An introduction to Lizanne – Rolling with the waves
Imagine you’re throwing a dinner party. You don’t know when your guests are arriving, you’re not sure what they like to eat, and you’ve never even cooked before. That is roughly my current situation as I wait for the girls to arrive in Hawaii…
Hi everyone, I’m Lizanne, and I’m a chocoholic
I am South African, grew up in the UK and am currently living in Cape Town. Izzy will pass the baton onto me in Hawaii and I will row with the girls across to Samoa, where Meg will take over from me and row to Cairns.
I got involved in the row last year and was held as a reserve if ever they needed one…. So I got this call a couple of months ago; “Liz, you still up for it?!”
I have never rowed before – “Yeah sure!”
I have now had 3 months to prepare for a 60+ day stint on an ocean rowing boat; 2 hours on, 2 hours off, 24/7. 3 months to learn everything I can about the sea, organise my practice (which I bought 9 months ago) for my departure, get life insurance (jokes…. sort of) and pick up at least 10-12kg of muscle and fat. It has been a fascinating experience already and I’m not even on the boat yet!
I have started going into the men’s section of the gym and stare at myself in the mirror with an angry face. I have started saying stuff like “I worked my triceps too hard and now I can’t wash my hair”.
I have brownies for breakfast without feeling guilty, I realised I can never have too many eggs and I add butter to everything.
The aspect of the row I’m very intrigued and fascinated by is the mental prep. No doubt it will be a physical challenge, but what will get us all through to the other side is the mental capacity to believe that you can do anything you set your mind to.
Currently there is only one other person who knows what I’m going through- Meg Dyos. She will be taking over from me in Samoa. Look out for her intro blog as she is one of the funniest people I have ever met! She is quickly becoming a soul sister….
We’re both currently just rolling with the waves as we try to prepare ourselves as best we can for something we have never done before. So far it’s been a great ride, and I’m so excited for what is still in store for us
A few things that have brought joy to us on Doris in the last 24hrs… For the first time in nearly 2 weeks, we have sunshine!! We have had nothing but a constant blanket of grey cloud over us for as far as we could see over the recent weeks and so it’s unbelievable how good it feels to see blue sky. Secondly, our iPad is back up and running! Our iPad is our lifeline to writing the blogs and receiving mail from you, so without it we’d be limited to the phone and we all felt like we would be missing out on sharing our story, which to be honest, writing a blog and reading mail is the highlight of the day.
Finally we received our first contact on VHF. We have used our VHF plenty of times before to contact other boats, but never before has a nearby boat contacted us. So when I heard ‘Doris, Doris this is Marjorie, Marjorie, do you read me over’, we got so excited! Immediately I jumped on the VHF and responded. Chief mate Aaron and Second mate Steve were on a cruise liner from LA to Hawaii, they had contacted us after seeing Doris on AIS & noticed in our boat detail that we were just 8m long. After informing them of our project they were really supportive and turns out they will be at the Pier next to us in Honolulu in mid July when we hope to arrive. We have arranged to contact them on arrival and they plan to come over for a visit whilst also offering us a tour of their boat, which I suspect will be slightly more extravagant than Doris!
In the last 48hrs we have had to drop our course to 200 degrees nearly due South, but this has thankfully worked to help us avoid a high pressure system that would have pushed North East if we had continued West, so thanks to Uncle Tone (Tony Humphries our onshore support) we have missed it.
This is most probably as good a time as any to give a brief description of how we navigate, so that we can answer some of the questions that have been asked via our blogs. Tony Humphries (aka uncle tone to us) tracks our progress daily, whilst monitoring the currents, wind speed and direction. Tony sends us a daily update of the conditions and what course we should hold, via sat phone text, we then liaise with him with what conditions are actually like in situ, but 99% of the time Tony’s predictions are spot on, to the hour. We work to ‘course over ground’ rather than ‘heading’ because we are so influenced by wind and currents that we could be heading/ facing 90 degrees but travelling over the ground 180 degrees. On board Doris we are fortunate enough to be sponsored by Raymarine, who have fully kitted out Doris with equipment and Navionics who have kindly sponsored our maps. So here’s the list of kit aboard:
E7 chart plotter: this provides us with the ability to map our location, lat/long, distance travelled, ability to set waypoints and AIS signals of other boats etc.
AIS transceiver & receiver: this means we can see boats that are travelling within approx. 15miles of us and we set an alarm so that it alerts us when a boat enters within a 2mile radius of us. This is important when in big seas and at night time when line of sight is impaired. It also transmits a signal so that other boats who should all have an AIS onboard, can see us on their repeater even if they can’t see us by eye looking out at sea (such as boat Marjorie above).
p70 deck repeater: this repeats the course over ground from the chart plotter so we can see it on deck and hold ourselves on course.
tack tick range: for wind gauge, depth gauge and speed over ground.
