Voyage complete

While his 53-day trip rowing across the Atlantic Ocean was life-changing, Charles Wilkins says he’ll never do it again.

"I don’t have to do it again. I did it once," the 61-year-old local author said before laughing. "I don’t care if I ever row again except at my cottage."

Wilkins was part of a 16-person international crew that rowed from Morocco to Barbados, a 5,094-kilometre trek. The trip was both exciting and traumatic at the same time. For 15 straight days, 50 kilometres per hour winds slammed waves into the catamaran that were bigger than most houses, he said.

"So you can imagine what it was like out there being beaten basically assaulted by 40-foot waves day and night for 15 days straight and trying to row under these conditions," Wilkins said. "You take 15 days straight of that it and starts to work on your mind and imagination as well as your body for an old guy like me."

The crew would row in two hour shifts. Being inside the boat on break during inclement weather could be even worse than rowing because the waves would smash the bottom of the boat. While the crew had two-hour breaks to sleep, most didn’t get more than an hour at a time.

Wilkins said he slept even less because he had to take notes for his book.

"You’d think you were at war. It was like bombs going off," said Wilkins.

But the physical and mental exhaustion could also be off-set by the beauty of the ocean, the vast sky and stars above. Whales, dolphins and other sea-life followed the crew all the time, which also made the experience worth the trip, he added.

"You could look under the boat at almost any time and see these bug fish harbouring under the hulls, which was really a fantastic opera unto itself."

The humans aboard could also be both good and bad, he said. Heated debates and disagreements were common, but Wilkins said he’s amazed at how the crew came together.

"(I’m amazed) that people could coalesce as a community in the way those 16 people did and begin to care about one another and even in a sense love one another in the broadest sense. Well there was a little bit of the narrow sense of that going on as well," Wilkins joked.

Back home for a week now, Wilkins said he’s still readjusting to life on land.

"When I stand up from a chair or get out of bed the world rocks like that a little bit," he said.

Wilkins expects his book on the adventure to be out sometime next year.