A note from Sean Keener, BootsnAll Co-founder: Alastair Humphreys is an old friend of BootsnAll. He sent us these dispatches as he cycled around the world. In 2004 he came through Portland, stayed with us for a few days, and we hosted an event at our office to help him raise money along the way. He kept going, and he has done so much more since.
Strange that South America should begin beneath Cape Town's Table Mountain. Yet as I stood on the foredeck of the yacht, watching my waving friends slowly shrink from sight, it felt less like an ending than the start of a new chapter. I was aboard Maiden, bound for Rio de Janeiro amidst the glamour and excitement of the Cape to Rio yacht race. Table Bay was teeming with racing yachts and well wishers, a dramatic horizon filled spears of masts and curves of white sail. Jetskis and powerboats, canoes and press boats, gin palaces and bathtubs filled the few gaps. Helicopters swooped low above the fleet. The shoreline was lined with people and high on Signal Hill scores of binoculars flashed.
As the spectator boats gradually turned for home, the racing fleet were left alone to contemplate 4000 miles of ocean. As my first night at sea approached and Maiden pushed on through the waves I felt a basic thrill to be travelling again, to be on the move just for the sheer hell of it. This is how I used to feel: I've got my mojo back! I turned away from the fading Table Mountain and Africa and looked towards the sunset and South America. Every new beginning comes from some other new beginning's end.
To my undisguised glee a newspaper article in Cape Town had labelled me an "intrepid young British adventurer". But on that first night at sea I was brought brutally back down to size as I hung over the side of the boat retching my guts out. Lasagne ("how on Earth did I manage to fit so much inside myself?" I marvelled) reappeared with gusto, my eyes streamed and the damnable prospect of three weeks of this awfulness added to my misery. In my cycling clothes and shoes I was soaking wet and cold. Pride comes before a hurl.
Once recovered I joined in the steady routine of racing across the Atlantic. Maiden forged a name for herself when Tracy Edwards skippered her in the 1989-90 Whitbread Round the World Race with the first ever all-female crew. Today Maiden is run as a business, taking paying crew for ocean races, Caribbean cruises and so on. I would strongly recommend the experience. She is a 58 foot (17m) aluminium monohull yacht. At the very front of the boat is the foredeck where all the juicy action happens during sail changes - flailing ropes, armfuls of billowing sail and drunken footed rolling and pitching. The deck is criss-crossed with ropes of every colour running taut to 15 different winches. There are two huge steering wheels and a panel of glowing green GPS instruments. At night the two compasses glow orange like shining crystal balls. Pressure valves allow the adjustment of mysterious sounding things like the 'babystay' and the 'vang'. Everything started as a foreign language to me but somebody would always translate: "Pull the bloody red rope, Al!"
Below decks is a tiny toilet (tip: brace your head against the roof when pulling up your shorts to avoid an embarrassing catapulting out into the corridor), a kitchen smaller than a broom cupboard, and the navigation station of charts, screens, switches, weather faxes and radios. All 15 of us squash into a stinking, sweaty area large enough only for 12 tiny bunks. There is not enough headroom to stand: comfort is a low priority on racing yachts. The engine room, water maker and sail locker take up the rest of the space.
The crew was split into two watches for the rotating routine of duties. 0000 (midnight) to 0400 ("the biscuit watch" when a packet of biscuits was eagerly shared), 0400 to 0800, 0800 to 1400, 1400 to 2000 and 2000 to 2359 was how the days went. When off duty, people try to sleep in the airless, sweaty bunks. Helming duties rotated and occasional frenzies of activity were needed when jibbing or changing sails, but generally there was not a lot to do except admire the view, read, crave beer (and cigarettes... and salad... and ice cream... and chicas...), talk rubbish and try to hide from the sun.
When waking, the other watch (who incidentally did not appreciate being woken by 1. guitar, 2. shouting, 3. singing or 4. hunting horn. Shame there were no bagpipes on board...) were handed a cup of tea before climbing bleary eyed up on deck. We would then jump into their empty bunks for a welcome four hours sleep.