Evo autopilot : we have only just started using this in the last week, as travelling below 1kt makes the pilot work too hard, so we stuck to hand steering during those times since we left Santa Barbara.
Navionics maps : Navionics gold is really clear and gives a great amount of detail when exiting or entering near land. We have maps for the U.S. That cover Hawaii and Samoa, with another card for Australian waters.
If we were to have an electrical failure, then we have a battery powered handheld GPS as well as the Navionics uploaded via apps on our iPhones and iPads to give us real time, current location. So we’re confident we can maintain our own navigation ability aboard Doris if needed.
Hope this answers some questions but feel free to let us know if not.
Personal messages:
Heather – so lovely to receive your email hon, thank you for thinking of us it was great to hear your news of little Pip. With regards to X factor – love Grimmy but he’s not a producer/ singer to be a mentor so reckon that is twaddle & JC to finally leave Top Gear, interesting replacement!
Mary – glad all is good at home with you and Daz. In response to your question, no we don’t brush our teeth every 2hrs but usually twice a day still ;).
Jade & Kim- thanks for sorting the flat, exciting news jade about the move. Can’t wait to be back at Ullswater and finally enjoying some social time with you girls when I get back. Xx
Being out here in the middle of nothingness with all the time in the world, gives you an amazing opportunity to think long and hard about what is important to you in the ‘real world’ and how we have become the people we are. Obviously the main thing that we all agree on is that family is paramount. It is their support, guidance and encouragement that we truly appreciate and are forever thankful to them.
LP and I spent one of today’s shifts taking about our wonderful parents and we reflected on how both of us share a mixture of traits from both our mothers and our fathers (the good bits of course!). There is so much respect and admiration we have for our mums but as it’s Fathers Day today, we thought we would share with you an insight into our fantastic dads and what we believe some of the traits are that we have been lucky enough to have inherited from them.
Laura
My dad has always taught me strong morales, he is a man that is laid back and easy going but will stick to what he believes in. He is compassionate and will show his kind, caring nature in going above and beyond to help others. He’s taught me the art of problem solving and without a doubt has instilled in me to see things through and never give up. On a practical note, I can certainly thank my dad for my driving skills, having been taught from a young age in the fields of Cornwall. This means I love driving any car, at any opportunity, in any location and I’m not a female afraid of parking in small spaces (which came in handy on the hills of San Fran!).
My dad has shown me the values that we share as a team, he has taught me integrity, trust and above all he is my inspirational father figure, that I am very lucky to have. Love you Dad xx
Natalia
I get my patience and the love of meeting new people from my dad. He is the peacekeeper in the family and I seem to have also adopted that trait.
My dad has always been one of my heroes. There are many reasons for this but the main one has to be the admiration I feel for him dealing with the huge challenge he faced as a young man. My dad has certainly overcome his own adversity by not only fighting and overcoming cancer but also the life changing experience of losing a limb (right leg, above the knee amputation).
He has always been the most incredible father and encouraged me to be the free spirit that I am. He embodies the values that we live by on Doris by showing not only strength and resilience but also great perseverance. He is my constant inspiration.
To all those fathers out there, Happy Fathers Day!
The last two days have been marked by technological difficulties. The screen on my Kindle broke first, followed by an iPad that we have on board. I am sad to lose my Kindle as had really been enjoying reading on my off shifts. More important though is the loss of the iPad. We were using it to write and send our daily blogs and emails and to take some photos. We are now using a phone as back up, which is very frustrating, so our blogs might be a little shorter from now on.
On the Pacific, every downturn seems accompanied by a positive though, and the last 48 hours have been rich in wildlife. The pod of 6 enormous whales right next to the boat yesterday in addition to an amazing large electric blue fish with a yellow tail, inquisitive albatross and other birds very close have kept our spirits high.
Nighttime storytelling continues and our collective repertoire is expanding all the time. Last night I told the story of Braveheart and Ems reciprocated with Cool Runnings, a film we both love. We were crying with tears by the end of it recalling some of the one liners.
We are currently keeping a course over ground of 200 degrees as we have been advised that there is an area of high pressure North of us that we should veer South of if we can. The exciting development is that we have passed 1000 nautical miles since leaving San Francisco. You can now see Doris and the Hawaiian islands on the same page of our chart plotter as we make slow but steady progress towards Honolulu!
“Today has been a special landmark day as we have just hit 1000 nautical miles from Santa Barbara and we’ve had quite an incredible wildlife spotting day too….” Hear more…
I am writing this blog in a small and smelly cabin on Nat’s mobile phone as our iPad is having a few issues. I’m trying to rewrite the blog post about night shifts which I spent ages typing on the iPad while eating porridge with the other hand. However I keep getting disturbed by climbing out on deck to see a pod of whales which are passing the boat. They are massive and seem very interested in Doris as they keep coming really close to say hello. That’s ocean rowing for you! We are still finally making good progress in the right direction and Hawaii is getting closer by the day. We’ll keep you posted on the wildlife, iPad and weather situation and stay posted for the night shift blog coming soon.
