in my throat. I turned to the crowd, sitting patiently in my boat, and saw my parents. I locked eyes with my mum, but I couldn’t hold her stare. I had to turn away. With my back to her, I shouted, ‘I love you, Mum!’ The crowd Awww’d, which made me laugh and put my emotions back on an even keel before we cast off.

By the third night, we settled into our groove. I had a wonderful shift alone on deck. The night sky was rich with stars. They reached all the way down to the horizon and I felt as if I was at the centre of a snow globe. The uninterrupted disc that was the horizon was stunning.

The cabin door flew open. My partner was having a panic attack. I was ripped from my contentment and plunged into a caretaking role. It is not unusual in the first week of ocean rowing to have a severe reaction – the strange combination of claustrophobia on a tiny boat and agoraphobia of the wide ocean takes some getting used to.

For my partner, though, she never fully recovered. She had the amazing bravery and self-awareness to see that going on was not an option. We called for a boat to come and get her.

I had to decide: go on alone or get off as well.

I was intent on going on solo. It took 36 hours for the boat to reach us. As we waited, I got in my own head. We were having power issues. The batteries were draining quickly, even with the solar charges, meaning we had to turn off vital safety kit. Was I crossing from the objective risk of rowing an ocean solo to the reckless risk of rowing an ocean with a faulty boat? Getting off seemed like a sensible decision. Or was I just chickening out and looking for an excuse to save face?

I battled with the decision, getting increasingly overwhelmed. I couldn’t think clearly. I couldn’t make sense of the options. Nothing was clear.

It was here that I needed the ability to sit with discomfort and emotionally regulate. It was this experience that drove me to such lengths to build resilience and to expose myself to stress so I could become comfortable in chaos. But it took months before I recovered enough to start training again.

When the yacht arrived I got off, but I did not leave the turmoil behind. For the next six months, my decision never left my mind. It lingered and festered. It gripped me. I was lower than I’d ever thought possible. It felt like I had a ball of lead in my gut, yanking me down.

Pathetic. Quitter. Wimp. Pathetic. Pathetic. Pathetic, I told myself. My self-worth had vanished. My mental health was in tatters. I’d quit not once, but twice. Worthless. Pathetic. Quitter.

I had this idea of myself as this resilient adventurer who could endure hardship. That idea was dashed. This malaise seeped into every aspect of my life – friendships, work, hobbies. I had no drive to do anything, let alone another adventure. Every time I read about someone else rowing the Atlantic, I felt even more embarrassed, imagining my friends reading the same story and thinking, Another one! It does seem very easy, and yet we all know about Mark, don’t we? One Frenchman even floated across the Atlantic in a giant barrel. That stung.

And then, I saw something on my Facebook feed.

An ocean rower, Leven Brown, posted: he needed a team. He was going to attempt to be the first to row through the Northwest Passage. Who’s in?

Even prior to my first attempt to row the Atlantic I’d called Leven. I’d heard on the grapevine that he wanted to row the Northwest Passage and I told him that once I’d set the world record, I’d call him again and we’d start to plan. But now Leven was planning it anyway, I wanted to be involved. I knew I couldn’t wait until I felt better or I’d miss this opportunity entirely. I called and signed up immediately.

Just the act of signing up dragged my sense of identity back almost to normal. I had a goal. I was going on an adventure and this time it was bigger and bolder than the Atlantic. But I wasn’t free of my self-loathing. I was so scared of going back to that dark place of misery. I couldn’t fail. I just couldn’t face the humiliation again.

I needed to become more resilient. This was when I became obsessed with the idea of building and training my mind. I reached out to experts like Brock Bastion, so that when I did eventually reach the Northwest Passage, I would be mentally solid as ice. I would be sure I could handle any adversity, and that I’d never be overwhelmed by uncertainty again. As I trained my mind, I regained my confidence and also my identity.

It wasn’t a linear progression. In the build up to the adventure, sometimes those feelings of despair crept up on me. When Leven and I fell out, those feelings of utter despair returned in full force. But they had less power over me. I could keep moving forward.

I needed all my resilience to get to the start line, let alone the finish. I faced so many obstacles. The lows of the Atlantic, the sense of humiliation and loss of identity, the setbacks with Leven, the last-minute decision to come with the Arctic Cowboys. The Northwest Passage was about more than world firsts.

For me, part of it at least was about redemption.

ICEBOUND

3

3 July 2023

We woke at 3pm. I was still buzzing with excitement from the night before. A few extra days onshore felt like a small price for the adventure we’d already had. We’d all anticipated being stuck on shore at some point – so why did it matter if it was on day one or day fifty? We happily resigned ourselves to the wait – the rapport within the group was already jovial and relaxed.

West called his sister Barbara on the sat phone – he had to go out of the cabin and set up a little antenna. She conveyed the latest information from Tom: the conditions were due to change soon. It was Monday, and we hoped to leave again on Wednesday or Thursday.

The cabin was a simple structure with one long room. We slept on a wooden platform at the end. It had only been one night since we’d left civilisation and already this cabin, with an old metal oil burner and a desk, felt like a luxury compared to the outside world. The wild had become our norm so quickly, and our relative sense of comfort had changed. It felt like we’d been there an age. There was another, even smaller and simpler cabin about twenty metres away.

We decided to pass the time firing the guns. It was sensible that we each had a shot or two, to make sure we knew what we were doing. It was better to practise now than to try to work it out as a polar bear charged. I fired the rifle to great effect, hitting a barrel in a tight cluster. When I tried to fire the shotgun I had less success – I aimed and fired, the gun kicked back, slammed me in the face and burst my lip. I knew which gun I’d be reaching for in the event of a bear attack. At least it made us all laugh.

I set up a small windmill. Tex:Energy – a portable off-grid power solutions company – had provided it to keep our devices charged. We were all amazed by how effective it was at replenishing our GPS devices. The day passed without much to note and we went to bed, with clear skies under the constant sun. The wind picked up overnight and I considered taking in the windmill. Our small wooden home now felt like the ultimate sanctum as the wind scoured the walls and roof. With the noise and occasional shake of the door, I couldn’t help but picture what this wind would feel like in the tiny world of our tent. Sooner or later, I knew I’d find out.