This article was published in Nuvo Magazine on January 16, 2008. Photos courtesy of Sarah Kessans and Emily Kohl.

A rough day

It wasn’t their first time in the middle of the ocean. The last time was much worse. Sarah Kessans, then 22, and Emily Kohl, then 23, both graduates of Purdue University, were huddled in the small cabin of their 24 ft. ocean rowing boat with their sea anchor, a parachute-like outfit, dropped down into the water during the squall that came on them 18 hours before. As they were about to make another call into their distant support ship, a rogue wave, likely close to 20 feet high, slammed into the vessel’s port side sending the craft tumbling keel side up. Having awoken some time earlier to a cabin severely depleted of oxygen, the women had removed the solar fan vents from the cabin’s walls to let in more air. Now that the cabin was underwater, those vents were serving more as sieves while the sea poured in. The women grabbed the few articles they could: the Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon (EPIRB), a jacket and a digital camera. They emerged from the vessel’s interior in time to see their life raft floating away in the distance. The next 16 hours were spent on the keel of their overturned boat, trying to stay warm as they were visited by wave after chilling wave.
“It was just wicked, wicked weather out there, I mean we’re talking 10 to 20 ft. waves and 20 knot winds,” said Kessans.
They were eventually plucked out of the ocean by a British Tall Ship, a vessel that to the weary and frigid women, resembled a spooky manifestation from Pirates of the Caribbean.

Editor’s note: See the rescue yourself Online at www.youtube.com/watch?v=apo5XsTrXa0

They spent the next 11 days aboard the ship with the crew, making their abrupt departure from their own plans less difficult. They set to learning the workings of the massive vessel and climbing the 300 ft. masts to set the sails. They stopped and explored the beautiful island of Bequia, played beach volleyball on Mayreau, swam around the Tobago Keys and hiked the volcanoes of St. Lucia before arriving in Barbados with one less boat and many more stories. Incidentally, the boat turned up a few months later off the island of Desirade in the French West Indies which, ironically, is just 40 miles south of Antigua, the island the girls were rowing for in the first place. The hull was still completely intact and with the help of the chief of police on the island, they were able to have the boat put on a container and sent back on course for the U.S.
. . .

Mind games

“A lot of it was just putting that ’05 race behind us,” said Kohl. “It was having the mental fortitude to know that things were going to be o.k., knowing what to do when dangerous situations arise.”
In fact, mental preparation was about all the women had time to do this go around. Though they were planning to compete in the ‘07 race, they were still in some debt from ’05, and sponsorship money wasn’t coming in as quickly as they hoped. They resigned to setting their sights on ’09.
But in October, two months before the race was scheduled to start, Kessans got a call from Simon Chalk, the race organizer. He told her that there was a boat called the Mount Spirit waiting in the UK. The boat was still in pretty good shape after being raced across the North Atlantic in 2006 and the team who had used it offered it up to be borrowed for free under the condition that the race support their selected charity. There was one drastic difference, however, between this boat and the one they had rowed back in ’05: This boat was built for a team of four.
A couple of months earlier, Kohl drove down to Florida to pick up the American Spirit after it had been reclaimed from the clutches of the Atlantic. She spent the night at a friend’s house, leaving the boat parked out front. The next morning she found an envelope fixed onto the boat’s scratched and battered hull with blue painters tape. It was from a woman named Jan Kissel, the mother of Tara Remington, an American who has spent most of the last 15 years living in New Zealand.
Kohl remembered Remington from the ’05 race. They met her on the island of Antigua, the race’s finish line. Remington hadn’t finished the race either, she and her rowing partner having gone through a couple of hurricanes, a capsize, a head injury and, oh yes, a shark attack. There was another woman at the restaurant that night as well, Jo Davies, a Brit who had badly injured her back during the ’05 race. She had to wait seven days on the boat with her team after her immobilizing injury before a successful rescue was managed.
That evening, as the girls sat around drinking rum at a restaurant called Trapas, they all shared their oceanic war stories. They decided that, all having unfinished business with the Atlantic, it would be a grand idea to do it all over again in 2007 as a team of four. Thanks to the note left on the boat by Kissel, contact between the four women was reestablished and they started talking again.
But it never really amounted to anything more than talk until Kessans got the call from Simon Chalk. She and Kohl talked it over and decided that this was too great a stroke of luck to pass up. Kessans arranged to take a short break from her PhD studies and they got back in touch with both Remington and Davies, who were eager to accept the belated invitation.
And so it was set. The team of four would depart on December 3rd from La Gomera, a small chunk of land that makes up part of the Canary Islands. They would set a course for Antigua, 2,931 miles away, in a red boat with its fitting name stuck to the side with white vinyl letters: “Unfinished Business.”
. . .

The event

All of this was a part of something known as the Woodvale Challenge. Woodvale Events, a British group, puts on ocean rowing races every year. While 2007 was a year for the Atlantic, 2008 will be the year of the North Atlantic, starting just off the Manhattan shores and ending in the Scilly Isles, 28 miles off the southwest coast of England.
“We help people from all different backgrounds row across oceans, from the Olympian to the sort of house wife athlete,” said Simon Chalk, race organizer for Woodvale Events and himself a participant in this year’s race on the record breaking Oyster Shack team. The group handles 24/7 boat tracking via GPS during the event as well as the insurance and coordination with rescue services. But clearly, judging by the women’s experience in 2005, you can’t prepare for everything.
. . .