99.5% of the time out here I can definitely say I am absolutely loving the journey and the challenges we face. The majority of the time I have a permanent smile on my face or I’m crying tears of laughter.
Yesterday for me though for some reason I woke in a reflective mood and sitting in the second position on the oars gave me a 2hr shift to be in my own little bubble. I suddenly started to reflect on the reasons why we are here, why I persevered for the last 4 years and why I’ve put my family & friends through the stress of supporting me through it. The thought brought tears to my eyes and I slowly started to sob my way through the 2hr shift. I was thinking of Rashid and Yasin and how they lost the love of their life and mother respectively, to breast cancer just 3 years ago, just 6 months after Yasin was born. I was thinking of Kate Philp who lost her leg after being hit by an AED at war and had to go through not just the rehab of learning to walk with a prosthetic, but to learn how to live a new life, a new image that she hadn’t planned for.
I was thinking of some of the patients and athletes I have worked with in my physio career and those stories that are so impactful for me; like an 18 year old female who was in a car accident and her boyfriend dies next to her whilst she survives but is left with a C6/7 (neck) complete spinal cord injury. This 18 year old has gone on to be a Gold medal Paralympian and is one of the strongest, most determined females I have met and she astounds me with her amazing attitude to life. I could go on and on, listing men and women that I have met in my life and my career. Whether it’s their attitude or the strength of love shared in their family and friends, it’s the belief that they can go on to achieve or to recreate a new life journey after they’ve faced a life changing experience and maintain a positive attitude, that I find so inspiring. This is why I love Walking With The Wounded.
WWTW create a support network for those who have been injured at war, they provide pathways to re-educate and retrain service personnel, to help them create a new life journey. I became aware of WWTW when Martin Hewitt, who I’d worked with through GB disabled skiing, got taken on the Harry’s Arctic Heroes expedition to the North Pole. Martin was ex-parachute regiment who’d been shot in the arm and was left with a right arm paralysis. The aim of the expedition was for it to be the first team of injured personnel to reach the North Pole. Seeing Martin achieve that and what he has gone on to achieve since then, really highlighted to me what opportunities WWTW create. Like the Paralympians that I work with, WWTW look beyond the disability and focus on the abilities of the individual. They encourage participation in events which will create a physical and mental challenge, so that when they overcome this they have a new confidence in their abilities.
It is being fortunate to have been exposed and surrounded by people with such a strength in mental ability, that it has always made me question my own capabilities. I, like the other girls, realise that we are so lucky to be healthy, fit, have loving family and friends around us and to have the opportunity to be able to do what we’re doing here in the Pacific, that it is for this reason that I believe we face any small challenge we have with humour or banter, because without a doubt, there are certainly millions of people that cope with a lot more than what we’re facing.
Tomorrow the Ride of the Lions and Waterloo 200 starts, these are cycling events that have been organised by WWTW and participants will be injured veterans and supporters of the charity. If we were there we’d be riding along too, but instead we’ll be rowing the waves of the Pacific in supporting from afar. If you’re in London and would like to support the riders please see their website www.walkingwiththewounded.org.uk for more details.
We continue you make faster progress South West with the arrival (finally!) of some following winds. Today Nat and I saw our first flying fish. I had no idea they fly so far! Our last shift on the oars we decided to make a Spanish shift. We both spoke only in Spanish, with some inventive Spanglish thrown in from time to time, and listened to Spanish music (Juanes, Santana etc). It was great fun and we might make it a regular occurrence.
Every day on Doris brings a new example of how simple life can be. We are constantly reminded that we don’t need much to get by. In addition to the equipment for the boat (communications equipment, para anchor, tool bag, flares etc) and our communal items (medical kit, talc, soap, loo roll, wet wipes, multi tool etc), each of us has a pocket in the aft cabin to keep our personal belongings in that measures approximately 45 x 40 x 20cm.
In my pocket I have: sunglasses, glasses, toothbrush, toothpaste, comb, sun cream and face stick, lip balm, hand gel, 2 x long sleeved tops, 2 x leggings, shorts, 2 x vest tops, 2 x buffs, wooly hat and gloves, iPod, kindle, notebook and pen, sponge for washing, head torch, travel towel, spare socks and underwear. Our snack packs and water bottles live next to our pockets. It is a constant challenge trying to extract things from the pocket without having to completely pack and re-pack, but everything has a home and fits in. It just goes to show how little we actually need to get by.