Mealtimes were the highlight of the day, especially as Joel's cooking was an absurd mid-ocean extravaganza. Roast lamb, pan-fried freshly caught dorado, ceviche and home-made ice cream thousands of miles from land! The 'Cape to Rio' was an arduous endurance race for our highly tuned racing machine crew spread-eagled around deck and feasting.
24 days is a long time. Think how many people you talk to, miles you drive and phone calls you make in 24 normal days. Weeks in the office, weekends at home. Ever changing horizons. Hours of television, reams of newspapers. For us it was a disc of blue water, 58ft of boat and 14 other people who were complete strangers on day one. Yet I was not bored (except after week one when I realised with disappointment that crashing waves and shrieking gales were not going to feature). Once away from the African coast we were barefoot, in T-shirts and shorts 24 hours a day. The days blazed beneath a pale blue sky and above an incredibly clear blue ocean streaked deep down with shafts of white light.
Sunsets brought relief from the furnace, leaving the world to darkness, us, and the comforting glow of the GPS and compass. We began the race with a fat cream moon in a golden halo. Small clouds of black and silver shone as we cruised down the yellow carpet of moonlight. The helmsman heaves on the wheel as we surf down the heavy, fast black waves. It is eternal motion, racing ever onwards towards Rio. As the weeks passed the moon waned, filling the utterly black sky with so many stars and shooting stars that they spill over into the ocean, showers of amazing phosphorescent sparks streaming in our wake, a wake of white water stretching back to Africa and the end of two thin tyre tracks.
Behind the boat morning catches us, the sea a purple mauve as the sky begins to turn orange and then blue. Only the strong stars survive. Eventually even Venus fades. Dawn reinvigorates you after the long night and thoughts turn towards breakfast, waking the next watch and then bed.
Small events break up the hours and days. A torn sail or Alberto being winched up the mast to make repairs. John's 40th birthday party (and the only bottle of beer on board), Pete being smacked in the head by a passing flying fish in the dead of night and then exacting his revenge by frying the 14 we had on deck for breakfast.
We fell becalmed for several days. I felt so small, so alone, so utterly at the mercy of the wind. It was an impressive experience. I realised then just how vast the Atlantic is. Dorados swam around the boat and refused to nibble our lines. We covered ourselves in shampoo and leaped overboard, with 6km of water below us and thousands of miles to shore. We tried everything to regain favour with the wind gods - singing ("every bit of wind's gonna be alright"), wind dances, sacrifices to Neptune (toothpaste, a lone sock and a spoonful of my supper), eating lentils and, bizarrely, scratching the mast. Eventually one of them must have worked as the wind returned.
Crossing the Greenwich Meridian was a big moment for me - the next time I cross it I will be back in London! Only 360 degrees still to go. I'm on my way home at last. The waves thump, sluice and fizz on the hull as I lie in my bunk. Come on wind, take me homewards!
We crossed the finish line in the dead of night, beneath the outline of Sugarloaf mountain and the vast Christ the Redeemer statue gleaming white and appearing to hang in the sky. We had crossed the Atlantic and I have a new continent to cycle across. I am looking forward to South America.
Poor Cape Town! I loved Cape Town but Rio really puts her in the shade. It is the most beautiful city setting I have ever seen. Add samba and football, dental floss bikinis and a permanent party mood and you have Rio. Rio walks with a bum wiggle, talks football, eats, drinks and never ever sleeps. I love it!
Of course I had to visit the Maracana - the largest stadium in the world - to revel in the music, energy, noise and utter craziness of Brazilian football. I am afraid that Elland Road, Leeds will never seem the same again... Now, having been brutally parted from 17 months of hair, I can look forward to 100 hours on the bus to Ushuaia (the Southernmost town in the world) where, at last, I will get back on the bike again, bound for Alaska.
Where to find Alastair now
Start at alastairhumphreys.com. His books, newsletter and podcast are all there.
Alastair turned this ride into two books: Moods of Future Joys, from England to Cape Town, and Thunder and Sunshine, the long way home from Patagonia. There is a version for younger readers too, The Boy Who Biked the World.
He has written many more since, including Microadventures, Grand Adventures, My Midsummer Morning, The Doorstep Mile and Local.