And then there were four

The sun was directly overhead in a warm, early December sky over the La Gomera. The anticipation and stress levels of the two women were trimmed thanks to their having been on this same starting line two years before, but nothing could contain the excitement that comes along with have 20 ocean rowing boats out in the bay, brimming with adrenaline. Sarah Kessans sat in their boat reflecting on how amazig it was that this had all come together in just two months. They had found a boat, worked out the sponsorships, and all four of them were in the boat ready to go. The reflecting was cut off abruptly as the sound of the air horn screamed through air and all quivering adrenaline was released and the boats shot out into the wide, consuming sea.
The women could tell at the outset that this race would be a different experience. When they had done the race in ’05 they were a team of two, so while one person was always rowing, the other person was mostly sleeping, not leaving much overlap for things like conversation. But with four rowers the women worked in teams, Kessans and Kohl always rowing together in two hour shifts while Remington and Davies ate or slept, and then switching.
“With four it’s just so much more dynamic,” said Kessans. “Being able to share duties such as cooking and plotting the charts and talking on the satellite phone and just having somebody with you, it’s just so much better.”
An obvious difference this sort of race holds from most others is its duration. Being on the boat for over 50 days, it became a home for the women, it was where their life took place. They did laundry in a bucket, washing as much of the skin-irritating salt out of the fabric as possible.
They had a water-making machine on board, that is, a contraption that uses reverse osmosis to clear the salt out of the sea water to make it drinkable. They carried a spare 200 liters as their ballast, some of which they had to tap into when their solar panel went on the fritz and they weren’t able to power their machine, but luckily not enough to break the 50 liter mark where a team will start incurring penalties.
They ate mostly freeze-dried food, mac and cheese, beef stroganoff, noodles and chicken, things that required only boiling water to be hydrated back into a somewhat edible form. They also brought plenty of junk food along, Doritos, Fritos, Snickers bars, Slim Jims, things to keep snacking on in between rowing duties. Even with all their eating, though, after 50 days of working out for 12 hours a day the girls all came home 15 to 20 pounds lighter.
“I mean, you’re burning about 4,000 calories a day and really you can’t eat 4,000 calories a day,” said Kessans. “I mean you could, but we just really didn’t want to eat that much just because it’s a lot of food.”
And because every reader is now asking the same question: “how did they go to the bathroom …”
“’Bucket and chuck it’ with baby wipes was pretty much the way to go,” said Kessans. She also let me in on the little nugget, if you will, that one of the team members liked to go over the side, but balance issues kept the other three hovering over those buckets that hadn’t been lost over the side or broken.
. . .

One simple question

Most would say that this sort of experience begs one question: Why? Why put yourself through an episode such as this? Why subject yourself to the elements of physical exertion and exhaustion that this sort of journey requires? Why lay yourself out there, vulnerable to the unpredictability of ever changing oceanic weather? Why spend half your daytime hours lying awake in a boat’s small cabin that has turned into a virtual sauna as you await your next turn at the oars? What is the point in all this?
“I think they’re nuts,” said Jere Jenkins, formerly the women’s varsity rowing coach at Purdue University. “I mean, three-fifths of our planet is covered with water. The oceans are an incredibly powerful entity and to go out there for 50 days basically alone, I think, is just crazy.”
He said that he does understand the pull towards rowing, though. “The draw to rowing is that it is a sport where you push yourself mentally and physically to your absolute limit everyday. It’s hard for people to understand when they see it on television because it all looks so smooth and graceful, but when you’re actually in the boat and rowing it’s an incredibly intense experience,” he said.
Jenkins was the coach when Kessans and Kohl were on the team and said that they were both very intense athletes, even in training. “They would put their rowing machines nose to nose and they would basically growl at each other,” he said.
“The difference between being on a bigger oceangoing boat and on a ocean rowboat where you sit two feet above the water, it’s like two different oceans,” said Kessans. “Being propelled by your own power makes it so that the sounds are different. You can hear the ocean, you can see the blind fish practically jump into your lap. You really feel a part of the ocean whereas on a larger ship you’re really just a passenger on it.”
“At times you’re not in control and nature is in control,” said Kohl. “And that’s a big thing. If you’re in a boat with an engine or a motor you have some sort of control, but when you’re in an ocean rowing boat when the only thing you have to move with is oars, that’s something that’s really different.”
. . .