There is something I strangely enjoy about this basic living. There are no decisions to be made about what to wear, where to be when, or what to eat (this is by and large true as we have limited food options, although we all manage to spend a lot of time deciding which expedition meal to eat each day!). It is the small things that we appreciate: finding a chocolate bar that you didn’t think you had at the bottom of a snack pack; a blast of fresh air into the hot, humid cabin; a good nap; a gap in the clouds and sunlight on the water; a warm sleeping bag; a fly by from a friendly albatross; a fresh pair of socks; laughter with friends – big, belly aching laugh till you cry type laughter.
There have been and will continue to be many challenges that we face out here in the mighty Pacific. I’d say one of the main forms of adversity of ocean rowing, due to the 12x two hour shift patterns that are continually repeated, is the monotony of it all. Every time you awake from a rest shift to get back out onto the oars for your 2 hour row shift it feels a little like groundhog day.
Luckily we had previously considered this issue and as some members of the team need variety more than others (clearly obvious from our personality testing we had done), and so we have a number of ways to try to disguise the monotonous way of life out here.
*Team dynamic
Every 4 days or so we change rowing partners. This is a great way to mix things up a bit. As each of us is really different, so our team dynamic changes with a rowing partner swap giving instant variety.
*The shifts
We rotate rowing position every shift so that when you are in the front position you are in charge of steering and then the next shift you move to the back rowing position etc
The view from the back seat is the back of the front rower and the view of the front rower is the front of the aft cabin bulkhead and cabin.
We have a plan pre rowing shift what we want that shift to be and options include music listening, story telling, silence, reflective or a mix of any of the options.
*The sleeping positions
The 2 rowers resting are usually both in the aft cabin. We do a head to toe sleeping arrangement and even that we vary. Each shift we will rotate the position that we lie (facing the stern of the boat or facing the deck) as well as sleeping bags and pillows!
*Food
As we have now audited and rationed our food, we know exactly how many of each type of meal there is remaining. We make sure that we all eat the same number of each meal and it makes sense to eat a different meal each day until the rotation begins again.
There is a good variety generally with our freeze dried food including spaghetti bolognese, shepherds pie, savoury beef, chicken korma, beef curry, macaroni cheese, scrambled egg, beef and potato hotpot, vegetable noodles, sweet & sour chicken, beef stroganoff and chilli con carne.
We have breakfast, desserts and we also have our daily snack packs which are all slightly different.
*The sea
50 shades of blue!
I never knew sea blue had so many subtle differences but when you spend 12 hours of every day staring out at it, this begins to become noticeable.
There is also the forever changing sea state which makes the days varied.
*The sky
When not an overcast and continuously grey sky and pitch black night, (which we are having at the moment), the ever changing cloud formations never cease to amaze me. Rowing shifts change between dawn, day, sunset, nighttime with a starry or moonlit sky and this offers variation.
*Enjoying the journey
We each write a blog. Every day would soon become monotonous but every 4 days is very manageable as we rotate between the four of us and we all love sharing our journey with you. That’s what this is all about. Sharing the highs and the lows and dealing with all the challenges we have and will have to face – together.
*My personal passion is photography and although I was unable to bring my own personal SLR camera, I am still making an effort to capture as many moments out here as I can. Trying to be creative and come up with a variety of different types of shot definitely keeps me on my toes.
In case you’re interested I also seem to have adopted a strange habit of speaking in different accents daily – so that also keeps me highly amused.
The big picture of this expedition is overwhelming. We’ve already been out here 33 days and are still a long way from Hawaii. We have a very very long way to go to Cairns and thinking about that is daunting.
It’s all about breaking things down into bite sized manageable sections or ‘chunking’, as we call it. It’s all about the chunking!
Stroke by stroke
Shift by shift
Day by day
Week by week
Leg by leg
We attempt to stay in the moment and not project too much into the future or worry about how long we’ve been out here already and how long we still have to go.
Instead we concentrate our energies on what food we will eat, what speed we have just reached, the story we are listening to, the way the sea moves, the sensations in our hands, bum, hips etc
As we have mentioned before, all we can do is control the controllable and make it through the journey stroke by stroke and day by day. Mentally, this is what will make it the easiest to deal with.
We can imagine that this chunking process is the best way to deal with the changes and challenges that present themselves when recovering from injury or illness. We have so much respect and admiration for the women who are supported by our charities and are reminded constantly of the daily battles that they have to face. This is a huge part of our journey. A journey of our own discovery into how the mind works and how to make positive change when faced with adversity. Ultimately we want to share the stories of all women fighting breast cancer and the women fighting to create a new life after being injured at war with Walking With The Wounded.
When we feel that things are getting a little monotonous, all we really need to do is remind ourselves that this journey is finite and then draw strength and inspiration from all the women that we are honoured to be supporting x
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