The geography of the sea

One thing that separates huge bodies of water like the ocean from any other place in the world is the simple and overwhelming lack of geography. In any place where people normally spend their time there is always something to see, always something on the horizon that breaks the mind-numbing flatness created by the curvature of the earth. But on the ocean there is nothing to see in the distance, in any direction.
This being said, the women said that you learn to appreciate what you do find. One day the team was joined by a pod of dolphins that swam alongside their boat for over half an hour. But it was the nights that they started to really look forward to. Being over a thousand miles from the closest light source, the sky looked as if it had been ripped open, the rawness of millions upon millions of stars revealed.
They would spend their nights rowing together, listening to the music they piped in through two speakers on deck (everything from the 80s to Death Cab to Dashboard Confessional, for those keeping track at home). Some nights they would put in the earphones from their iPods and listen to recorded books. And there were other nights when they would simply row in silence, hearing nothing more than the sound their oars dipping in and out of the dark sea.
They celebrated Christmas at sea with a few special treats. Davies’ mom had packed presents for all four women, including kazoos and Santa hats. They made themselves a Christmas tree by wrapping green tinsel around the boat’s three antennas.
“It wasn’t your average Christmas tree but it definitely got us in the holiday spirit,” said Kessans, who along with Kohl spent her second Christmas in the middle of the ocean.
“She called us on Christmas eve when the whole family was hanging out,” said Emily Kessans, 21, Sarah’s younger sister and a nursing student on the IUPUI campus here in Indy. She said that she thinks she might actually have talked more with her sister when she was at sea than when she’s normally on land, thanks likely in large part to the satellite phone sponsorship the team had. She said that Sarah was, understandably, always pretty tired when she called and was usually ready to eat or sleep.
Some of Sarah Kessans early Christmases were spent right here on the north side of Indianapolis. In 1992, when she was eight, the family moved further south in Indiana, onto a 160-acre farm.
“At first she was hesitant even to walk outside the house,” said Tim Kessans, Sarah’s father and a resident of Floyds Knobs, Ind. Over the phone, Mr. Kessans sounds warm and proud. Through sheepish, reminiscent laughs, he said that it wasn’t long before Sarah was walking down to the river, building forts with her friends, and eventually off the farm entirely.
“She was always climbing the tallest trees growing up or swimming across the flooded Blue River near our home,” said Emily Kessans. “We spent a lot of time on the roof.”
In high school, Sarah Kessans became involved in the national science fair with her research in creating a natural herbicide. This project took her all over the country, let her meet President Bush, got her a summer in Israel and, in the words of her father, kept expanding her wings more and more.
. . .

Business: finished

It was Jan 22 and the sun was just beginning to set when the mountains came into view. Antigua, an island just a quarter the size of Marion County, lie just 20 miles away and as the sun dropped lower in the sky the little island’s lights seemed to get brighter and brighter. When they were about two miles from shore the team was met by a virtual platoon of boats, one of which was a catamaran that had been rented by their family members.
“At the end we were absolutely hauling,” said Kohl. “We were going so fast with the adrenaline and wanting to get in. I think we did the last two miles in about a half hour.”
As they neared shore they saw flares go off from the top of Fort Berkeley. The flares, which they later found out were being ignited by the men of team Pura Vida, the race’s overall winners, lit up the night sky like a homeward-beckoning beacon. When they did finally make it to port they stepped off the boat that had been their home for the last 51 days 16 hours and 31 minutes into the collective welcoming arms of a huge crowd. Their families had rented a steel band to greet them, the plinking of the metal drums penetrating the normally calm island night.
“We had waited for that moment pretty much for four years since we got the idea of rowing across the Atlantic,” said Kessans. “It was absolutely surreal and we were absolutely on top of the world.”
“It was definitely the finish that we longed for when we were out there,” added Kohl.
The previous record for a women’s team of four in this race was 67 days, set during the 2005 race. With the girls finish this race of 51 days, they blasted the old record out of the water, so to speak. And in a frenzy of excited celebration, the letters ‘U’ and ‘N’ were peeled off the side of the boat, christening her anew as “Finished Business.”
Ends of journeys are always times when you look back on what they’ve been. But it’s also a time when we can’t help but look forward. What comes next for these two women? Will there be more ocean rowing in their futures? As of now, one is saying probably and the other, probably not.
“I may end up doing the ’09 Indian Ocean race,” said Kohl. “It would be kind of a big historical moment for us, having an American women’s four go across and with the experience that we now have with these two races we could hopefully go in and win the race. So that’s a maybe,” she said.
Kessans had different thoughts. “As far as I’m concerned, I mean, I may eat my words later, but I’m sort of ready to get onto new adventures, everything from climbing to hiking to adventure racing. I love the experience [of ocean rowing] and would recommend it to anyone. It really is a life-changing event. But for right now I’m definitely done rowing oceans for a bit,” she said.
. . .
Being able to say that they had rowed across an ocean wasn’t the only reason the women were on this boat. They are also raising money for the Meningitis Trust UK and the Meningitis Trust New Zealand. Their association with the charity sort of occurred by default. It was the charity of the boat’s owning team that had rowed their boat across the North Atlantic in 2006. With the free use of the boat came the stipulation that they raise money for the charity. So that’s exactly what they set out to do, and in no small fashion. By the end of it, they hope to have raised $20 thousand. Currently they’re only about a quarter of the way there, so if you’d like to support the cause, be sure to visit <www.justgiving.com/unfinishedbusiness>.